The thing that has really stunned me about last night's broadcast from the party bunker was that nobody has thought that the people who need to organise and deliver these million jabs a day from today should be told first.
Finding out on the telly that you are about to be placed under a massive workload where you will literally be under siege by angry people all the way through Christmas (and thanks for volunteering for working every day) is Not Good.
Its like Peppa couldn't give a monkeys about other people. Can't be right...
Haven't they been talking about ramping up the rate of vaccination as soon as Omicron was named?
The announcement in this broadcast follows a fortnight of internal NHS work on working out how to ramp up the vaccination rate, including negotiations with GPs about what work to stop doing to enable needles to be plunged into arms instead.
The government have done precisely what you complain they have not done.
I posted last night that its a ballsy strategy which they had to do. My point is that they haven't told the people who are doing the actual injecting. At least thats what swathes of them are reporting on Twitter and elsewhere. I have no doubt that high level conversations have taken place with the NHS, but its not been with the people on the ground.
It's been all over the news for a couple of weeks. It's not exactly been secret.
That everyone would be jabbed in December? Fascinating that you think that has been all over the news for weeks when the PM announced it last night for the first time and then explained why he had changed the target from 7 weeks.
No one has set a goal of jabbing everyone in December.
That claim is a misrepresentation.
Though obvs the media will pretend it was the goal when jabs are still happening in Jan week 2, because they want a story.
"Everyone eligible aged 18 and over in England will have the chance to get their booster before the New Year."
"The chance to" meaning that everyone can get the jab this year. Which is a goal of jabbing everyone over 18.
There is some furious back pedalling on PB from Team Johnson today. "We never meant everyone over 18 would be vaccinated, just offered a vaccine".
What an absolute crock! Johnson tried to give the "impression" that third jabs would be administered to all by New Year's day. That was my understanding, and I thought he is making a hostage to fortune tough call here. But it turns out I was wrong and it just meant "a chance to" get a jab
If I buy a lottery ticket I have "a chance to" win a million pounds, but it is far from certain I will, infact it is most unlikely.
On Police Scotland, they are now saying that they will record rapes as having been carried by a woman if the accused person "insists".
Now forget the trans issue for a minute (though note that doing this completely ignores the legal definition of rape and buggers up the statistics and data, which will affect the viability of initiatives like the one on domestic violence @DavidL was describing upthread).
But just listen to the underlying approach - if the accused "insists".
Excuse me. Since when should the accused be able to insist on how the police do their job?
Will the police close the case without investigation if the accused person "insists? Will they destroy evidence if the accused person "insists"? What else will they do if the accused person "insists"?
Someone should be saying to them: don't be so fucking stupid. Your job is to investigate. Concentrate on that. That means recording facts accurately. Not worrying about validating someone else's feelings. That is not your job.
It's the careering about from one half-arsed objective to another which leads to the police failing to focus on - and be halfway competent in - their key day job.
England: Extension of vaccination rollout announced to take effect on Monday. Frequently you can book over the weekend because the system is updated and ready to go.
Scotland: Health secretary announces on Twitter extension of vaccination rollout for next day. Wife phones up the next day and told it's not happening until the next next day.
But it's Johnson who hasn't done any forward planning.
What's changed is the shortening of the remaining booster programme by more than half, according to Johnson's announcement. Time is of the essence, so any further acceleration they can make is worth it, even if they don't make the target, as long as it is orderly.
I think the broadcast had three objectives:
1. Get people to take Omicron seriously so they change their behaviour. 2. Make it clear we're entirely dependent on vaccination and voluntary measures. Johnson won't bring in any new NPIs. 3. Allow Johnson to take the initiative with the kind of showy programme he likes.
The key question is (2). Will it be enough?
Doubtful. As you say, collapsing 7 weeks of work into 3 at zero notice when Christmas and New Year are in those 3 is *challenging*. The pledge is that "Everyone eligible aged 18 and over in England will have the chance to get their booster before the New Year." That means the system has to have enough doses and appointment slots to do everyone in 3 weeks. Which is a million a day.
We need this to happen. But it seems unlikely. Sadly.
Tell you what - lets let them try eh? When they fail, as you have decided that they will, you can come on and shout about how prescient you are.
FFS - for once try to see things with a neutral stance.
"Leave him alone, he's doing his best"
I *support* the attempt to do this. We have no other choice. The data with Omicron gets worse and worse so their only play other than hard lockdown now is smash out as many boosters as possible and hope it works. I want this to work because it has to.
But pointing out the challenge is not me saying they will fail wanting to be smug. I don't want to be right. It just seems massively unlikely to do it in 3 normal weeks, never mind these 3 weeks.
So I expect the result will be another lockdown. Which again I do not want.
I think you'll be surprised. Firstly I don't think omicron is going to have the impact on hospitalization/death that you do. Secondly, I doubt a lockdown will happen. There are still more measures that can come in that are a long way short of that.
My thoughts from last night, posted on another forum:
“Okay, just watched the highlights, now going to bed. Initial thoughts…
“We thought the procedure was rushed for “the show”, but hadn’t realised that the instruction was only given to half of the lapped cars to overtake, and hadn’t realised there was an original decision for lapped cars to not overtake. To be honest, after a couple of laps of the SC we expected a red flag, to give a “Baku Sprint” finish once they’d cleaned up the mess.
“Masi is bang to rights for a breach of 48.12, (“Unless the clerk of the course considers the presence of the safety car is still necessary, once the last lapped car has passed the leader the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap.”) and the FIA are going to have an almighty problem working out what to do about it. He was making things up as he went along, when there are a specific set of rules he needs to follow.
“Just about the only possibility is to curtail the race by two laps, and declare the result on the positions behind the SC. But that overturns the drivers’ championship, for something that isn’t the fault of the champion - which is quite the mess they’ve got themselves into.
“Also LOL to find out that Mercedes bought their lawyer with them. This has a CAS case written all over it.”
The FIA have done a good job of bringing their own sport into disrepute in the past few weeks, seemingly desparate to see a new name on the trophy. WWF1
The FIA seem to be arguing that the race director has absolute discretion to manage the operation of the safety car. I don’t see how that can stand, if it allows (as in this case) the director to completely set aside the procedures clearly set out in the rules, and impose a procedure which obviously favours a single driver above everyone else on the track. That effectively gives him the unchallengeable ability to fix races, which is plainly absurd.
My thoughts from last night, posted on another forum:
“Okay, just watched the highlights, now going to bed. Initial thoughts…
“We thought the procedure was rushed for “the show”, but hadn’t realised that the instruction was only given to half of the lapped cars to overtake, and hadn’t realised there was an original decision for lapped cars to not overtake. To be honest, after a couple of laps of the SC we expected a red flag, to give a “Baku Sprint” finish once they’d cleaned up the mess.
“Masi is bang to rights for a breach of 48.12, (“Unless the clerk of the course considers the presence of the safety car is still necessary, once the last lapped car has passed the leader the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap.”) and the FIA are going to have an almighty problem working out what to do about it. He was making things up as he went along, when there are a specific set of rules he needs to follow.
“Just about the only possibility is to curtail the race by two laps, and declare the result on the positions behind the SC. But that overturns the drivers’ championship, for something that isn’t the fault of the champion - which is quite the mess they’ve got themselves into.
“Also LOL to find out that Mercedes bought their lawyer with them. This has a CAS case written all over it.”
The FIA have done a good job of bringing their own sport into disrepute in the past few weeks, seemingly desparate to see a new name on the trophy. WWF1
The FIA seem to be arguing that the race director has absolute discretion to manage the operation of the safety car. I don’t see how that can stand, if it allows (as in this case) the director to completely set aside the procedures clearly set out in the rules, and impose a procedure which obviously favours a single driver above everyone else on the track. That effectively gives him the unchallengeable ability to fix races, which is plainly absurd.
I think it stands because that's what the rules say.
Should Masi have the power to fix the race like that? No. Should teams be badgering Masi while he's making his ruling? Red Bull saying to him "we only need one racing lap" etc ... No.
But he does have that power whether he should or shouldn't. It's absurd but that's what the rules say in giving him blanket discretion.
That needs changing but I can't see any scope for an appeal working because Masi was given unlimited power with the SC.
Have you got a link to the relevant article of the regulations?
The broken article is 48.12 and the blank cheque for Masi article is 15.3 apparently.
Masi seems to have unlimited overriding authority in respect of the Safety Car so the rules don't have to be followed. 🤦♂️
That doesn't read like Masi can ignore all the regulations on Safety Cars as and when he sees fit.
- With him and the Clerk of the Course, Masi has overriding authority; the Clerk of the Course can only act with his agreement. It doesn't look to apply to "overriding authority over the regulations." - I would argue that "use of the Safety Car" is whether to use the Safety Car and for how long. Should it be intended as they claim, the regulations on what happens with a Safety Car need not have been written. Nor should they have bothered with the argument that 48.13 overrides 48.12 (which is effectively, "Yeah, that's what's supposed to happen, but if we say "Safety Car comes in now," that overrides everything else." If they're relying on "Masi has carte blanche to do what he likes with the Safety Car, up to and including forcing everyone to do doughnuts around it," then 48.13 is as irrelevant as 48.12.
Essentially, their response was:
I think that's exactly their response.
And as someone else noted the absence of the words "in accordance with the Sporting Regulations" in the use of the Safety Car is quite pointed.
Yes the rules seem to be more guidance than rules. It shouldn't be the case, but it does seem to be the case.
England: Extension of vaccination rollout announced to take effect on Monday. Frequently you can book over the weekend because the system is updated and ready to go.
Scotland: Health secretary announces on Twitter extension of vaccination rollout for next day. Wife phones up the next day and told it's not happening until the next next day.
But it's Johnson who hasn't done any forward planning.
What's changed is the shortening of the remaining booster programme by more than half, according to Johnson's announcement. Time is of the essence, so any further acceleration they can make is worth it, even if they don't make the target, as long as it is orderly.
I think the broadcast had three objectives:
1. Get people to take Omicron seriously so they change their behaviour. 2. Make it clear we're entirely dependent on vaccination and voluntary measures. Johnson won't bring in any new NPIs. 3. Allow Johnson to take the initiative with the kind of showy programme he likes.
The key question is (2). Will it be enough?
Doubtful. As you say, collapsing 7 weeks of work into 3 at zero notice when Christmas and New Year are in those 3 is *challenging*. The pledge is that "Everyone eligible aged 18 and over in England will have the chance to get their booster before the New Year." That means the system has to have enough doses and appointment slots to do everyone in 3 weeks. Which is a million a day.
We need this to happen. But it seems unlikely. Sadly.
I'm a little confused as to whether the exact commitment is to offer everyone the chance to book an appointment by the end of the month, or actually to get the boosters administered to all those eligible by the end of the month. Whether this is down to the Government's messaging or the media's reporting of it, I don't know.
But yes, I'll be astonished if we get anywhere near to administering all the required boosters. The system will be doing well just to finish all the over 40s by the end of December.
It must surely be a commitment to get every booster delivered; just offering the boosters to everyone with dates well into the future can be done by Wednesday when the online booking opens up to all over 18s.
I'm all for ambitious targets (though why wait until now?) but this smacks as:
a) a 'dead cat' tactic to divert from Partygate and the Tory NPI rebellion, and
b) a hostage to fortune for the government which will come back to bite them when woefully underachieved.
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
As Red Bull were at zero risk of track position to bring in via a pit stop and change to softs, you could argue that Mercedes then knew they would do that so should have instantly brought Hamilton in to also switch to softs.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place. ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace*. iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
* Of course if they finish under the safety car it doesn't work...
Visited North Shropshire at the weekend. Feels like it'll be a majority of less than 2,000 for either Con or LD.
That's very interesting. What are you basing it on - actual canvassing and comparing with previous VI or chatting to people or...? (no need to say if you were helping a specific party if you'd rather not) Is there a lot of engagement by voters, or do you think turnout will be low?
Totally unscientific combination of those things. But my prediction for Old Bexley wasn't particularly good: I forecast Reform to get 20% and they only received 6.6%.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
I think that is undoubtedly true. The vast majority of crime is incompetent chaos where who did it is pretty bloody obvious, typically a member of the family or a lover. Detective work is minimal. It is administration and ensuring that the evidence available is collated that forms the larger part of the job.
A solicitor friend told me that the police are, in general, incompetent. They catch criminals because, in general, the criminals are more incompetent.
I always thought this was slightly unkind to the police, but he had much more contact with them than I did.
In my experience that is generally true but it can be startling when you come across good practice. I was recently on a Crown Office training course and the most interesting speaker was head of the sexual crimes unit in Scotland. If they identified a victim with certain characteristics they would work on the history of the accused tracing his previous relationships, addresses, other information that had been ingathered about him etc. They would use a series of data bases to achieve this and have the resources to investigate across Scotland.
The results are clogging up our High Court with many accused facing multiple charges of serial rape, sexual violence and domestic abuse. The patterns are highlighted and the law entitles the jury to determine the likelihood of the offence by reference to those patterns.
This is bringing to justice misogynistic monsters who have blundered through life causing so much pain and chaos but who previously all too often got away with it because the evidence in any one particular incident was weak or unreliable. Just a small example to show that it is not impossible when you have properly directed and motivated staff.
Sorry but I do not like this. By all means use data and patterns to detect criminals but juries should not be invited to convict people on the basis that the accused is clearly a wrong'un, and even if there is no evidence in this particular case, it's the sort of thing he does and he is well overdue.
We've seen with Covid that even highly intelligent politicians, journalists and doctors are more-or-less innumerate so the idea juries can think probabilistically is absurd, and that goes for judges too. I can see why prosecutors welcome any tool that increases conviction rates but I'm not sure it helps justice.
That is about 0.3% of the number of Omicron cases that have been identified. The uncertainty is still huge, but given the high growth rate I don't think that is indicating a disease that's much milder than Delta.
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
As Red Bull were at zero risk of track position to bring in via a pit stop and change to softs, you could argue that Mercedes then knew they would do that so should have instantly brought Hamilton in to also switch to softs.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place. ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace. iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
The big risk for Lewis, was that he gave up track position and the race went on to finish behind the safety car.
Mercedes were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.
On Police Scotland, they are now saying that they will record rapes as having been carried by a woman if the accused person "insists".
Now forget the trans issue for a minute (though note that doing this completely ignores the legal definition of rape and buggers up the statistics and data, which will affect the viability of initiatives like the one on domestic violence @DavidL was describing upthread).
But just listen to the underlying approach - if the accused "insists".
Excuse me. Since when should the accused be able to insist on how the police do their job?
Will the police close the case without investigation if the accused person "insists? Will they destroy evidence if the accused person "insists"? What else will they do if the accused person "insists"?
Someone should be saying to them: don't be so fucking stupid. Your job is to investigate. Concentrate on that. That means recording facts accurately. Not worrying about validating someone else's feelings. That is not your job.
It's the careering about from one half-arsed objective to another which leads to the police failing to focus on - and be halfway competent in - their key day job.
Once again, you seemed to be unduly interested in facts. Facts are hard, oppressive and don't take into account... feelings. And feelings are much more important than facts.
Accidentally having an arrest rate of 99% young black men under the PTA is factual. But dancing badly at the Notting Hill Carnival makes someone (who?) *feel* better. So that is the important bit.
I’m looking forward to the first race of next season when Ham is leading by 30 seconds on the last few corners and he asks over the radio his team to check with Massi that he’s not going to arbitrarily change the rules before the end….
More seriously I think Mercedes best play is to say they are appealing the decision to arbitrarily change the rules of the safety car as it’s vital for the sport that competitors know what rules they are playing by before it starts but that if they win they are not asking for the race result to be changed as they wouldn’t want to win the drivers championship unless they deserved it.
They should also demand if they win that Massi steps down for bringing the sport into disrepute.
They get public recognition that the actions and rule change was wrong, they diminish Ver title, look good sports for not taking the title from Ver and also ensure that F1 is a bit more sensible about the balance of entertainment and sporting integrity next season…..
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
As Red Bull were at zero risk of track position to bring in via a pit stop and change to softs, you could argue that Mercedes then knew they would do that so should have instantly brought Hamilton in to also switch to softs.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place. ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace. iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
But they did lose track position to the lapped cars. As it was unfolding, I said RedBull made the wrong call due to the lack of time to let the lapped cars go past.
The thing that has really stunned me about last night's broadcast from the party bunker was that nobody has thought that the people who need to organise and deliver these million jabs a day from today should be told first.
Finding out on the telly that you are about to be placed under a massive workload where you will literally be under siege by angry people all the way through Christmas (and thanks for volunteering for working every day) is Not Good.
Its like Peppa couldn't give a monkeys about other people. Can't be right...
Haven't they been talking about ramping up the rate of vaccination as soon as Omicron was named?
The announcement in this broadcast follows a fortnight of internal NHS work on working out how to ramp up the vaccination rate, including negotiations with GPs about what work to stop doing to enable needles to be plunged into arms instead.
The government have done precisely what you complain they have not done.
I posted last night that its a ballsy strategy which they had to do. My point is that they haven't told the people who are doing the actual injecting. At least thats what swathes of them are reporting on Twitter and elsewhere. I have no doubt that high level conversations have taken place with the NHS, but its not been with the people on the ground.
It's been all over the news for a couple of weeks. It's not exactly been secret.
That everyone would be jabbed in December? Fascinating that you think that has been all over the news for weeks when the PM announced it last night for the first time and then explained why he had changed the target from 7 weeks.
No one has set a goal of jabbing everyone in December.
That claim is a misrepresentation.
Though obvs the media will pretend it was the goal when jabs are still happening in Jan week 2, because they want a story.
"Everyone eligible aged 18 and over in England will have the chance to get their booster before the New Year."
"The chance to" meaning that everyone can get the jab this year. Which is a goal of jabbing everyone over 18.
Yes, that's how I understand it - all adults are to be offered the jab before the New Year (but it's still voluntary). I support the effort though I share RP's doubts about feasibility and in general I do feel that the Government has been consistently behind the curve though they get there in the end. If they get there by, say, Jan 8 I'd count that as pretty good.
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
Sure. Verstappen started on soft tyres, so needed an earlier pit stop. That put him on the hard tyre on lap 13. Hamilton was boxed to do the same on lap 14. Then with the gap between them not closing we had a virtual safety car. Red Bull switched to a two stop strategy and pitted Verstappen for a fresh set of hard tyres. Mercedes had been asking Hamilton for his choice of tyre if there was a safety car, but otherwise planned to not stop again.
The one stop was the optimal strategy. Two stop was supposed to be slower. So Verstappen ends up further behind Hamilton albeit on fresher tyres. The gap needs to close by 0.8s per lap and some laps it is but increasingly not. They gambled that putting Verstappen much further behind on a fresh set they could catch up - it wasn't working.
And then the safety car. Mercedes had a choice - do we pit as planned for or not? The risk was that Verstappen stays out and takes the lead so they didn't. Or that a red flag follows quickly in which case change your tyres in the pit lane. So they didn't. Verstappen did.
What ultimately cost Mercedes the race was not pitting during the VSC. A set of tyres 20 laps fresher would likely have been enough for Hamilton to hold off Verstappen even on fresh softs - as he had at the start of the race. Or else re-pass him as he *almost* did even on his shagged set of hards.
People keep saying "there was no option to pit Hamilton. But there was - in the VSC period. That put him on the wrong tyres and out of luck during the safety car after they played it safe and left him out again.
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
As Red Bull were at zero risk of track position to bring in via a pit stop and change to softs, you could argue that Mercedes then knew they would do that so should have instantly brought Hamilton in to also switch to softs.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place. ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace. iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
No
iv) If Hamilton pits then Max doesn't and is in the lead, then the Safety Car stays out until the end as the rules are actually followed and Max wins.
The problem is that there shouldn't have been any question as to whether the race would restart or not. Since there was a question over that, Hamilton couldn't pit while Max had nothing to lose by doing so once Hamilton was past the pit line for the last time.
When I read about the Stephen Port case, the other day -- I found it truly shocking.
There was gross incompetence. The first body was dumped outside his flat, Port was not a master criminal he was dumb. It was easy to solve this crime after the first victim.
Then, there was not just lack of empathy for the victims and their relatives, but real unconscionable callousness. It looks like gross homophobia ... unless the Met really do treat everyone like pieces of shit.
And then, incredibly, many of the officers involved in these cases were promoted.
I give credit to The Guardian -- not a newspaper I much like -- which has been banging on and on about this. This is a major scandal, or should be.
The case reads like something that might happen in a tenth-rate banana republic.
The victims dumped, forgotten and failed; the bungling police promoted; the politicians looking the other way; and press indifferent or yadda-yaddaing on about trivia.
Awful. Worse even than the murder of Sarah Everard, and God knows that was bad enough.
My thoughts from last night, posted on another forum:
“Okay, just watched the highlights, now going to bed. Initial thoughts…
“We thought the procedure was rushed for “the show”, but hadn’t realised that the instruction was only given to half of the lapped cars to overtake, and hadn’t realised there was an original decision for lapped cars to not overtake. To be honest, after a couple of laps of the SC we expected a red flag, to give a “Baku Sprint” finish once they’d cleaned up the mess.
“Masi is bang to rights for a breach of 48.12, (“Unless the clerk of the course considers the presence of the safety car is still necessary, once the last lapped car has passed the leader the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap.”) and the FIA are going to have an almighty problem working out what to do about it. He was making things up as he went along, when there are a specific set of rules he needs to follow.
“Just about the only possibility is to curtail the race by two laps, and declare the result on the positions behind the SC. But that overturns the drivers’ championship, for something that isn’t the fault of the champion - which is quite the mess they’ve got themselves into.
“Also LOL to find out that Mercedes bought their lawyer with them. This has a CAS case written all over it.”
The FIA have done a good job of bringing their own sport into disrepute in the past few weeks, seemingly desparate to see a new name on the trophy. WWF1
A red flag would have been better, absolutely. Though we have to recognise the red herring that is the lapped cars. Lets assume that Latifi's car had been lifted slightly quicker and all lapped cars had gone by. One lap left. Verstappen on new softs behind Lewis on worn hards. No grounds for appeal. Would Mercedes have been happy? No.
Nor is there any scope for "curtail the race by two laps" because one team doesn't like the result. Nowhere in the regulations does it even suggest the possibility of considering such a thing.
The hard reality is that Mercedes fucked up their strategy and were unlucky. They believed the hard tyre would go to the end, Hamilton was doing his best but kept telling them that the tyres wouldn't last at that pace. And then manna from heaven - the virtual safety car. An opportunity for a cheap pit stop which Red Bull took and Mercedes didn't. Leaving Hamilton on tyres that were only heading in one direction. Had they pitted during the VSC the differential between Hamilton and Verstappen would not have been so high.
Then we have the Latifi crash itself. Red Bull saw it and rolled the dice, Verstappen straight in for a pitstop. Had there not have been a safety car then his chances of catching Hamilton had completely gone. If your response is "well of course it would be a safety car" then Mercedes had the same opportunity and missed it.
The real sad thing for me about the whole thing is how whiny and petulant both the Red Bull and Mercedes teams have been. For months. The FIA really needs to give both of them a calm pill.
Sanest F1 post I’ve read on here for a long time. The general tone on this blog has been utterly appalling and really makes me concerned about the mental health of many of the posters. Calm down folks! It’s only entertainment. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Ssshhhh, it's much more entertaining reading the F1 crywank than PT's anti-science lies. Leave them be.
Sound advice. Primal screaming may be just the therapy motörheads require.
Just as an aside, this reminds me a bit of when Vettel was robbed of victory in Canada, to the benefit of Hamilton. Only that had a clearer cut resolution (annul the bullshit decision).
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
As Red Bull were at zero risk of track position to bring in via a pit stop and change to softs, you could argue that Mercedes then knew they would do that so should have instantly brought Hamilton in to also switch to softs.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place. ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace. iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
The big risk for Lewis, was that he gave up track position and the race went on to finish behind the safety car.
Mercedes were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.
If there'd been a red flag then they'd have both been able to put softs on, wouldn't they?
That would have been the only fair way to deal with it.
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
Red Bull were in the fortunate position, of being able to do the opposite of what the car in front did. Twice.
If Lewis had stopped at the end, and Max gained track position, and the race then finished behind the safety car, with Lewis having literally given away the championship…
And that is luck - a key factor in F1. The point I keep coming back to was Mercedes failing to cover off Verstappen with a 2 stop. Had he taken the fresh set of hard tyres held back during the VSC period then he would have been on tyres 20 laps fresher at the end. Enough to hold off Verstappen again for a lap.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
I think that is undoubtedly true. The vast majority of crime is incompetent chaos where who did it is pretty bloody obvious, typically a member of the family or a lover. Detective work is minimal. It is administration and ensuring that the evidence available is collated that forms the larger part of the job.
A solicitor friend told me that the police are, in general, incompetent. They catch criminals because, in general, the criminals are more incompetent.
I always thought this was slightly unkind to the police, but he had much more contact with them than I did.
I wonder if the police services elsewhere in Europe are in a similar state? Or the rest of the Anglosphere?
One of the other dads at the little un's school is ex-Met, and before that ex-military (he's an older dad). If I recall correctly, he was invalided out of the Met after he was stabbed. Our kids are in different classes now, so I don't get as much chance to chat to him, but he did have some rather (ahem) strong views on the incompetence of the Home Office.
I do wonder if the problem is that the police have too much to do: not just in terms of crimes, but in terms of what they do. We want police on the streets. We want crimes investigated. We want victims supported and for the wrong un's to face justice. The crimes can vary from vandalism and arson (as happened in our village last week; the teenagers responsible have been caught) to historic serious sexual crimes, to fraud.
But if that's the case, I've no idea what the solution is.
I suspect that Mr J's penultimate paragraph is right. The police have been 'charged' (ahem) with all sorts of roles and as we all know, the actual number of bodies (ahem again) has been reduced. It's probably arguable that there were not enough in 2010 before the Coalition's reductions and the replacements now being sought will bring the numbers up to 'almost adequate', rather than 'inadequate', as under Cameron and May. I wonder too, if the technological advances that enable historic crimes to be investigated have had an effect.
This won't be popular but perhaps Dominic Raab is right that the police should not spend time and resources on very old cases. Raab's one year statute of limitations is too radical but perhaps it is time to say that any crimes more than, say, two or three decades old are spent. Congratulations, you got away with it, but note that if Burglar Bill is still active then he can be caught and banged up for his recent and current crimes.
It's not so much chasing Burglar Bill after 20 years as the kiddy-fiddlers, whose unfortunate victims bury their suffering, mentally, until something or someone triggers their memories.
I'd love to book my booster jab but after spending more than an hour on the website & entering my NHS number dozens of times I give up. On both mobile and desktop the site is faulty. Cc@nhsuk"
My thoughts from last night, posted on another forum:
“Okay, just watched the highlights, now going to bed. Initial thoughts…
“We thought the procedure was rushed for “the show”, but hadn’t realised that the instruction was only given to half of the lapped cars to overtake, and hadn’t realised there was an original decision for lapped cars to not overtake. To be honest, after a couple of laps of the SC we expected a red flag, to give a “Baku Sprint” finish once they’d cleaned up the mess.
“Masi is bang to rights for a breach of 48.12, (“Unless the clerk of the course considers the presence of the safety car is still necessary, once the last lapped car has passed the leader the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap.”) and the FIA are going to have an almighty problem working out what to do about it. He was making things up as he went along, when there are a specific set of rules he needs to follow.
“Just about the only possibility is to curtail the race by two laps, and declare the result on the positions behind the SC. But that overturns the drivers’ championship, for something that isn’t the fault of the champion - which is quite the mess they’ve got themselves into.
“Also LOL to find out that Mercedes bought their lawyer with them. This has a CAS case written all over it.”
The FIA have done a good job of bringing their own sport into disrepute in the past few weeks, seemingly desparate to see a new name on the trophy. WWF1
A red flag would have been better, absolutely. Though we have to recognise the red herring that is the lapped cars. Lets assume that Latifi's car had been lifted slightly quicker and all lapped cars had gone by. One lap left. Verstappen on new softs behind Lewis on worn hards. No grounds for appeal. Would Mercedes have been happy? No.
Nor is there any scope for "curtail the race by two laps" because one team doesn't like the result. Nowhere in the regulations does it even suggest the possibility of considering such a thing.
The hard reality is that Mercedes fucked up their strategy and were unlucky. They believed the hard tyre would go to the end, Hamilton was doing his best but kept telling them that the tyres wouldn't last at that pace. And then manna from heaven - the virtual safety car. An opportunity for a cheap pit stop which Red Bull took and Mercedes didn't. Leaving Hamilton on tyres that were only heading in one direction. Had they pitted during the VSC the differential between Hamilton and Verstappen would not have been so high.
Then we have the Latifi crash itself. Red Bull saw it and rolled the dice, Verstappen straight in for a pitstop. Had there not have been a safety car then his chances of catching Hamilton had completely gone. If your response is "well of course it would be a safety car" then Mercedes had the same opportunity and missed it.
The real sad thing for me about the whole thing is how whiny and petulant both the Red Bull and Mercedes teams have been. For months. The FIA really needs to give both of them a calm pill.
Sanest F1 post I’ve read on here for a long time. The general tone on this blog has been utterly appalling and really makes me concerned about the mental health of many of the posters. Calm down folks! It’s only entertainment. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Ssshhhh, it's much more entertaining reading the F1 crywank than PT's anti-science lies. Leave them be.
Sound advice. Primal screaming may be just the therapy motörheads require.
The speed of collapse from F1 is the most epic thing ever to I am never watching this pathetic apology for a competitive sport again was as good as a play.
England: Extension of vaccination rollout announced to take effect on Monday. Frequently you can book over the weekend because the system is updated and ready to go.
Scotland: Health secretary announces on Twitter extension of vaccination rollout for next day. Wife phones up the next day and told it's not happening until the next next day.
But it's Johnson who hasn't done any forward planning.
What's changed is the shortening of the remaining booster programme by more than half, according to Johnson's announcement. Time is of the essence, so any further acceleration they can make is worth it, even if they don't make the target, as long as it is orderly.
I think the broadcast had three objectives:
1. Get people to take Omicron seriously so they change their behaviour. 2. Make it clear we're entirely dependent on vaccination and voluntary measures. Johnson won't bring in any new NPIs. 3. Allow Johnson to take the initiative with the kind of showy programme he likes.
The key question is (2). Will it be enough?
Doubtful. As you say, collapsing 7 weeks of work into 3 at zero notice when Christmas and New Year are in those 3 is *challenging*. The pledge is that "Everyone eligible aged 18 and over in England will have the chance to get their booster before the New Year." That means the system has to have enough doses and appointment slots to do everyone in 3 weeks. Which is a million a day.
We need this to happen. But it seems unlikely. Sadly.
So given how challenging it is, if it happens then are you going to give credit where credit is due to the government?
Or will you just roll your eyes and move on?
What part of "its a ballsy strategy but they have to do it" is unclear. I support trying to get this done. I support the now herculean effort needed from the NHS who are going to sacrifice their christmas for us.
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
As Red Bull were at zero risk of track position to bring in via a pit stop and change to softs, you could argue that Mercedes then knew they would do that so should have instantly brought Hamilton in to also switch to softs.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place. ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace. iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
The big risk for Lewis, was that he gave up track position and the race went on to finish behind the safety car.
Mercedes were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.
Was it not just bad luck that a car should crash at just the moment Lewis was coasting to victory
I’ve wondered over the past few years if there need to be two “police” forces. As more and more “new crimes” such as hate crimes etc become an issue due to new laws and new technology it seems like there are too many conflicting needs placed upon the current police.
In my (strange) brain it seems to me there are two different types of crime/policing areas. “Physical crime” and “non-physical crime”.
So for physical crime the current or previous incarnation of the police should work - from assaults, murder, vehicle crime etc etc they require a very physical presence from the police and is reflected in training (well sort of….).
The “non-physical” crime - hate crimes, fraud, harassment etc need a different approach and I would imagine that there is a small cross-over of police who are naturally good at or suited to dealing with both well.
So is it worth examining whether to have two police “streams”. One is the traditional - you join the police, train, work as a beat Bobby and move along getting specialised and developing skills ets for those “physical crime” needs.
The second stream is separate - you go through different training - like accountants or solicitors etc focussed on analysing paperwork/electronic communications. You never have to work the beat, wear a uniform etc.
This would attract a different cohort who would be good at these sort of forensic investigations at a desk and want to be investigators but don’t want to go out on the street and work shifts etc.
They are both police with powers to arrest etc etc but separate streams, entry requirements, training and different appeal and broader appeal.
It would take a lot of the crap off the desks of the physical police - can be out dealing with people instead of stuck at desk trawling through their computers and hopefully also ensure that investigations/crimes that require a different approach get dealt with better.
Fraud is already largely offloaded to the City of London police who specialise in such things. And given that most fraud is rarely local / regional it does make sense for it to be done by a national force.
Hate / harassment aren't the same because they do have clear regional elements in most cases
an interesting point: the armed forces recently broadened their recruitment to untypical military types as specialists in things such as cyber and psychology etc - I wonder whether for cyberfraud etc do we need to use expensive trained able bodied constables when actually it could be done by less physically capable (perhaps older) individuals...
The people still need to be trained (there is only so much handholding you can do before it's better to automate the lot away) - it just means you need to recruit a different set of people.
Sadly it also won't be older people because these jobs would be highly computer based and that probably rules out the older people you are thinking of.
By ‘older’, they mean the likes of you and I - who could probably do a better job of investigating cyber crime than someone who is recruited for their physical fitness and appearance.
As could I but I doubt our pay requirements would reflect what the OP is hoping to pay those people - remember he's saying that policemen are expensive - in which case an IT expert on £100k+ is not what you want.
We are back to the GCHQ IT adverts offering to pay £25-30k a year with a skillset requirement where I'm thinking - that's an impossible combination and if you have half that skillset it's £50k minimum.
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
As Red Bull were at zero risk of track position to bring in via a pit stop and change to softs, you could argue that Mercedes then knew they would do that so should have instantly brought Hamilton in to also switch to softs.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place. ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace. iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
The big risk for Lewis, was that he gave up track position and the race went on to finish behind the safety car.
Mercedes were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.
If there'd been a red flag then they'd have both been able to put softs on, wouldn't they?
That would have been the only fair way to deal with it.
Yes.
I’m not a fan of artificial crap for “The Show”, but if that’s what they wanted to do, the best way to do it would have been to stop the race and restart - as they did in Baku - once the mess had been cleaned up. With all competitors allowed to change tyres if they wish.
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
As Red Bull were at zero risk of track position to bring in via a pit stop and change to softs, you could argue that Mercedes then knew they would do that so should have instantly brought Hamilton in to also switch to softs.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place. ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace. iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
The big risk for Lewis, was that he gave up track position and the race went on to finish behind the safety car.
Mercedes were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.
Yep, realised that after I posted !
The cleanest solution would be for a rule change 'all lapped cars must allow cars that have lapped them through safely when directed by the race director' under the SC. Though even with that rule change Mercedes wouldn't have known whether the race might finish under SC or not. If the crash happens later the race finishes under safety. If the crash happens earlier it wouldn't. It was right on the brink, which made everything so bad for Mercedes.
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
As Red Bull were at zero risk of track position to bring in via a pit stop and change to softs, you could argue that Mercedes then knew they would do that so should have instantly brought Hamilton in to also switch to softs.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place. ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace. iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
But they did lose track position to the lapped cars. As it was unfolding, I said RedBull made the wrong call due to the lack of time to let the lapped cars go past.
If Mercedes pitted and lost track position, either: - They had every chance of the race ending under the Safety Car. Which, had the rules been followed, it would have done. Boom; threw away the win and Championship on the off-chance they'd spontaneously change the rules. - Best case, if they did it all in reverse, Hamilton is behind Verstappen on tyres no better than his (ie fresh softs versus fresh softs) with one lap to go on a track difficult for overtaking if you don't have a big pace advantage (look at how hard it was to get past Perez with a smaller tyre advantage). In the end, Verstappen had a 2-3 second per lap pace advantage from his tyres and Hamilton still fought. Eliminate that advantage, and the order they're released is the order they're finishing - especially as Verstappen can do "yield or we crash" whenever an overtake attempt is made.
No, Mercedes and Hamilton were screwed. There is no way it could unfold that they had any significant chance of winning as soon as Masi decided to play fast and loose with the rules in order to get a dramatic finish for Liberty Media and the cameras.
My thoughts from last night, posted on another forum:
“Okay, just watched the highlights, now going to bed. Initial thoughts…
“We thought the procedure was rushed for “the show”, but hadn’t realised that the instruction was only given to half of the lapped cars to overtake, and hadn’t realised there was an original decision for lapped cars to not overtake. To be honest, after a couple of laps of the SC we expected a red flag, to give a “Baku Sprint” finish once they’d cleaned up the mess.
“Masi is bang to rights for a breach of 48.12, (“Unless the clerk of the course considers the presence of the safety car is still necessary, once the last lapped car has passed the leader the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap.”) and the FIA are going to have an almighty problem working out what to do about it. He was making things up as he went along, when there are a specific set of rules he needs to follow.
“Just about the only possibility is to curtail the race by two laps, and declare the result on the positions behind the SC. But that overturns the drivers’ championship, for something that isn’t the fault of the champion - which is quite the mess they’ve got themselves into.
“Also LOL to find out that Mercedes bought their lawyer with them. This has a CAS case written all over it.”
The FIA have done a good job of bringing their own sport into disrepute in the past few weeks, seemingly desparate to see a new name on the trophy. WWF1
The FIA seem to be arguing that the race director has absolute discretion to manage the operation of the safety car. I don’t see how that can stand, if it allows (as in this case) the director to completely set aside the procedures clearly set out in the rules, and impose a procedure which obviously favours a single driver above everyone else on the track. That effectively gives him the unchallengeable ability to fix races, which is plainly absurd.
Sky’s coverage was terrible. That article sets out very clearly why what happened yesterday was utterly disgraceful.
You can hardly expect Sky to highlight that their product is shite. It was the same with the T20 WC where almost every match was won by the team batting second. They didn't go on about it because it demonstrated that this was not a meaningful sporting contest.
We have a stack of changes coming through for 2022 which will improve the formula and make for harder racing. We also need to see some rule changes to remove some of the dangerous and petulant moments seen this year: 1. Ban cars from trundling round the track during FP and Qualy. There have been several close incidents this year and not all of the tracks offer sweeping forward views of the track. The risk of a car smashing into a much slower car unsighted is too high. 2. Remove the ambiguities involved in track limits. Never mind "you can't go off track in these turns" it should be the whole track. More gravel traps and high kerbs please 3. Remove the ambiguities over "gaining an advantage". If you go off the track in a battle with another driver you lose the place. We have seen repeated incidences of drivers gaming the huge run-offs to follow the rules yet gain an advantage 4. Stop teams petitioning the race director and stewards. Make it one-way traffic from race control to the teams, not the other way round. Have contact allowable for emergencies only not for whining. 5. Simplify the safety car rules. If there is debris on track or a stranded vehicle or marshals need to be on track, deploy the safety car. Do it more. Reshuffle the pack so that they restart in order. Not only is this a fair applies to all interpretation of the rules it also stops these races where we get a huge spread through the field very quickly. Works in Indy, steal with pride.
As for Abu Dhabi, if Mercedes are taking this all the way then the sanction is to annul the race. The regulations are clear that the race director is the race director, but if he got it wrong then annul the whole event. Doesn't give Mercedes what they want, but then again nothing does.
As I pointed out above once we're into release all the lapped cars then Verstappen is right behind Hamilton. So whilst they are protesting the unreleased part what they really mean is they are protesting the release part, despite that being the normal use of the rules they want using normally...
Had they followed the safety car procedure the race would have ended under the safety car - which is why Mercedes didn't bring Hamilton in. That's you second inaccuracy today - the first was to claim that Hamilton tyres wouldn't have lasted.
*Hamilton* said his tyres wouldn't last. Repeatedly. On the radio. Pointing out to Bono that he couldn't keep that pace to the end. His genius is that he always manages to find a way to protect the tyres even when they are going off. The VSC period was a freebie pit stop and they missed it.
You say "followed safety-car procedures". There are three options - finish under SC which all teams had agreed should not happen, not let the lapped cars pass, or let the lapped cars pass. Masi has interpreted the need to let cars pass as being to bunch up the field. I agree that he shouldn't have been selective and have called for the rules to be changed to stop this from happening.
Mercedes are complaining that the RD failed to let all cars past. So had he done so Verstappen is right behind Hamilton still. So their complaint is stupid. What they really mean is that because of the risk that their driver on the wrong tyres would lose, the race should not have been restarted at all.
And thats why as a Hamilton fan I am not backing his team. "Don't let them race, we might lose" is not how the sport should work. And I am sick of both Wolff and Horner's petulant whining. It has gone on long enough. Its sport. Sometimes you are unlucky.
He made his tyres last - he was 10 seconds ahead and would have won easily without the safety car at the end.
As for the SC procedure, if it had been followed, there would not have been time to restart the race after all the cars had unlapped. Which is why Mercedes did what they did. Had they pitted, Verstappen would have stayed out as a final gamble - and who knows, at that point Massi might have decided to follow the rules.
I know he was making them last - he is a genius at tyre management. But - big but - he was left exposed to a safety car. The team knew this, hence their conversations with him about which tyres to put on if there is a safety car.
Once the SC goes out there are no good options for Mercedes. Stay out on old tyres and hope for the best. Pit and lose track position. And what happens if you pit and then there's a red flag and you lose a stack of places? So they stay out.
On the SC the marshals took their time shifting Latifi. Had they done half a lap quicker then all cars pass and Hamilton is at the mercy of Verstappen. Which is what all the midfield drivers have complained should have happened - why aren't they letting us past already?
What should have happened does not help Hamilton. Because his team had left him out 20 laps earlier instead of switching to a 2 stop.
The thing that has really stunned me about last night's broadcast from the party bunker was that nobody has thought that the people who need to organise and deliver these million jabs a day from today should be told first.
Finding out on the telly that you are about to be placed under a massive workload where you will literally be under siege by angry people all the way through Christmas (and thanks for volunteering for working every day) is Not Good.
Its like Peppa couldn't give a monkeys about other people. Can't be right...
Haven't they been talking about ramping up the rate of vaccination as soon as Omicron was named?
The announcement in this broadcast follows a fortnight of internal NHS work on working out how to ramp up the vaccination rate, including negotiations with GPs about what work to stop doing to enable needles to be plunged into arms instead.
The government have done precisely what you complain they have not done.
I posted last night that its a ballsy strategy which they had to do. My point is that they haven't told the people who are doing the actual injecting. At least thats what swathes of them are reporting on Twitter and elsewhere. I have no doubt that high level conversations have taken place with the NHS, but its not been with the people on the ground.
It's been all over the news for a couple of weeks. It's not exactly been secret.
That everyone would be jabbed in December? Fascinating that you think that has been all over the news for weeks when the PM announced it last night for the first time and then explained why he had changed the target from 7 weeks.
I don't think the specifics of the target are as important as the general message of "as fast as possible". Faster in this situation is always better, so if the system has sped up to reach the previous target then you ramp up the target to keep the acceleration going.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
I think that is undoubtedly true. The vast majority of crime is incompetent chaos where who did it is pretty bloody obvious, typically a member of the family or a lover. Detective work is minimal. It is administration and ensuring that the evidence available is collated that forms the larger part of the job.
A solicitor friend told me that the police are, in general, incompetent. They catch criminals because, in general, the criminals are more incompetent.
I always thought this was slightly unkind to the police, but he had much more contact with them than I did.
I wonder if the police services elsewhere in Europe are in a similar state? Or the rest of the Anglosphere?
One of the other dads at the little un's school is ex-Met, and before that ex-military (he's an older dad). If I recall correctly, he was invalided out of the Met after he was stabbed. Our kids are in different classes now, so I don't get as much chance to chat to him, but he did have some rather (ahem) strong views on the incompetence of the Home Office.
I do wonder if the problem is that the police have too much to do: not just in terms of crimes, but in terms of what they do. We want police on the streets. We want crimes investigated. We want victims supported and for the wrong un's to face justice. The crimes can vary from vandalism and arson (as happened in our village last week; the teenagers responsible have been caught) to historic serious sexual crimes, to fraud.
But if that's the case, I've no idea what the solution is.
I suspect that Mr J's penultimate paragraph is right. The police have been 'charged' (ahem) with all sorts of roles and as we all know, the actual number of bodies (ahem again) has been reduced. It's probably arguable that there were not enough in 2010 before the Coalition's reductions and the replacements now being sought will bring the numbers up to 'almost adequate', rather than 'inadequate', as under Cameron and May. I wonder too, if the technological advances that enable historic crimes to be investigated have had an effect.
This won't be popular but perhaps Dominic Raab is right that the police should not spend time and resources on very old cases. Raab's one year statute of limitations is too radical but perhaps it is time to say that any crimes more than, say, two or three decades old are spent. Congratulations, you got away with it, but note that if Burglar Bill is still active then he can be caught and banged up for his recent and current crimes.
It's not so much chasing Burglar Bill after 20 years as the kiddy-fiddlers, whose unfortunate victims bury their suffering, mentally, until something or someone triggers their memories.
And that is why it will not be popular but if someone is still fiddling, they can be caught. Women and children are being raped and murdered today, and if there has to be a choice, let's give current and future victims priority over historical ones.
England: Extension of vaccination rollout announced to take effect on Monday. Frequently you can book over the weekend because the system is updated and ready to go.
Scotland: Health secretary announces on Twitter extension of vaccination rollout for next day. Wife phones up the next day and told it's not happening until the next next day.
But it's Johnson who hasn't done any forward planning.
What's changed is the shortening of the remaining booster programme by more than half, according to Johnson's announcement. Time is of the essence, so any further acceleration they can make is worth it, even if they don't make the target, as long as it is orderly.
I think the broadcast had three objectives:
1. Get people to take Omicron seriously so they change their behaviour. 2. Make it clear we're entirely dependent on vaccination and voluntary measures. Johnson won't bring in any new NPIs. 3. Allow Johnson to take the initiative with the kind of showy programme he likes.
The key question is (2). Will it be enough?
Doubtful. As you say, collapsing 7 weeks of work into 3 at zero notice when Christmas and New Year are in those 3 is *challenging*. The pledge is that "Everyone eligible aged 18 and over in England will have the chance to get their booster before the New Year." That means the system has to have enough doses and appointment slots to do everyone in 3 weeks. Which is a million a day.
We need this to happen. But it seems unlikely. Sadly.
Tell you what - lets let them try eh? When they fail, as you have decided that they will, you can come on and shout about how prescient you are.
FFS - for once try to see things with a neutral stance.
"Leave him alone, he's doing his best"
I *support* the attempt to do this. We have no other choice. The data with Omicron gets worse and worse so their only play other than hard lockdown now is smash out as many boosters as possible and hope it works. I want this to work because it has to.
But pointing out the challenge is not me saying they will fail wanting to be smug. I don't want to be right. It just seems massively unlikely to do it in 3 normal weeks, never mind these 3 weeks.
So I expect the result will be another lockdown. Which again I do not want.
I think you'll be surprised. Firstly I don't think omicron is going to have the impact on hospitalization/death that you do. Secondly, I doubt a lockdown will happen. There are still more measures that can come in that are a long way short of that.
What you think about Omicron is as irrelevant as what I think about it. What *the medics and scientists* think is what matters. And they are not as optimistic as you are. I wish they were, but they're not.
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
As Red Bull were at zero risk of track position to bring in via a pit stop and change to softs, you could argue that Mercedes then knew they would do that so should have instantly brought Hamilton in to also switch to softs.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place. ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace. iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
The big risk for Lewis, was that he gave up track position and the race went on to finish behind the safety car.
Mercedes were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.
Yep, realised that after I posted !
The cleanest solution would be for a rule change 'all lapped cars must allow cars that have lapped them through safely when directed by the race director' under the SC. Though even with that rule change Mercedes wouldn't have known whether the race might finish under SC or not. If the crash happens later the race finishes under safety. If the crash happens earlier it wouldn't. It was right on the brink, which made everything so bad for Mercedes.
I don't see why lapped cars are moved out of the way at all.
If Hamilton has overtaken lapped cars more than Max has then that's a position that he's gained on the track.
The reason Max was behind many of those lapped cars was because of his pit. Had he not pitted, he wouldn't have been behind those lapped cars, and if he'd pitted under normal circumstances he'd have to overtake them so why not do so after a SC?
Matt Chorley @MattChorley · 54m No10 vs JCVI vs Javid vs NHS
All the talk of "Booster Blame Game" seems odd to me.
Pre-omicron we were already doing fairly well. Makes sense to step up now of course, but idea it was a disaster doesn't bear comparison with similar countries
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
As Red Bull were at zero risk of track position to bring in via a pit stop and change to softs, you could argue that Mercedes then knew they would do that so should have instantly brought Hamilton in to also switch to softs.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place. ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace. iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
The big risk for Lewis, was that he gave up track position and the race went on to finish behind the safety car.
Mercedes were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.
Sure. They pull him in and then a stack of things could go wrong - red flag, Verstappen stays out then red flag, no red flag but Mercedes screw the pit stop etc etc etc.
Had they done a 2-stop 20 laps earlier none of that would have mattered.
England: Extension of vaccination rollout announced to take effect on Monday. Frequently you can book over the weekend because the system is updated and ready to go.
Scotland: Health secretary announces on Twitter extension of vaccination rollout for next day. Wife phones up the next day and told it's not happening until the next next day.
But it's Johnson who hasn't done any forward planning.
What's changed is the shortening of the remaining booster programme by more than half, according to Johnson's announcement. Time is of the essence, so any further acceleration they can make is worth it, even if they don't make the target, as long as it is orderly.
I think the broadcast had three objectives:
1. Get people to take Omicron seriously so they change their behaviour. 2. Make it clear we're entirely dependent on vaccination and voluntary measures. Johnson won't bring in any new NPIs. 3. Allow Johnson to take the initiative with the kind of showy programme he likes.
The key question is (2). Will it be enough?
Doubtful. As you say, collapsing 7 weeks of work into 3 at zero notice when Christmas and New Year are in those 3 is *challenging*. The pledge is that "Everyone eligible aged 18 and over in England will have the chance to get their booster before the New Year." That means the system has to have enough doses and appointment slots to do everyone in 3 weeks. Which is a million a day.
We need this to happen. But it seems unlikely. Sadly.
So given how challenging it is, if it happens then are you going to give credit where credit is due to the government?
Or will you just roll your eyes and move on?
What part of "its a ballsy strategy but they have to do it" is unclear. I support trying to get this done. I support the now herculean effort needed from the NHS who are going to sacrifice their christmas for us.
They probably can accelerate boosters with the resources they have got. Just applying more energy can get you closer to the goal.
This is a "dog that didn't bark" situation though. The problem isn't the boosters. The problem is not bringing in other interventions in a timely way, should they be needed.
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
As Red Bull were at zero risk of track position to bring in via a pit stop and change to softs, you could argue that Mercedes then knew they would do that so should have instantly brought Hamilton in to also switch to softs.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place. ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace. iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
No
iv) If Hamilton pits then Max doesn't and is in the lead, then the Safety Car stays out until the end as the rules are actually followed and Max wins.
The problem is that there shouldn't have been any question as to whether the race would restart or not. Since there was a question over that, Hamilton couldn't pit while Max had nothing to lose by doing so once Hamilton was past the pit line for the last time.
The safety car went out with 5 laps remaining. Verstappen was called into the pit box BEFORE the safety car was deployed - they gambled it would be. And once it is out there absolutely was the question as to whether the race would restart - the assumption should be that it would because unless there was lots of debris or serious damage to the barriers it doesn't take 5 laps to lift the car out.
Strictly is where it's at. Rose has been favourite for ages and is now odds on (!!) to win with AJ at 10s (bf) and John Whaite at 40s (bf).
I mean Rose was great but AJ and John both put in 10s performances which means on a coin toss the public would have to prefer Rose's story to the others. Which they very well might. We do like a story and Rose's is moving and genuinely admirable.
But then so is John/Johannes' and lest we forget apart from being a goddess AJ as a black woman also is breaking ground.
But on the dancing alone those odds are totally out of whack and I've backed AJ & John.
I’ve wondered over the past few years if there need to be two “police” forces. As more and more “new crimes” such as hate crimes etc become an issue due to new laws and new technology it seems like there are too many conflicting needs placed upon the current police.
In my (strange) brain it seems to me there are two different types of crime/policing areas. “Physical crime” and “non-physical crime”.
So for physical crime the current or previous incarnation of the police should work - from assaults, murder, vehicle crime etc etc they require a very physical presence from the police and is reflected in training (well sort of….).
The “non-physical” crime - hate crimes, fraud, harassment etc need a different approach and I would imagine that there is a small cross-over of police who are naturally good at or suited to dealing with both well.
So is it worth examining whether to have two police “streams”. One is the traditional - you join the police, train, work as a beat Bobby and move along getting specialised and developing skills ets for those “physical crime” needs.
The second stream is separate - you go through different training - like accountants or solicitors etc focussed on analysing paperwork/electronic communications. You never have to work the beat, wear a uniform etc.
This would attract a different cohort who would be good at these sort of forensic investigations at a desk and want to be investigators but don’t want to go out on the street and work shifts etc.
They are both police with powers to arrest etc etc but separate streams, entry requirements, training and different appeal and broader appeal.
It would take a lot of the crap off the desks of the physical police - can be out dealing with people instead of stuck at desk trawling through their computers and hopefully also ensure that investigations/crimes that require a different approach get dealt with better.
Fraud is already largely offloaded to the City of London police who specialise in such things. And given that most fraud is rarely local / regional it does make sense for it to be done by a national force.
Hate / harassment aren't the same because they do have clear regional elements in most cases
an interesting point: the armed forces recently broadened their recruitment to untypical military types as specialists in things such as cyber and psychology etc - I wonder whether for cyberfraud etc do we need to use expensive trained able bodied constables when actually it could be done by less physically capable (perhaps older) individuals...
The people still need to be trained (there is only so much handholding you can do before it's better to automate the lot away) - it just means you need to recruit a different set of people.
Sadly it also won't be older people because these jobs would be highly computer based and that probably rules out the older people you are thinking of.
By ‘older’, they mean the likes of you and I - who could probably do a better job of investigating cyber crime than someone who is recruited for their physical fitness and appearance.
As could I but I doubt our pay requirements would reflect what the OP is hoping to pay those people - remember he's saying that policemen are expensive - in which case an IT expert on £100k+ is not what you want.
We are back to the GCHQ IT adverts offering to pay £25-30k a year with a skillset requirement where I'm thinking - that's an impossible combination and if you have half that skillset it's £50k minimum.
Yes, they’d need to adjust the pay scale somewhat, and the formal rank structure for these specialist roles.
I would want what the police see as an Inspector’s salary, rather than a Constable’s.
IIRC the military have certain roles for whom they give an ‘honourary’ rank, such as medics, whom they could never find if they had to start at the bottom of the Officer scale.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
I think that is undoubtedly true. The vast majority of crime is incompetent chaos where who did it is pretty bloody obvious, typically a member of the family or a lover. Detective work is minimal. It is administration and ensuring that the evidence available is collated that forms the larger part of the job.
A solicitor friend told me that the police are, in general, incompetent. They catch criminals because, in general, the criminals are more incompetent.
I always thought this was slightly unkind to the police, but he had much more contact with them than I did.
I wonder if the police services elsewhere in Europe are in a similar state? Or the rest of the Anglosphere?
One of the other dads at the little un's school is ex-Met, and before that ex-military (he's an older dad). If I recall correctly, he was invalided out of the Met after he was stabbed. Our kids are in different classes now, so I don't get as much chance to chat to him, but he did have some rather (ahem) strong views on the incompetence of the Home Office.
I do wonder if the problem is that the police have too much to do: not just in terms of crimes, but in terms of what they do. We want police on the streets. We want crimes investigated. We want victims supported and for the wrong un's to face justice. The crimes can vary from vandalism and arson (as happened in our village last week; the teenagers responsible have been caught) to historic serious sexual crimes, to fraud.
But if that's the case, I've no idea what the solution is.
I suspect that Mr J's penultimate paragraph is right. The police have been 'charged' (ahem) with all sorts of roles and as we all know, the actual number of bodies (ahem again) has been reduced. It's probably arguable that there were not enough in 2010 before the Coalition's reductions and the replacements now being sought will bring the numbers up to 'almost adequate', rather than 'inadequate', as under Cameron and May. I wonder too, if the technological advances that enable historic crimes to be investigated have had an effect.
This won't be popular but perhaps Dominic Raab is right that the police should not spend time and resources on very old cases. Raab's one year statute of limitations is too radical but perhaps it is time to say that any crimes more than, say, two or three decades old are spent. Congratulations, you got away with it, but note that if Burglar Bill is still active then he can be caught and banged up for his recent and current crimes.
It's not so much chasing Burglar Bill after 20 years as the kiddy-fiddlers, whose unfortunate victims bury their suffering, mentally, until something or someone triggers their memories.
And that is why it will not be popular but if someone is still fiddling, they can be caught. Women and children are being raped and murdered today, and if there has to be a choice, let's give current and future victims priority over historical ones.
Can I just say, without going into any detail, for reasons which will perhaps eventually become clear, that when 'something or someone triggers their memories' the pain is as bad as before, and moreover that pain is also felt by people who were not there at the time, but have become associated with the victim later. And, who knows how long the perpetrator continued with their evil acts?
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
As Red Bull were at zero risk of track position to bring in via a pit stop and change to softs, you could argue that Mercedes then knew they would do that so should have instantly brought Hamilton in to also switch to softs.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place. ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace. iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
The big risk for Lewis, was that he gave up track position and the race went on to finish behind the safety car.
Mercedes were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.
Sure. They pull him in and then a stack of things could go wrong - red flag, Verstappen stays out then red flag, no red flag but Mercedes screw the pit stop etc etc etc.
Had they done a 2-stop 20 laps earlier none of that would have mattered.
Not sure about that, fresh softs are much quicker than 20 lap old hard (or medium) tyres. I mean softs won't last very long at all, but they don't need to when you've got at most 2 laps of racing.
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
As Red Bull were at zero risk of track position to bring in via a pit stop and change to softs, you could argue that Mercedes then knew they would do that so should have instantly brought Hamilton in to also switch to softs.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place. ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace. iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
The big risk for Lewis, was that he gave up track position and the race went on to finish behind the safety car.
Mercedes were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.
Sure. They pull him in and then a stack of things could go wrong - red flag, Verstappen stays out then red flag, no red flag but Mercedes screw the pit stop etc etc etc.
Had they done a 2-stop 20 laps earlier none of that would have mattered.
Not sure about that, fresh softs are much quicker than 20 lap old hard (or medium) tyres. I mean softs won't last very long at all, but they don't need to when you've got at most 2 laps of racing.
Yes a red flag and restarting with everyone on softs was the only fair outcome once the SC came out so close to the end.
I’ve wondered over the past few years if there need to be two “police” forces. As more and more “new crimes” such as hate crimes etc become an issue due to new laws and new technology it seems like there are too many conflicting needs placed upon the current police.
In my (strange) brain it seems to me there are two different types of crime/policing areas. “Physical crime” and “non-physical crime”.
So for physical crime the current or previous incarnation of the police should work - from assaults, murder, vehicle crime etc etc they require a very physical presence from the police and is reflected in training (well sort of….).
The “non-physical” crime - hate crimes, fraud, harassment etc need a different approach and I would imagine that there is a small cross-over of police who are naturally good at or suited to dealing with both well.
So is it worth examining whether to have two police “streams”. One is the traditional - you join the police, train, work as a beat Bobby and move along getting specialised and developing skills ets for those “physical crime” needs.
The second stream is separate - you go through different training - like accountants or solicitors etc focussed on analysing paperwork/electronic communications. You never have to work the beat, wear a uniform etc.
This would attract a different cohort who would be good at these sort of forensic investigations at a desk and want to be investigators but don’t want to go out on the street and work shifts etc.
They are both police with powers to arrest etc etc but separate streams, entry requirements, training and different appeal and broader appeal.
It would take a lot of the crap off the desks of the physical police - can be out dealing with people instead of stuck at desk trawling through their computers and hopefully also ensure that investigations/crimes that require a different approach get dealt with better.
Fraud is already largely offloaded to the City of London police who specialise in such things. And given that most fraud is rarely local / regional it does make sense for it to be done by a national force.
Hate / harassment aren't the same because they do have clear regional elements in most cases
an interesting point: the armed forces recently broadened their recruitment to untypical military types as specialists in things such as cyber and psychology etc - I wonder whether for cyberfraud etc do we need to use expensive trained able bodied constables when actually it could be done by less physically capable (perhaps older) individuals...
The people still need to be trained (there is only so much handholding you can do before it's better to automate the lot away) - it just means you need to recruit a different set of people.
Sadly it also won't be older people because these jobs would be highly computer based and that probably rules out the older people you are thinking of.
By ‘older’, they mean the likes of you and I - who could probably do a better job of investigating cyber crime than someone who is recruited for their physical fitness and appearance.
As could I but I doubt our pay requirements would reflect what the OP is hoping to pay those people - remember he's saying that policemen are expensive - in which case an IT expert on £100k+ is not what you want.
We are back to the GCHQ IT adverts offering to pay £25-30k a year with a skillset requirement where I'm thinking - that's an impossible combination and if you have half that skillset it's £50k minimum.
Yes, they’d need to adjust the pay scale somewhat, and the formal rank structure for these specialist roles.
I would want what the police see as an Inspector’s salary, rather than a Constable’s.
IIRC the military have certain roles for whom they give an ‘honourary’ rank, such as medics, whom they could never find if they had to start at the bottom of the Officer scale.
Just because it's 'always' been like that, doesn't mean that, in new circumstances, something different shouldn't be done.
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
As Red Bull were at zero risk of track position to bring in via a pit stop and change to softs, you could argue that Mercedes then knew they would do that so should have instantly brought Hamilton in to also switch to softs.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place. ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace. iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
The big risk for Lewis, was that he gave up track position and the race went on to finish behind the safety car.
Mercedes were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.
If there'd been a red flag then they'd have both been able to put softs on, wouldn't they?
That would have been the only fair way to deal with it.
Yes.
I’m not a fan of artificial crap for “The Show”, but if that’s what they wanted to do, the best way to do it would have been to stop the race and restart - as they did in Baku - once the mess had been cleaned up. With all competitors allowed to change tyres if they wish.
Yes. And my proposed rule changes posted upthread demands a lot more safety car use as they do in Indy. Any major incident - throw out the SC, unlap cars, close up the field, restart the race. That way we get racing and overtaking not a procession where the cars are 20 seconds apart from each other.
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
As Red Bull were at zero risk of track position to bring in via a pit stop and change to softs, you could argue that Mercedes then knew they would do that so should have instantly brought Hamilton in to also switch to softs.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place. ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace. iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
The big risk for Lewis, was that he gave up track position and the race went on to finish behind the safety car.
Mercedes were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.
Yep, realised that after I posted !
The cleanest solution would be for a rule change 'all lapped cars must allow cars that have lapped them through safely when directed by the race director' under the SC. Though even with that rule change Mercedes wouldn't have known whether the race might finish under SC or not. If the crash happens later the race finishes under safety. If the crash happens earlier it wouldn't. It was right on the brink, which made everything so bad for Mercedes.
I don't see why lapped cars are moved out of the way at all.
If Hamilton has overtaken lapped cars more than Max has then that's a position that he's gained on the track.
The reason Max was behind many of those lapped cars was because of his pit. Had he not pitted, he wouldn't have been behind those lapped cars, and if he'd pitted under normal circumstances he'd have to overtake them so why not do so after a SC?
If it was me I'd have a rule saying if you are lapped you retire (do lapped cars ever recover to the extent of ending with a placing anyway?). Actually, I'd have made yesterday a match race between RB and Mercedes in the first place. The actual result wasn't markedly less silly than a cup final going by default because one team's coach got stuck in traffic on the M1.
England: Extension of vaccination rollout announced to take effect on Monday. Frequently you can book over the weekend because the system is updated and ready to go.
Scotland: Health secretary announces on Twitter extension of vaccination rollout for next day. Wife phones up the next day and told it's not happening until the next next day.
But it's Johnson who hasn't done any forward planning.
What's changed is the shortening of the remaining booster programme by more than half, according to Johnson's announcement. Time is of the essence, so any further acceleration they can make is worth it, even if they don't make the target, as long as it is orderly.
I think the broadcast had three objectives:
1. Get people to take Omicron seriously so they change their behaviour. 2. Make it clear we're entirely dependent on vaccination and voluntary measures. Johnson won't bring in any new NPIs. 3. Allow Johnson to take the initiative with the kind of showy programme he likes.
The key question is (2). Will it be enough?
Doubtful. As you say, collapsing 7 weeks of work into 3 at zero notice when Christmas and New Year are in those 3 is *challenging*. The pledge is that "Everyone eligible aged 18 and over in England will have the chance to get their booster before the New Year." That means the system has to have enough doses and appointment slots to do everyone in 3 weeks. Which is a million a day.
We need this to happen. But it seems unlikely. Sadly.
Tell you what - lets let them try eh? When they fail, as you have decided that they will, you can come on and shout about how prescient you are.
FFS - for once try to see things with a neutral stance.
"Leave him alone, he's doing his best"
I *support* the attempt to do this. We have no other choice. The data with Omicron gets worse and worse so their only play other than hard lockdown now is smash out as many boosters as possible and hope it works. I want this to work because it has to.
But pointing out the challenge is not me saying they will fail wanting to be smug. I don't want to be right. It just seems massively unlikely to do it in 3 normal weeks, never mind these 3 weeks.
So I expect the result will be another lockdown. Which again I do not want.
I think you'll be surprised. Firstly I don't think omicron is going to have the impact on hospitalization/death that you do. Secondly, I doubt a lockdown will happen. There are still more measures that can come in that are a long way short of that.
What you think about Omicron is as irrelevant as what I think about it. What *the medics and scientists* think is what matters. And they are not as optimistic as you are. I wish they were, but they're not.
I too am concerned. I have been making noises about a lockdown announcement next Saturday, after all (though that's probably at least partly down to me catastrophizing as a coping mechanism.)
Anyway, it's neither some kind of heresy, nor a Govian "we've had enough of experts" assertion, for others to doubt some of the more dire predictions. Lest we forget, the models have been wrong before. All of the SAGE-commissioned models projecting the effects of unlockdown in England in July significantly overestimated both caseload and subsequent deaths. Some were ludicrously wide of the mark, i.e. those particular scientists were all proven wrong. So we shall see.
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
As Red Bull were at zero risk of track position to bring in via a pit stop and change to softs, you could argue that Mercedes then knew they would do that so should have instantly brought Hamilton in to also switch to softs.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place. ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace. iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
The big risk for Lewis, was that he gave up track position and the race went on to finish behind the safety car.
Mercedes were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.
Yep, realised that after I posted !
The cleanest solution would be for a rule change 'all lapped cars must allow cars that have lapped them through safely when directed by the race director' under the SC. Though even with that rule change Mercedes wouldn't have known whether the race might finish under SC or not. If the crash happens later the race finishes under safety. If the crash happens earlier it wouldn't. It was right on the brink, which made everything so bad for Mercedes.
I don't see why lapped cars are moved out of the way at all.
If Hamilton has overtaken lapped cars more than Max has then that's a position that he's gained on the track.
The reason Max was behind many of those lapped cars was because of his pit. Had he not pitted, he wouldn't have been behind those lapped cars, and if he'd pitted under normal circumstances he'd have to overtake them so why not do so after a SC?
Because lapped cars are in the way. When the SC goes out the whole field closes back up. The lapped cars are strewn through the field and may impede cars who are battling which risks accidents and more safety cars ("cautions breed cautions" as they say in Indycar). So they get moved away.
Yes it completely removes the gaps that had been built up...
Mr. Dickson, ha. It's at times like this I'm glad to be interested yet also not care if the result gets changed.
Huzzah for filthy neutrality!
I believe some aspersions have been cast at your views on classical history, nevertheless I am happy to lay down my vestigial interest in F1 at your feet as the resident PB F1 expert.
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
As Red Bull were at zero risk of track position to bring in via a pit stop and change to softs, you could argue that Mercedes then knew they would do that so should have instantly brought Hamilton in to also switch to softs.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place. ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace. iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
The big risk for Lewis, was that he gave up track position and the race went on to finish behind the safety car.
Mercedes were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.
Yep, realised that after I posted !
The cleanest solution would be for a rule change 'all lapped cars must allow cars that have lapped them through safely when directed by the race director' under the SC. Though even with that rule change Mercedes wouldn't have known whether the race might finish under SC or not. If the crash happens later the race finishes under safety. If the crash happens earlier it wouldn't. It was right on the brink, which made everything so bad for Mercedes.
I don't see why lapped cars are moved out of the way at all.
If Hamilton has overtaken lapped cars more than Max has then that's a position that he's gained on the track.
The reason Max was behind many of those lapped cars was because of his pit. Had he not pitted, he wouldn't have been behind those lapped cars, and if he'd pitted under normal circumstances he'd have to overtake them so why not do so after a SC?
If it was me I'd have a rule saying if you are lapped you retire (do lapped cars ever recover to the extent of ending with a placing anyway?). Actually, I'd have made yesterday a match race between RB and Mercedes in the first place. The actual result wasn't markedly less silly than a cup final going by default because one team's coach got stuck in traffic on the M1.
The best analogy for me is that one team is winning 4-0 in stoppage time when the ref says "next goal wins" and awards a penalty to the team that was losing.
Strictly is where it's at. Rose has been favourite for ages and is now odds on (!!) to win with AJ at 10s (bf) and John Whaite at 40s (bf).
I mean Rose was great but AJ and John both put in 10s performances which means on a coin toss the public would have to prefer Rose's story to the others. Which they very well might. We do like a story and Rose's is moving and genuinely admirable.
But then so is John/Johannes' and lest we forget apart from being a goddess AJ as a black woman also is breaking ground.
But on the dancing alone those odds are totally out of whack and I've backed AJ & John.
It does end up being a personality popularity contest in the final when you have three excellent dancers.
As an aside, it warms the cockles of my heart that despite the BBC including a few 'minority' contestants for 'diversity' the Great British Public have shown them they have no truck with that sort of nonsense. Oh...
England: Extension of vaccination rollout announced to take effect on Monday. Frequently you can book over the weekend because the system is updated and ready to go.
Scotland: Health secretary announces on Twitter extension of vaccination rollout for next day. Wife phones up the next day and told it's not happening until the next next day.
But it's Johnson who hasn't done any forward planning.
What's changed is the shortening of the remaining booster programme by more than half, according to Johnson's announcement. Time is of the essence, so any further acceleration they can make is worth it, even if they don't make the target, as long as it is orderly.
I think the broadcast had three objectives:
1. Get people to take Omicron seriously so they change their behaviour. 2. Make it clear we're entirely dependent on vaccination and voluntary measures. Johnson won't bring in any new NPIs. 3. Allow Johnson to take the initiative with the kind of showy programme he likes.
The key question is (2). Will it be enough?
Doubtful. As you say, collapsing 7 weeks of work into 3 at zero notice when Christmas and New Year are in those 3 is *challenging*. The pledge is that "Everyone eligible aged 18 and over in England will have the chance to get their booster before the New Year." That means the system has to have enough doses and appointment slots to do everyone in 3 weeks. Which is a million a day.
We need this to happen. But it seems unlikely. Sadly.
Tell you what - lets let them try eh? When they fail, as you have decided that they will, you can come on and shout about how prescient you are.
FFS - for once try to see things with a neutral stance.
"Leave him alone, he's doing his best"
I *support* the attempt to do this. We have no other choice. The data with Omicron gets worse and worse so their only play other than hard lockdown now is smash out as many boosters as possible and hope it works. I want this to work because it has to.
But pointing out the challenge is not me saying they will fail wanting to be smug. I don't want to be right. It just seems massively unlikely to do it in 3 normal weeks, never mind these 3 weeks.
So I expect the result will be another lockdown. Which again I do not want.
I think you'll be surprised. Firstly I don't think omicron is going to have the impact on hospitalization/death that you do. Secondly, I doubt a lockdown will happen. There are still more measures that can come in that are a long way short of that.
What you think about Omicron is as irrelevant as what I think about it. What *the medics and scientists* think is what matters. And they are not as optimistic as you are. I wish they were, but they're not.
I don't that's right. Most of the medics and scientists (by the way, you do know what I do for a living don't you?) are taking the precautionary principle. Quite rightly too - prepare for the worst and hope its not. But the immunologists, the experts in how these things work are confident that serious disease and death will be protected against omicron. The shrill voices are once again the modellers with the their nonsense 'not a prediction' predictions. As yet unchallenged on past failure. See June/July for a prime example.
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
As Red Bull were at zero risk of track position to bring in via a pit stop and change to softs, you could argue that Mercedes then knew they would do that so should have instantly brought Hamilton in to also switch to softs.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place. ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace. iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
The big risk for Lewis, was that he gave up track position and the race went on to finish behind the safety car.
Mercedes were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.
Sure. They pull him in and then a stack of things could go wrong - red flag, Verstappen stays out then red flag, no red flag but Mercedes screw the pit stop etc etc etc.
Had they done a 2-stop 20 laps earlier none of that would have mattered.
Not sure about that, fresh softs are much quicker than 20 lap old hard (or medium) tyres. I mean softs won't last very long at all, but they don't need to when you've got at most 2 laps of racing.
Hamilton's car is faster on the straights. And even on ancient hard tyres he almost retook the lead and Verstappen had a couple of major twitchy moments in the 2nd half of the lap. Had Hamilton's tyres been 20 laps fresher...
A late safety car is a known risk for the teams. They plan to mitigate that risk. Mercedes failed to implement it despite openly discussing it on the radio.
Strictly is where it's at. Rose has been favourite for ages and is now odds on (!!) to win with AJ at 10s (bf) and John Whaite at 40s (bf).
I mean Rose was great but AJ and John both put in 10s performances which means on a coin toss the public would have to prefer Rose's story to the others. Which they very well might. We do like a story and Rose's is moving and genuinely admirable.
But then so is John/Johannes' and lest we forget apart from being a goddess AJ as a black woman also is breaking ground.
But on the dancing alone those odds are totally out of whack and I've backed AJ & John.
There's little to separate the three finalists who are all exceptionally good (poor Rhys would be in the final any other year I think). For most of the series AJ has been my favourite (and not only because she's gorgeous), she is extremely smart, hard working and competitive - check her out on Would I Lie To You where she almost single handedly pushes her team to a 5-0 victory - and delivers outstanding dances. But I think there's an emotional intensity to Rose's dancing which just pushes her ahead for me. She is a well-deserved favourite but I agree the others may be value at the prices you mention. I think John suffers from being in a same-sex pairing because it makes it easier to compare the professional and celebrity dancers. Although he is a gread dancer he is not as good as Johannes, and that is much more obvious than it is in the case of the two women. Anyway, good to be discussing something interesting instead of those cars that go round and round in circles!
Mail Online: 'Why weren't we doing this MONTHS ago?': Tory MPs and NHS bosses warn dishing out a MILLION boosters a day in face of Omicron will be 'incredibly difficult' and may see operations cancelled again - as GPs say they only found out scaling up plans LAST NIGHT
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
As Red Bull were at zero risk of track position to bring in via a pit stop and change to softs, you could argue that Mercedes then knew they would do that so should have instantly brought Hamilton in to also switch to softs.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place. ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace. iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
The big risk for Lewis, was that he gave up track position and the race went on to finish behind the safety car.
Mercedes were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.
Yep, realised that after I posted !
The cleanest solution would be for a rule change 'all lapped cars must allow cars that have lapped them through safely when directed by the race director' under the SC. Though even with that rule change Mercedes wouldn't have known whether the race might finish under SC or not. If the crash happens later the race finishes under safety. If the crash happens earlier it wouldn't. It was right on the brink, which made everything so bad for Mercedes.
I don't see why lapped cars are moved out of the way at all.
If Hamilton has overtaken lapped cars more than Max has then that's a position that he's gained on the track.
The reason Max was behind many of those lapped cars was because of his pit. Had he not pitted, he wouldn't have been behind those lapped cars, and if he'd pitted under normal circumstances he'd have to overtake them so why not do so after a SC?
I'd agree with this. It feels more consistent (the FAI could argue that no-one had unlapped and they hadn't been picking and choosing to help Verstappen. And Verstappen could have either stayed out on his hard tyres and held track position, or got the advantage of the fresh softs and incurred that impact of needing to overtake those backmarkers. Rather than being awarded the best of both worlds.
After all, he'd already had an enormous slice of luck to give him any chance at all. Placing a heavy thumb on the scales to help him specifically and make him the overwhelming favourite is what jars.
As it happens, I think he'd have cleared the backmarkers in quarter of a lap, closed up to Hamilton after that in another quarter to half a lap, and had most of the long gentle flat-out curve down to Turn 9 and the final sector after that to try to pass Hamilton. He'd still have been odds-on, I reckon, but Hamilton would have had a fighting chance.
Mail Online: 'Why weren't we doing this MONTHS ago?': Tory MPs and NHS bosses warn dishing out a MILLION boosters a day in face of Omicron will be 'incredibly difficult' and may see operations cancelled again - as GPs say they only found out scaling up plans LAST NIGHT
The answer to the question is....the JCVI....
Professor Finn should be hanging his head in shame after this.
I’ve wondered over the past few years if there need to be two “police” forces. As more and more “new crimes” such as hate crimes etc become an issue due to new laws and new technology it seems like there are too many conflicting needs placed upon the current police.
In my (strange) brain it seems to me there are two different types of crime/policing areas. “Physical crime” and “non-physical crime”.
So for physical crime the current or previous incarnation of the police should work - from assaults, murder, vehicle crime etc etc they require a very physical presence from the police and is reflected in training (well sort of….).
The “non-physical” crime - hate crimes, fraud, harassment etc need a different approach and I would imagine that there is a small cross-over of police who are naturally good at or suited to dealing with both well.
So is it worth examining whether to have two police “streams”. One is the traditional - you join the police, train, work as a beat Bobby and move along getting specialised and developing skills ets for those “physical crime” needs.
The second stream is separate - you go through different training - like accountants or solicitors etc focussed on analysing paperwork/electronic communications. You never have to work the beat, wear a uniform etc.
This would attract a different cohort who would be good at these sort of forensic investigations at a desk and want to be investigators but don’t want to go out on the street and work shifts etc.
They are both police with powers to arrest etc etc but separate streams, entry requirements, training and different appeal and broader appeal.
It would take a lot of the crap off the desks of the physical police - can be out dealing with people instead of stuck at desk trawling through their computers and hopefully also ensure that investigations/crimes that require a different approach get dealt with better.
Fraud is already largely offloaded to the City of London police who specialise in such things. And given that most fraud is rarely local / regional it does make sense for it to be done by a national force.
Hate / harassment aren't the same because they do have clear regional elements in most cases
an interesting point: the armed forces recently broadened their recruitment to untypical military types as specialists in things such as cyber and psychology etc - I wonder whether for cyberfraud etc do we need to use expensive trained able bodied constables when actually it could be done by less physically capable (perhaps older) individuals...
The people still need to be trained (there is only so much handholding you can do before it's better to automate the lot away) - it just means you need to recruit a different set of people.
Sadly it also won't be older people because these jobs would be highly computer based and that probably rules out the older people you are thinking of.
By ‘older’, they mean the likes of you and I - who could probably do a better job of investigating cyber crime than someone who is recruited for their physical fitness and appearance.
As could I but I doubt our pay requirements would reflect what the OP is hoping to pay those people - remember he's saying that policemen are expensive - in which case an IT expert on £100k+ is not what you want.
We are back to the GCHQ IT adverts offering to pay £25-30k a year with a skillset requirement where I'm thinking - that's an impossible combination and if you have half that skillset it's £50k minimum.
Yes, they’d need to adjust the pay scale somewhat, and the formal rank structure for these specialist roles.
I would want what the police see as an Inspector’s salary, rather than a Constable’s.
IIRC the military have certain roles for whom they give an ‘honourary’ rank, such as medics, whom they could never find if they had to start at the bottom of the Officer scale.
The problem there is a lot of people understand that qualified medics are expensive (heck it's x years at university) but can't see that IT skills deserve the same (or more) money - because while the training required is the same (or more) it's not time at uni that's important it's the unpaid hours after work keeping you skillset up to date.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
I think that is undoubtedly true. The vast majority of crime is incompetent chaos where who did it is pretty bloody obvious, typically a member of the family or a lover. Detective work is minimal. It is administration and ensuring that the evidence available is collated that forms the larger part of the job.
A solicitor friend told me that the police are, in general, incompetent. They catch criminals because, in general, the criminals are more incompetent.
I always thought this was slightly unkind to the police, but he had much more contact with them than I did.
I wonder if the police services elsewhere in Europe are in a similar state? Or the rest of the Anglosphere?
One of the other dads at the little un's school is ex-Met, and before that ex-military (he's an older dad). If I recall correctly, he was invalided out of the Met after he was stabbed. Our kids are in different classes now, so I don't get as much chance to chat to him, but he did have some rather (ahem) strong views on the incompetence of the Home Office.
I do wonder if the problem is that the police have too much to do: not just in terms of crimes, but in terms of what they do. We want police on the streets. We want crimes investigated. We want victims supported and for the wrong un's to face justice. The crimes can vary from vandalism and arson (as happened in our village last week; the teenagers responsible have been caught) to historic serious sexual crimes, to fraud.
But if that's the case, I've no idea what the solution is.
I suspect that Mr J's penultimate paragraph is right. The police have been 'charged' (ahem) with all sorts of roles and as we all know, the actual number of bodies (ahem again) has been reduced. It's probably arguable that there were not enough in 2010 before the Coalition's reductions and the replacements now being sought will bring the numbers up to 'almost adequate', rather than 'inadequate', as under Cameron and May. I wonder too, if the technological advances that enable historic crimes to be investigated have had an effect.
This won't be popular but perhaps Dominic Raab is right that the police should not spend time and resources on very old cases. Raab's one year statute of limitations is too radical but perhaps it is time to say that any crimes more than, say, two or three decades old are spent. Congratulations, you got away with it, but note that if Burglar Bill is still active then he can be caught and banged up for his recent and current crimes.
It's not so much chasing Burglar Bill after 20 years as the kiddy-fiddlers, whose unfortunate victims bury their suffering, mentally, until something or someone triggers their memories.
There is fat chance of improving the police's competence when someone as terminally useless as Raab is put in a position of power.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
I think that is undoubtedly true. The vast majority of crime is incompetent chaos where who did it is pretty bloody obvious, typically a member of the family or a lover. Detective work is minimal. It is administration and ensuring that the evidence available is collated that forms the larger part of the job.
A solicitor friend told me that the police are, in general, incompetent. They catch criminals because, in general, the criminals are more incompetent.
I always thought this was slightly unkind to the police, but he had much more contact with them than I did.
I wonder if the police services elsewhere in Europe are in a similar state? Or the rest of the Anglosphere?
One of the other dads at the little un's school is ex-Met, and before that ex-military (he's an older dad). If I recall correctly, he was invalided out of the Met after he was stabbed. Our kids are in different classes now, so I don't get as much chance to chat to him, but he did have some rather (ahem) strong views on the incompetence of the Home Office.
I do wonder if the problem is that the police have too much to do: not just in terms of crimes, but in terms of what they do. We want police on the streets. We want crimes investigated. We want victims supported and for the wrong un's to face justice. The crimes can vary from vandalism and arson (as happened in our village last week; the teenagers responsible have been caught) to historic serious sexual crimes, to fraud.
But if that's the case, I've no idea what the solution is.
I suspect that Mr J's penultimate paragraph is right. The police have been 'charged' (ahem) with all sorts of roles and as we all know, the actual number of bodies (ahem again) has been reduced. It's probably arguable that there were not enough in 2010 before the Coalition's reductions and the replacements now being sought will bring the numbers up to 'almost adequate', rather than 'inadequate', as under Cameron and May. I wonder too, if the technological advances that enable historic crimes to be investigated have had an effect.
This won't be popular but perhaps Dominic Raab is right that the police should not spend time and resources on very old cases. Raab's one year statute of limitations is too radical but perhaps it is time to say that any crimes more than, say, two or three decades old are spent. Congratulations, you got away with it, but note that if Burglar Bill is still active then he can be caught and banged up for his recent and current crimes.
It's not so much chasing Burglar Bill after 20 years as the kiddy-fiddlers, whose unfortunate victims bury their suffering, mentally, until something or someone triggers their memories.
And that is why it will not be popular but if someone is still fiddling, they can be caught. Women and children are being raped and murdered today, and if there has to be a choice, let's give current and future victims priority over historical ones.
Rape now is effectively decriminalised. A combination of lack of resources and a justice system on its knees.
On the other hand the Police Service in Scotland and Northern Ireland have lots of time to pursue women who write things they disapprove of on Twitter.
is that because currently they can have their cake (EU passports, free movement, UK economic power, opportunities in UK and EU) and eat it......?
Probably but fair enough, it confirms my view the biggest support for a UI would be if Boris had imposed a hard border in Ireland, he didn't and now NI voters have the best of both worlds, still in the UK but an open border with Ireland too. Just needs Frost to remove the Irish Sea border now
England: Extension of vaccination rollout announced to take effect on Monday. Frequently you can book over the weekend because the system is updated and ready to go.
Scotland: Health secretary announces on Twitter extension of vaccination rollout for next day. Wife phones up the next day and told it's not happening until the next next day.
But it's Johnson who hasn't done any forward planning.
What's changed is the shortening of the remaining booster programme by more than half, according to Johnson's announcement. Time is of the essence, so any further acceleration they can make is worth it, even if they don't make the target, as long as it is orderly.
I think the broadcast had three objectives:
1. Get people to take Omicron seriously so they change their behaviour. 2. Make it clear we're entirely dependent on vaccination and voluntary measures. Johnson won't bring in any new NPIs. 3. Allow Johnson to take the initiative with the kind of showy programme he likes.
The key question is (2). Will it be enough?
Doubtful. As you say, collapsing 7 weeks of work into 3 at zero notice when Christmas and New Year are in those 3 is *challenging*. The pledge is that "Everyone eligible aged 18 and over in England will have the chance to get their booster before the New Year." That means the system has to have enough doses and appointment slots to do everyone in 3 weeks. Which is a million a day.
We need this to happen. But it seems unlikely. Sadly.
So given how challenging it is, if it happens then are you going to give credit where credit is due to the government?
Or will you just roll your eyes and move on?
What part of "its a ballsy strategy but they have to do it" is unclear. I support trying to get this done. I support the now herculean effort needed from the NHS who are going to sacrifice their christmas for us.
They probably can accelerate boosters with the resources they have got. Just applying more energy can get you closer to the goal.
This is a "dog that didn't bark" situation though. The problem isn't the boosters. The problem is not bringing in other interventions in a timely way, should they be needed.
Specifically, I suspect they need to slow the O growth rate down from doubling every 2 to 3 days to doubling every week. That will buy enough time to complete the booster programme. But they need to do that today. Waiting until after Christmas will be too late. On current growth O will be rampant by Christmas. If they started effective interventions now, I don't think they need to last last more than a month or so. But it is a bummer in some ways that this happening over Christmas, particularly for hospitality etc.
Strictly is where it's at. Rose has been favourite for ages and is now odds on (!!) to win with AJ at 10s (bf) and John Whaite at 40s (bf).
I mean Rose was great but AJ and John both put in 10s performances which means on a coin toss the public would have to prefer Rose's story to the others. Which they very well might. We do like a story and Rose's is moving and genuinely admirable.
But then so is John/Johannes' and lest we forget apart from being a goddess AJ as a black woman also is breaking ground.
But on the dancing alone those odds are totally out of whack and I've backed AJ & John.
It does end up being a personality popularity contest in the final when you have three excellent dancers.
As an aside, it warms the cockles of my heart that despite the BBC including a few 'minority' contestants for 'diversity' the Great British Public have shown them they have no truck with that sort of nonsense. Oh...
Indeed. I was going to make a comment that just like PL football which is nearly equally diverse although PL footie does have one huge blind spot which I don't see changing any time particularly soon.
is that because currently they can have their cake (EU passports, free movement, UK economic power, opportunities in UK and EU) and eat it......?
Probly. Why BJ and co don't offer a similar lash up to Scotland I don't know, would keep the ramshackle show on the road for another 20 years (or at least well past BJ's increasingly parlous tenure). Possibly something psychological to do with keeping the home island 'pure'.
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
As Red Bull were at zero risk of track position to bring in via a pit stop and change to softs, you could argue that Mercedes then knew they would do that so should have instantly brought Hamilton in to also switch to softs.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place. ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace. iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
The big risk for Lewis, was that he gave up track position and the race went on to finish behind the safety car.
Mercedes were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.
Yep, realised that after I posted !
The cleanest solution would be for a rule change 'all lapped cars must allow cars that have lapped them through safely when directed by the race director' under the SC. Though even with that rule change Mercedes wouldn't have known whether the race might finish under SC or not. If the crash happens later the race finishes under safety. If the crash happens earlier it wouldn't. It was right on the brink, which made everything so bad for Mercedes.
I don't see why lapped cars are moved out of the way at all.
If Hamilton has overtaken lapped cars more than Max has then that's a position that he's gained on the track.
The reason Max was behind many of those lapped cars was because of his pit. Had he not pitted, he wouldn't have been behind those lapped cars, and if he'd pitted under normal circumstances he'd have to overtake them so why not do so after a SC?
If it was me I'd have a rule saying if you are lapped you retire (do lapped cars ever recover to the extent of ending with a placing anyway?). Actually, I'd have made yesterday a match race between RB and Mercedes in the first place. The actual result wasn't markedly less silly than a cup final going by default because one team's coach got stuck in traffic on the M1.
The best analogy for me is that one team is winning 4-0 in stoppage time when the ref says "next goal wins" and awards a penalty to the team that was losing.
And sends the Goalie off as well. What irked me most yesterday was Christian Horner saying that he had to let them race. For 52 laps they had raced and Hamilton was comfortably clear. The "race" was verstappen on soft tyres trying to overtake a car on tyres 40 laps old. It was a foregone conclusion what would happen.
Strictly is where it's at. Rose has been favourite for ages and is now odds on (!!) to win with AJ at 10s (bf) and John Whaite at 40s (bf).
I mean Rose was great but AJ and John both put in 10s performances which means on a coin toss the public would have to prefer Rose's story to the others. Which they very well might. We do like a story and Rose's is moving and genuinely admirable.
But then so is John/Johannes' and lest we forget apart from being a goddess AJ as a black woman also is breaking ground.
But on the dancing alone those odds are totally out of whack and I've backed AJ & John.
If Strictly was based on Dancing Ability then Chris Hollins wouldn't be a Champion.
England: Extension of vaccination rollout announced to take effect on Monday. Frequently you can book over the weekend because the system is updated and ready to go.
Scotland: Health secretary announces on Twitter extension of vaccination rollout for next day. Wife phones up the next day and told it's not happening until the next next day.
But it's Johnson who hasn't done any forward planning.
What's changed is the shortening of the remaining booster programme by more than half, according to Johnson's announcement. Time is of the essence, so any further acceleration they can make is worth it, even if they don't make the target, as long as it is orderly.
I think the broadcast had three objectives:
1. Get people to take Omicron seriously so they change their behaviour. 2. Make it clear we're entirely dependent on vaccination and voluntary measures. Johnson won't bring in any new NPIs. 3. Allow Johnson to take the initiative with the kind of showy programme he likes.
The key question is (2). Will it be enough?
Doubtful. As you say, collapsing 7 weeks of work into 3 at zero notice when Christmas and New Year are in those 3 is *challenging*. The pledge is that "Everyone eligible aged 18 and over in England will have the chance to get their booster before the New Year." That means the system has to have enough doses and appointment slots to do everyone in 3 weeks. Which is a million a day.
We need this to happen. But it seems unlikely. Sadly.
Tell you what - lets let them try eh? When they fail, as you have decided that they will, you can come on and shout about how prescient you are.
FFS - for once try to see things with a neutral stance.
"Leave him alone, he's doing his best"
I *support* the attempt to do this. We have no other choice. The data with Omicron gets worse and worse so their only play other than hard lockdown now is smash out as many boosters as possible and hope it works. I want this to work because it has to.
But pointing out the challenge is not me saying they will fail wanting to be smug. I don't want to be right. It just seems massively unlikely to do it in 3 normal weeks, never mind these 3 weeks.
So I expect the result will be another lockdown. Which again I do not want.
I think you'll be surprised. Firstly I don't think omicron is going to have the impact on hospitalization/death that you do. Secondly, I doubt a lockdown will happen. There are still more measures that can come in that are a long way short of that.
What you think about Omicron is as irrelevant as what I think about it. What *the medics and scientists* think is what matters. And they are not as optimistic as you are. I wish they were, but they're not.
I too am concerned. I have been making noises about a lockdown announcement next Saturday, after all (though that's probably at least partly down to me catastrophizing as a coping mechanism.)
Anyway, it's neither some kind of heresy, nor a Govian "we've had enough of experts" assertion, for others to doubt some of the more dire predictions. Lest we forget, the models have been wrong before. All of the SAGE-commissioned models projecting the effects of unlockdown in England in July significantly overestimated both caseload and subsequent deaths. Some were ludicrously wide of the mark, i.e. those particular scientists were all proven wrong. So we shall see.
I absolutely agree that models can be wrong - thats why they are models. My specific point on this one is that there are two groups of people. The medics and scientists with training, experience and access to the data. And internet experts without those.
The more the collected medics and scientists collate and model data which grows in size every day, the worse it looks to then=m. They might be wrong - we hope to God they are. But it doesn't look good. Saying "I don't think Omicron is x" is like me hypothesising that the moon may be made of cheese after all. We can say it, but it doesn't make us the person with the knowledge nor likely to be more right than the actual experts.
Mail Online: 'Why weren't we doing this MONTHS ago?': Tory MPs and NHS bosses warn dishing out a MILLION boosters a day in face of Omicron will be 'incredibly difficult' and may see operations cancelled again - as GPs say they only found out scaling up plans LAST NIGHT
The answer to the question is....the JCVI....
Professor Finn should be hanging his head in shame after this.
Thr bare face cheek of the guy to be on Sky last night from Portugal just going nothing to see, no issues, well people should be isolating themselves away if they haven't had a booster, that what I did.
And not even a single query of but were responsible for delaying decisions, you told us vax the world, boosters are an unnecessary luxury....
Strictly is where it's at. Rose has been favourite for ages and is now odds on (!!) to win with AJ at 10s (bf) and John Whaite at 40s (bf).
I mean Rose was great but AJ and John both put in 10s performances which means on a coin toss the public would have to prefer Rose's story to the others. Which they very well might. We do like a story and Rose's is moving and genuinely admirable.
But then so is John/Johannes' and lest we forget apart from being a goddess AJ as a black woman also is breaking ground.
But on the dancing alone those odds are totally out of whack and I've backed AJ & John.
If Strictly was based on Dancing Ability then Chris Hollins wouldn't be a Champion.
Yes and that bloke from whichever boy band it was would be. I get it.
Just that the other two aren't without "stories" either although yes Rose's is compelling.
On Police Scotland, they are now saying that they will record rapes as having been carried by a woman if the accused person "insists".
Now forget the trans issue for a minute (though note that doing this completely ignores the legal definition of rape and buggers up the statistics and data, which will affect the viability of initiatives like the one on domestic violence @DavidL was describing upthread).
But just listen to the underlying approach - if the accused "insists".
Excuse me. Since when should the accused be able to insist on how the police do their job?
Will the police close the case without investigation if the accused person "insists? Will they destroy evidence if the accused person "insists"? What else will they do if the accused person "insists"?
Someone should be saying to them: don't be so fucking stupid. Your job is to investigate. Concentrate on that. That means recording facts accurately. Not worrying about validating someone else's feelings. That is not your job.
It's the careering about from one half-arsed objective to another which leads to the police failing to focus on - and be halfway competent in - their key day job.
Once again, you seemed to be unduly interested in facts. Facts are hard, oppressive and don't take into account... feelings. And feelings are much more important than facts.
Accidentally having an arrest rate of 99% young black men under the PTA is factual. But dancing badly at the Notting Hill Carnival makes someone (who?) *feel* better. So that is the important bit.
Okay, I'll bite. Though I'm not sure why you have the propensity to bring race into so many things. It doesn't follow from Cyclefree's points.
Having an arrest rate of 99% young black men under the PTA - yes, highly problematic - suggests targeted policing. Police officers dancing badly at Notting Hill Carnival - a good thing. and certainly not something to be concerned about. The last 50 years in this country shows relations between the police and the black community to be frequently sour, which is inimical to both good policing and crime detection. Improving relations with young black people and winning their confidence is well worth doing, because those with confidence in the police are more likely to share information with them. Dancing while policing a carnival is pretty harmless in this context.
Strictly is where it's at. Rose has been favourite for ages and is now odds on (!!) to win with AJ at 10s (bf) and John Whaite at 40s (bf).
I mean Rose was great but AJ and John both put in 10s performances which means on a coin toss the public would have to prefer Rose's story to the others. Which they very well might. We do like a story and Rose's is moving and genuinely admirable.
But then so is John/Johannes' and lest we forget apart from being a goddess AJ as a black woman also is breaking ground.
But on the dancing alone those odds are totally out of whack and I've backed AJ & John.
I'm not about to start betting on it but I fully expect Rose to win. All things being equal, she should come top on the judges' vote (and yes, I know this is all down to the viewers, but at least some of them will use the judges' critique to help arrive at a decision,) and she's the only one of the three who's never been in a dance off, which hints at where those viewer votes have been going.
OTOH the odds that you report are clearly silly - unless someone's leaked the viewer vote stats to them and Rose has been getting more than everyone else put together from week one.
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
As Red Bull were at zero risk of track position to bring in via a pit stop and change to softs, you could argue that Mercedes then knew they would do that so should have instantly brought Hamilton in to also switch to softs.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place. ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace. iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
The big risk for Lewis, was that he gave up track position and the race went on to finish behind the safety car.
Mercedes were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.
Yep, realised that after I posted !
The cleanest solution would be for a rule change 'all lapped cars must allow cars that have lapped them through safely when directed by the race director' under the SC. Though even with that rule change Mercedes wouldn't have known whether the race might finish under SC or not. If the crash happens later the race finishes under safety. If the crash happens earlier it wouldn't. It was right on the brink, which made everything so bad for Mercedes.
I don't see why lapped cars are moved out of the way at all.
If Hamilton has overtaken lapped cars more than Max has then that's a position that he's gained on the track.
The reason Max was behind many of those lapped cars was because of his pit. Had he not pitted, he wouldn't have been behind those lapped cars, and if he'd pitted under normal circumstances he'd have to overtake them so why not do so after a SC?
If it was me I'd have a rule saying if you are lapped you retire (do lapped cars ever recover to the extent of ending with a placing anyway?). Actually, I'd have made yesterday a match race between RB and Mercedes in the first place. The actual result wasn't markedly less silly than a cup final going by default because one team's coach got stuck in traffic on the M1.
The best analogy for me is that one team is winning 4-0 in stoppage time when the ref says "next goal wins" and awards a penalty to the team that was losing.
And sends the Goalie off as well. What irked me most yesterday was Christian Horner saying that he had to let them race. For 52 laps they had raced and Hamilton was comfortably clear. The "race" was verstappen on soft tyres trying to overtake a car on tyres 40 laps old. It was a foregone conclusion what would happen.
Horner is a whiny tosser. But he was right - all the teams wanted a racing finish (as stated by Masi and not disputed). That their gambles on strategy had paid off and Mercedes conservatism hadn't isn't cheating - its luck. And I don't think its a foregone conclusion either - Hamilton almost re-took the lead on dead tyres. Had his tyres been 20 laps fresher then I expect he would have held it as he had the faster car on the straights.
@Philip_Thompson you're fooling nobody but yourself by claiming you're not partisan. Which is fine as it goes but it is hilarious to see you accusing me of being partisan.
is that because currently they can have their cake (EU passports, free movement, UK economic power, opportunities in UK and EU) and eat it......?
Probly. Why BJ and co don't offer a similar lash up to Scotland I don't know, would keep the ramshackle show on the road for another 20 years (or at least well past BJ's increasingly parlous tenure). Possibly something psychological to do with keeping the home island 'pure'.
Quite so. Especially as we voters in Scotland actually wanted to remain in the EU, even more so than the NIrish.
Strictly is where it's at. Rose has been favourite for ages and is now odds on (!!) to win with AJ at 10s (bf) and John Whaite at 40s (bf).
I mean Rose was great but AJ and John both put in 10s performances which means on a coin toss the public would have to prefer Rose's story to the others. Which they very well might. We do like a story and Rose's is moving and genuinely admirable.
But then so is John/Johannes' and lest we forget apart from being a goddess AJ as a black woman also is breaking ground.
But on the dancing alone those odds are totally out of whack and I've backed AJ & John.
It does end up being a personality popularity contest in the final when you have three excellent dancers.
As an aside, it warms the cockles of my heart that despite the BBC including a few 'minority' contestants for 'diversity' the Great British Public have shown them they have no truck with that sort of nonsense. Oh...
Indeed. I was going to make a comment that just like PL football which is nearly equally diverse although PL footie does have one huge blind spot which I don't see changing any time particularly soon.
Hopefully it will. I've lost count of the number of times I've thought 'that will never be achieved in my lifetime' only to be pleasantly surprised.
Mr. Divvie, thanks (although Mr. Eagles' views on classical history are about as valid as a vow of fidelity from Boris Johnson).
This year I had some poor judgement and rotten luck (in stark contrast to the blindingly flukey 2020 season) but did manage to just barely scrape into the green.
I'm glad that while my bet (Norris best of the rest) failed here it wasn't either a Perez podium or Hamilton win tip. I'd be pretty annoyed if I'd backed those.
Red List and quarantine to be scrapped. Sensible move from Grant Shapps, a phrase I never expected to type.
Timing feels about right. The restrictions may have slowed down the growth of Omicron by two or three doubling periods, but the levels are now high enough domestically that their usefulness is waning.
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
As Red Bull were at zero risk of track position to bring in via a pit stop and change to softs, you could argue that Mercedes then knew they would do that so should have instantly brought Hamilton in to also switch to softs.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place. ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace. iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
The big risk for Lewis, was that he gave up track position and the race went on to finish behind the safety car.
Mercedes were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.
Yep, realised that after I posted !
The cleanest solution would be for a rule change 'all lapped cars must allow cars that have lapped them through safely when directed by the race director' under the SC. Though even with that rule change Mercedes wouldn't have known whether the race might finish under SC or not. If the crash happens later the race finishes under safety. If the crash happens earlier it wouldn't. It was right on the brink, which made everything so bad for Mercedes.
I don't see why lapped cars are moved out of the way at all.
If Hamilton has overtaken lapped cars more than Max has then that's a position that he's gained on the track.
The reason Max was behind many of those lapped cars was because of his pit. Had he not pitted, he wouldn't have been behind those lapped cars, and if he'd pitted under normal circumstances he'd have to overtake them so why not do so after a SC?
If it was me I'd have a rule saying if you are lapped you retire (do lapped cars ever recover to the extent of ending with a placing anyway?). Actually, I'd have made yesterday a match race between RB and Mercedes in the first place. The actual result wasn't markedly less silly than a cup final going by default because one team's coach got stuck in traffic on the M1.
Yep it is common for lapped cars to get points. It is by no means unheard of for leader to lap ever other car in the race and twice the lead car has lapped everyone else twice - Jackie Stewart in the Spanish GP in 1969 and Damon Hill in the Australian GP in 1995.
Red List and quarantine to be scrapped. Sensible move from Grant Shapps, a phrase I never expected to type.
A sop to the Tory rebels, and also harmless given that there's now clearly no value in trying to keep a handful of foreign Omicron cases out. Though FWIW, after this experience I do wonder if the Government will even try to keep the next variant (and there will inevitably be more) out in this fashion? It doesn't seem to have helped.
Strictly is where it's at. Rose has been favourite for ages and is now odds on (!!) to win with AJ at 10s (bf) and John Whaite at 40s (bf).
I mean Rose was great but AJ and John both put in 10s performances which means on a coin toss the public would have to prefer Rose's story to the others. Which they very well might. We do like a story and Rose's is moving and genuinely admirable.
But then so is John/Johannes' and lest we forget apart from being a goddess AJ as a black woman also is breaking ground.
But on the dancing alone those odds are totally out of whack and I've backed AJ & John.
It does end up being a personality popularity contest in the final when you have three excellent dancers.
As an aside, it warms the cockles of my heart that despite the BBC including a few 'minority' contestants for 'diversity' the Great British Public have shown them they have no truck with that sort of nonsense. Oh...
I think in the early stages of the competition you get some biases coming through in the public vote (and I believe there is statistical evidence on this). You usually have an inexplicably popular white man making it through a bit further than you would expect on dancing ability alone (cough *Dan* cough). And it would be worse without the judges having a final say in the dance-off. But by the time of the final you usually see the best dancers still in the competition, and the winner usually seems about right. From about week three I've been expecting the three we have now to make it to the final, for instance.
is that because currently they can have their cake (EU passports, free movement, UK economic power, opportunities in UK and EU) and eat it......?
Probly. Why BJ and co don't offer a similar lash up to Scotland I don't know, would keep the ramshackle show on the road for another 20 years (or at least well past BJ's increasingly parlous tenure). Possibly something psychological to do with keeping the home island 'pure'.
Since when did Scotland have a land border with an EU nation and a history of terrorism like NI?
As it is Scotland has also got a trade deal with the EU too anyway, Boris did not go for No Deal did he as some hardline Leavers wanted so stop complaining! Scotland is part of the island of GB like England, Scotland and Wales, geographically it is different to NI too, hence it is the UK of GB and NI, Scotland is just a part of GB.
Given the SNP failed to get a majority in May despite Brexit most Scots are clearly not that bothered by the Brexit deal either
Strictly is where it's at. Rose has been favourite for ages and is now odds on (!!) to win with AJ at 10s (bf) and John Whaite at 40s (bf).
I mean Rose was great but AJ and John both put in 10s performances which means on a coin toss the public would have to prefer Rose's story to the others. Which they very well might. We do like a story and Rose's is moving and genuinely admirable.
But then so is John/Johannes' and lest we forget apart from being a goddess AJ as a black woman also is breaking ground.
But on the dancing alone those odds are totally out of whack and I've backed AJ & John.
My five year-old niece is hooked on strictly. I asked her yesterday who was best on Saturday night and her response was instant:
Rose!
I watched on Saturday, and Rose looked like a pro to me in a way the others don’t.
Comments
What an absolute crock! Johnson tried to give the "impression" that third jabs would be administered to all by New Year's day. That was my understanding, and I thought he is making a hostage to fortune tough call here. But it turns out I was wrong and it just meant "a chance to" get a jab
If I buy a lottery ticket I have "a chance to" win a million pounds, but it is far from certain I will, infact it is most unlikely.
Now forget the trans issue for a minute (though note that doing this completely ignores the legal definition of rape and buggers up the statistics and data, which will affect the viability of initiatives like the one on domestic violence @DavidL was describing upthread).
But just listen to the underlying approach - if the accused "insists".
Excuse me. Since when should the accused be able to insist on how the police do their job?
Will the police close the case without investigation if the accused person "insists?
Will they destroy evidence if the accused person "insists"?
What else will they do if the accused person "insists"?
Someone should be saying to them: don't be so fucking stupid. Your job is to investigate. Concentrate on that. That means recording facts accurately. Not worrying about validating someone else's feelings. That is not your job.
It's the careering about from one half-arsed objective to another which leads to the police failing to focus on - and be halfway competent in - their key day job.
And as someone else noted the absence of the words "in accordance with the Sporting Regulations" in the use of the Safety Car is quite pointed.
Yes the rules seem to be more guidance than rules. It shouldn't be the case, but it does seem to be the case.
I'm all for ambitious targets (though why wait until now?) but this smacks as:
a) a 'dead cat' tactic to divert from Partygate and the Tory NPI rebellion, and
b) a hostage to fortune for the government which will come back to bite them when woefully underachieved.
Why didn't this happen
2 reasons I can see, with 3 as a confounding factor.
i) Hamilton was already passed the pit lane as Mercedes realised the crash took place.
ii) If Verstappen doesn't stop, track position is lost - though Hamilton being on softs, and Max not being on softs would mean Hamilton winning even if Hamilton was nominally behind Max on the track due to the extra pace*.
iii) Track position of lapped cars muddying the waters.
So the only valid game theory reason is i), with iii) meaning Mercedes didn't assess the game theory position correctly.
* Of course if they finish under the safety car it doesn't work...
We've seen with Covid that even highly intelligent politicians, journalists and doctors are more-or-less innumerate so the idea juries can think probabilistically is absurd, and that goes for judges too. I can see why prosecutors welcome any tool that increases conviction rates but I'm not sure it helps justice.
For me the obvious answer is lockdowns for the unvaccinated, policed by a requirement to show a vaxport when entering public spaces.
What am I missing?
Mercedes were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.
Accidentally having an arrest rate of 99% young black men under the PTA is factual. But dancing badly at the Notting Hill Carnival makes someone (who?) *feel* better. So that is the important bit.
More seriously I think Mercedes best play is to say they are appealing the decision to arbitrarily change the rules of the safety car as it’s vital for the sport that competitors know what rules they are playing by before it starts but that if they win they are not asking for the race result to be changed as they wouldn’t want to win the drivers championship unless they deserved it.
They should also demand if they win that Massi steps down for bringing the sport into disrepute.
They get public recognition that the actions and rule change was wrong, they diminish Ver title, look good sports for not taking the title from Ver and also ensure that F1 is a bit more sensible about the balance of entertainment and sporting integrity next season…..
The one stop was the optimal strategy. Two stop was supposed to be slower. So Verstappen ends up further behind Hamilton albeit on fresher tyres. The gap needs to close by 0.8s per lap and some laps it is but increasingly not. They gambled that putting Verstappen much further behind on a fresh set they could catch up - it wasn't working.
And then the safety car. Mercedes had a choice - do we pit as planned for or not? The risk was that Verstappen stays out and takes the lead so they didn't. Or that a red flag follows quickly in which case change your tyres in the pit lane. So they didn't. Verstappen did.
What ultimately cost Mercedes the race was not pitting during the VSC. A set of tyres 20 laps fresher would likely have been enough for Hamilton to hold off Verstappen even on fresh softs - as he had at the start of the race. Or else re-pass him as he *almost* did even on his shagged set of hards.
People keep saying "there was no option to pit Hamilton. But there was - in the VSC period. That put him on the wrong tyres and out of luck during the safety car after they played it safe and left him out again.
iv) If Hamilton pits then Max doesn't and is in the lead, then the Safety Car stays out until the end as the rules are actually followed and Max wins.
The problem is that there shouldn't have been any question as to whether the race would restart or not. Since there was a question over that, Hamilton couldn't pit while Max had nothing to lose by doing so once Hamilton was past the pit line for the last time.
There was gross incompetence. The first body was dumped outside his flat, Port was not a master criminal he was dumb. It was easy to solve this crime after the first victim.
Then, there was not just lack of empathy for the victims and their relatives, but real unconscionable callousness. It looks like gross homophobia ... unless the Met really do treat everyone like pieces of shit.
And then, incredibly, many of the officers involved in these cases were promoted.
I give credit to The Guardian -- not a newspaper I much like -- which has been banging on and on about this. This is a major scandal, or should be.
The case reads like something that might happen in a tenth-rate banana republic.
The victims dumped, forgotten and failed; the bungling police promoted; the politicians looking the other way; and press indifferent or yadda-yaddaing on about trivia.
Awful. Worse even than the murder of Sarah Everard, and God knows that was bad enough.
That would have been the only fair way to deal with it.
The unity of the political establishment
For any restrictions on anti vaxxers to work the measures have to be agreed across the UK meaning Sturgeon, Drakeford , NI all need to be on board
It should happen but the politics makes it extremely unlikely
The following is state of play as of the 9th of December (Scottish data after that not yet available) for England and Scotland.
It shows (second doses 90 days earlier) - (third doses on the 9th) = third doses to be done
We are back to the GCHQ IT adverts offering to pay £25-30k a year with a skillset requirement where I'm thinking - that's an impossible combination and if you have half that skillset it's £50k minimum.
Huzzah for filthy neutrality!
I’m not a fan of artificial crap for “The Show”, but if that’s what they wanted to do, the best way to do it would have been to stop the race and restart - as they did in Baku - once the mess had been cleaned up. With all competitors allowed to change tyres if they wish.
The cleanest solution would be for a rule change 'all lapped cars must allow cars that have lapped them through safely when directed by the race director' under the SC. Though even with that rule change Mercedes wouldn't have known whether the race might finish under SC or not.
If the crash happens later the race finishes under safety.
If the crash happens earlier it wouldn't.
It was right on the brink, which made everything so bad for Mercedes.
If Mercedes pitted and lost track position, either:
- They had every chance of the race ending under the Safety Car. Which, had the rules been followed, it would have done. Boom; threw away the win and Championship on the off-chance they'd spontaneously change the rules.
- Best case, if they did it all in reverse, Hamilton is behind Verstappen on tyres no better than his (ie fresh softs versus fresh softs) with one lap to go on a track difficult for overtaking if you don't have a big pace advantage (look at how hard it was to get past Perez with a smaller tyre advantage). In the end, Verstappen had a 2-3 second per lap pace advantage from his tyres and Hamilton still fought. Eliminate that advantage, and the order they're released is the order they're finishing - especially as Verstappen can do "yield or we crash" whenever an overtake attempt is made.
No, Mercedes and Hamilton were screwed. There is no way it could unfold that they had any significant chance of winning as soon as Masi decided to play fast and loose with the rules in order to get a dramatic finish for Liberty Media and the cameras.
Once the SC goes out there are no good options for Mercedes. Stay out on old tyres and hope for the best. Pit and lose track position. And what happens if you pit and then there's a red flag and you lose a stack of places? So they stay out.
On the SC the marshals took their time shifting Latifi. Had they done half a lap quicker then all cars pass and Hamilton is at the mercy of Verstappen. Which is what all the midfield drivers have complained should have happened - why aren't they letting us past already?
What should have happened does not help Hamilton. Because his team had left him out 20 laps earlier instead of switching to a 2 stop.
I don't see this as a great surprise.
If Hamilton has overtaken lapped cars more than Max has then that's a position that he's gained on the track.
The reason Max was behind many of those lapped cars was because of his pit. Had he not pitted, he wouldn't have been behind those lapped cars, and if he'd pitted under normal circumstances he'd have to overtake them so why not do so after a SC?
Matt Chorley
@MattChorley
·
54m
No10 vs JCVI vs Javid vs NHS
All the talk of "Booster Blame Game" seems odd to me.
Pre-omicron we were already doing fairly well. Makes sense to step up now of course, but idea it was a disaster doesn't bear comparison with similar countries
Had they done a 2-stop 20 laps earlier none of that would have mattered.
Excellent piece by John Harris on Johnson and the politics of contempt.
This is a "dog that didn't bark" situation though. The problem isn't the boosters. The problem is not bringing in other interventions in a timely way, should they be needed.
But then you need to add in the 2nd doses completed between 9 September and 30 September surely? 1.096m in the UK.
So 25m boosters in total?
In 20 days.
Strictly is where it's at. Rose has been favourite for ages and is now odds on (!!) to win with AJ at 10s (bf) and John Whaite at 40s (bf).
I mean Rose was great but AJ and John both put in 10s performances which means on a coin toss the public would have to prefer Rose's story to the others. Which they very well might. We do like a story and Rose's is moving and genuinely admirable.
But then so is John/Johannes' and lest we forget apart from being a goddess AJ as a black woman also is breaking ground.
But on the dancing alone those odds are totally out of whack and I've backed AJ & John.
I would want what the police see as an Inspector’s salary, rather than a Constable’s.
IIRC the military have certain roles for whom they give an ‘honourary’ rank, such as medics, whom they could never find if they had to start at the bottom of the Officer scale.
And, who knows how long the perpetrator continued with their evil acts?
https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2021/12/northern-ireland-unification-or-the-union/
Anyway, it's neither some kind of heresy, nor a Govian "we've had enough of experts" assertion, for others to doubt some of the more dire predictions. Lest we forget, the models have been wrong before. All of the SAGE-commissioned models projecting the effects of unlockdown in England in July significantly overestimated both caseload and subsequent deaths. Some were ludicrously wide of the mark, i.e. those particular scientists were all proven wrong. So we shall see.
Yes it completely removes the gaps that had been built up...
As an aside, it warms the cockles of my heart that despite the BBC including a few 'minority' contestants for 'diversity' the Great British Public have shown them they have no truck with that sort of nonsense. Oh...
A late safety car is a known risk for the teams. They plan to mitigate that risk. Mercedes failed to implement it despite openly discussing it on the radio.
So despite voting against Brexit a plurality of NI voters still want to remain in the UK
I think John suffers from being in a same-sex pairing because it makes it easier to compare the professional and celebrity dancers. Although he is a gread dancer he is not as good as Johannes, and that is much more obvious than it is in the case of the two women.
Anyway, good to be discussing something interesting instead of those cars that go round and round in circles!
After all, he'd already had an enormous slice of luck to give him any chance at all. Placing a heavy thumb on the scales to help him specifically and make him the overwhelming favourite is what jars.
As it happens, I think he'd have cleared the backmarkers in quarter of a lap, closed up to Hamilton after that in another quarter to half a lap, and had most of the long gentle flat-out curve down to Turn 9 and the final sector after that to try to pass Hamilton. He'd still have been odds-on, I reckon, but Hamilton would have had a fighting chance.
On the other hand the Police Service in Scotland and Northern Ireland have lots of time to pursue women who write things they disapprove of on Twitter.
Why BJ and co don't offer a similar lash up to Scotland I don't know, would keep the ramshackle show on the road for another 20 years (or at least well past BJ's increasingly parlous tenure). Possibly something psychological to do with keeping the home island 'pure'.
The more the collected medics and scientists collate and model data which grows in size every day, the worse it looks to then=m. They might be wrong - we hope to God they are. But it doesn't look good. Saying "I don't think Omicron is x" is like me hypothesising that the moon may be made of cheese after all. We can say it, but it doesn't make us the person with the knowledge nor likely to be more right than the actual experts.
And not even a single query of but were responsible for delaying decisions, you told us vax the world, boosters are an unnecessary luxury....
C U Later people.....
Red List and quarantine to be scrapped. Sensible move from Grant Shapps, a phrase I never expected to type.
Just that the other two aren't without "stories" either although yes Rose's is compelling.
Having an arrest rate of 99% young black men under the PTA - yes, highly problematic - suggests targeted policing.
Police officers dancing badly at Notting Hill Carnival - a good thing. and certainly not something to be concerned about. The last 50 years in this country shows relations between the police and the black community to be frequently sour, which is inimical to both good policing and crime detection. Improving relations with young black people and winning their confidence is well worth doing, because those with confidence in the police are more likely to share information with them. Dancing while policing a carnival is pretty harmless in this context.
OTOH the odds that you report are clearly silly - unless someone's leaked the viewer vote stats to them and Rose has been getting more than everyone else put together from week one.
None of the football analogies work btw.
This year I had some poor judgement and rotten luck (in stark contrast to the blindingly flukey 2020 season) but did manage to just barely scrape into the green.
I'm glad that while my bet (Norris best of the rest) failed here it wasn't either a Perez podium or Hamilton win tip. I'd be pretty annoyed if I'd backed those.
As it is Scotland has also got a trade deal with the EU too anyway, Boris did not go for No Deal did he as some hardline Leavers wanted so stop complaining! Scotland is part of the island of GB like England, Scotland and Wales, geographically it is different to NI too, hence it is the UK of GB and NI, Scotland is just a part of GB.
Given the SNP failed to get a majority in May despite Brexit most Scots are clearly not that bothered by the Brexit deal either
But in any event, I see no reason why it could not happen nation by nation.
Rose!
I watched on Saturday, and Rose looked like a pro to me in a way the others don’t.
But I know sod all about dancing.