Utterly appalling Red Wall breaks for the Tories in today’s Redfield & Wilton:
North East Lab 44% Con 22% North West Lab 52% Con 26% Yorkshire & Humber Lab 47% Con 36% West Midlands Lab 54% Con 31% East Midlands Lab 41% Con 37%
Totally Ratnered.
Will it stay that way?
These stats feel “sticky”.
What amazes me is suddenly how well the Tories are doing in their traditional Blue Wall heartland! This feels like a watershed: was the breaking of the Red Wall simply a one-off?
Now the Tories won't lose Redditch at the next GE, or if they do they'll be down to around 130 seats.
But the die is cast for North Shropshire, I don't think it'll be particularly close. And not in a good way for Boris. Might be a move against him with the absolute pants down shellacking they're about to receive.
Do you think it matters that it's the Lib Dems challenging rather than Labour? If Labour were going to win it, I'd tend to think that would be terminal for Johnson, but it's easy to dismiss the Lib Dems as a protest vote.
Just feels to me like the public are angry at the government, but they are far from convinced about Labour.
Nurit Baytch @NuritBaytch Today’s omicron report from Denmark compares % of cases that require hospitalization for delta vs omicron. It is HIGHER for omicron, and most of Denmark’s omicron cases were just diagnosed, meaning insufficient time has passed to require hospitalization
I need to think what sort of starter to have for Xmas lunch. Do people have starters with turkey?
I normally have ravioli in brodo (a clear and delicious broth). It somehow does not feel right with turkey. Perhaps I could still persuade Husband to ditch the turkey - or give it away - and we can have a lovely beef joint instead.
Anyway we are now eating lemons from our lemon tree. So there is a small touch of the Mediterranean in the Lakes, as promised.
I need to think what sort of starter to have for Xmas lunch. Do people have starters with turkey?
I normally have ravioli in brodo (a clear and delicious broth). It somehow does not feel right with turkey. Perhaps I could still persuade Husband to ditch the turkey - or give it away - and we can have a lovely beef joint instead.
Anyway we are now eating lemons from our lemon tree. So there is a small touch of the Mediterranean in the Lakes, as promised.
Hark at her, too good for prawn cocktail like the rest of us.
One person in the UK has died from omicron. This means the end of the world is nigh. According to some.
Covid numbers (nearly all unvaccinated) on our ICU do seem to be slowly growing. All staff dreading redeployment. Many are having sleepless nights at the prospect of being sent back to covid ICU.
As a complete novice about working in icu, what is it that makes them dread it? The ppe? Harder work? Patients dying? Or something else?
I need to think what sort of starter to have for Xmas lunch. Do people have starters with turkey?
I normally have ravioli in brodo (a clear and delicious broth). It somehow does not feel right with turkey. Perhaps I could still persuade Husband to ditch the turkey - or give it away - and we can have a lovely beef joint instead.
Anyway we are now eating lemons from our lemon tree. So there is a small touch of the Mediterranean in the Lakes, as promised.
I keep wondering whether we would have dealt with Covid in the same way had people like Tony Blair and Barack Obama been in charge. And my gut feeling is that we would have dealt with it in a less pessimistic way, because those leaders were intrinsically optimistic figures.
Utterly appalling Red Wall breaks for the Tories in today’s Redfield & Wilton:
North East Lab 44% Con 22% North West Lab 52% Con 26% Yorkshire & Humber Lab 47% Con 36% West Midlands Lab 54% Con 31% East Midlands Lab 41% Con 37%
Totally Ratnered.
Will it stay that way?
These stats feel “sticky”.
What amazes me is suddenly how well the Tories are doing in their traditional Blue Wall heartland! This feels like a watershed: was the breaking of the Red Wall simply a one-off?
Now the Tories won't lose Redditch at the next GE, or if they do they'll be down to around 130 seats.
But the die is cast for North Shropshire, I don't think it'll be particularly close. And not in a good way for Boris. Might be a move against him with the absolute pants down shellacking they're about to receive.
Do you think it matters that it's the Lib Dems challenging rather than Labour? If Labour were going to win it, I'd tend to think that would be terminal for Johnson, but it's easy to dismiss the Lib Dems as a protest vote.
Just feels to me like the public are angry at the government, but they are far from convinced about Labour.
I think it boils down to Boris. If he goes the Tories win. If he doesn't we're probably looking at a reverse 2010.
Nurit Baytch @NuritBaytch Today’s omicron report from Denmark compares % of cases that require hospitalization for delta vs omicron. It is HIGHER for omicron, and most of Denmark’s omicron cases were just diagnosed, meaning insufficient time has passed to require hospitalization
Utterly appalling Red Wall breaks for the Tories in today’s Redfield & Wilton:
North East Lab 44% Con 22% North West Lab 52% Con 26% Yorkshire & Humber Lab 47% Con 36% West Midlands Lab 54% Con 31% East Midlands Lab 41% Con 37%
Totally Ratnered.
Will it stay that way?
These stats feel “sticky”.
What amazes me is suddenly how well the Tories are doing in their traditional Blue Wall heartland! This feels like a watershed: was the breaking of the Red Wall simply a one-off?
Now the Tories won't lose Redditch at the next GE, or if they do they'll be down to around 130 seats.
But the die is cast for North Shropshire, I don't think it'll be particularly close. And not in a good way for Boris. Might be a move against him with the absolute pants down shellacking they're about to receive.
Do you think it matters that it's the Lib Dems challenging rather than Labour? If Labour were going to win it, I'd tend to think that would be terminal for Johnson, but it's easy to dismiss the Lib Dems as a protest vote.
Just feels to me like the public are angry at the government, but they are far from convinced about Labour.
It’s great that it’s the useless Lib Dems and not big bad Labour. The Tories are about to convince themselves that all is well. Let them get on with it! Never disturb your enemy while they are making a mistake.
I need to think what sort of starter to have for Xmas lunch. Do people have starters with turkey?
I normally have ravioli in brodo (a clear and delicious broth). It somehow does not feel right with turkey. Perhaps I could still persuade Husband to ditch the turkey - or give it away - and we can have a lovely beef joint instead.
Anyway we are now eating lemons from our lemon tree. So there is a small touch of the Mediterranean in the Lakes, as promised.
We don't have turkey, not keen on it. Typically have gammon and/or chicken.
For starter typically some smoked salmon, with a bread roll, olive oil and balsamic.
So every Norwegian has omicron after two weeks? They are going into this like lemmings.
Assuming the Mail is actually reporting the Norwegian public health body correctly, the estimate - if they don't get their way, of course - is between 90k and 300k per day.
The population of Norway is 5.4m, so if 100% of them were susceptible then 300k per day would, crudely speaking, imply the entire population contracting Omicron in 18 days.
Taking into account both that the new infection figures might be towards the lower end of the range, but also that much of the population is likely to be resistant to infection (due to natural or vaccine derived immunity, along with those who are crapping themselves at home and seldom if ever going out,) the Norwegian scientists seem to be inferring that the Omicron wave will pass through the entire remaining susceptible populace by any time between the middle of next week and the end of the month.
You can either dismiss such estimates as preposterous and ignore them, or accept them - with the logical consequence that the disease must be so incredibly infectious to take out that many people that quickly that more restrictions are pointless, because they'll do almost nothing to stop it.
At this point, we have to remember that, even in a March 2020-type tight lockdown, a large fraction of the working population still has to attend a physical workplace, and most people will have to go shopping for essentials. One asymptomatic person in the local Tesco might end up giving the disease to half the other people in there, regardless of whether everyone's got a piece of crumpled blue paper over their mouth or not.
With a disease that will get through your entire population in something like one or two weeks without harsh measures to control it, nothing much short of sealing each citizen in an individual perspex cube, at least twenty feet from anybody else, for a fortnight is going to really slow it down.
Nurit Baytch @NuritBaytch Today’s omicron report from Denmark compares % of cases that require hospitalization for delta vs omicron. It is HIGHER for omicron, and most of Denmark’s omicron cases were just diagnosed, meaning insufficient time has passed to require hospitalization
Table seems to suggest Denmark believes that pre Omicron there was only 1 hospital acquired infection, and in the last week there have been 8.
Find it hard to believe that is the result of a fair like for like comparison.
One person in the UK has died from omicron. This means the end of the world is nigh. According to some.
Covid numbers (nearly all unvaccinated) on our ICU do seem to be slowly growing. All staff dreading redeployment. Many are having sleepless nights at the prospect of being sent back to covid ICU.
How the fuck are they still almost all unvaccinated with our population denominators.
It's a mixture. The pregnant women get some sympathy, some genuinely mentally ill but some have made a conscious decision not to have the vaccine.
Nurit Baytch @NuritBaytch Today’s omicron report from Denmark compares % of cases that require hospitalization for delta vs omicron. It is HIGHER for omicron, and most of Denmark’s omicron cases were just diagnosed, meaning insufficient time has passed to require hospitalization
Fuck
If that kind of figure comes thru from UK real data (not modelling bollx) then its lockdown any day now I guess.
Utterly appalling Red Wall breaks for the Tories in today’s Redfield & Wilton:
North East Lab 44% Con 22% North West Lab 52% Con 26% Yorkshire & Humber Lab 47% Con 36% West Midlands Lab 54% Con 31% East Midlands Lab 41% Con 37%
Totally Ratnered.
Will it stay that way?
These stats feel “sticky”.
What amazes me is suddenly how well the Tories are doing in their traditional Blue Wall heartland! This feels like a watershed: was the breaking of the Red Wall simply a one-off?
Now the Tories won't lose Redditch at the next GE, or if they do they'll be down to around 130 seats.
But the die is cast for North Shropshire, I don't think it'll be particularly close. And not in a good way for Boris. Might be a move against him with the absolute pants down shellacking they're about to receive.
I need to think what sort of starter to have for Xmas lunch. Do people have starters with turkey?
I normally have ravioli in brodo (a clear and delicious broth). It somehow does not feel right with turkey. Perhaps I could still persuade Husband to ditch the turkey - or give it away - and we can have a lovely beef joint instead.
Anyway we are now eating lemons from our lemon tree. So there is a small touch of the Mediterranean in the Lakes, as promised.
I just ordered a 2kg Galician sirloin joint, reared for 8 years and aged on the bone for 30 days. It’s gonna be cooked over lump wood somewhere between the 26th -31st.
Utterly appalling Red Wall breaks for the Tories in today’s Redfield & Wilton:
North East Lab 44% Con 22% North West Lab 52% Con 26% Yorkshire & Humber Lab 47% Con 36% West Midlands Lab 54% Con 31% East Midlands Lab 41% Con 37%
Totally Ratnered.
Will it stay that way?
These stats feel “sticky”.
What amazes me is suddenly how well the Tories are doing in their traditional Blue Wall heartland! This feels like a watershed: was the breaking of the Red Wall simply a one-off?
Now the Tories won't lose Redditch at the next GE, or if they do they'll be down to around 130 seats.
But the die is cast for North Shropshire, I don't think it'll be particularly close. And not in a good way for Boris. Might be a move against him with the absolute pants down shellacking they're about to receive.
Don’t understand why folk eat a North American species for Christmas dinner. We should eat European food at festivals. I’m a big fan of steak pie. Beef Wellington, duck or goose also great. Venison or lamb sounds good too. Maybe hare or wild boar?
I need to think what sort of starter to have for Xmas lunch. Do people have starters with turkey?
I normally have ravioli in brodo (a clear and delicious broth). It somehow does not feel right with turkey. Perhaps I could still persuade Husband to ditch the turkey - or give it away - and we can have a lovely beef joint instead.
Anyway we are now eating lemons from our lemon tree. So there is a small touch of the Mediterranean in the Lakes, as promised.
We have a rib of beef joint ordered from the butchers. Mrs P's 2020 vintage Christmas pudding to follow - yum-yum! No starter - we find it too much for a Christmas dinner.
We have a lemon on our tree that looks ripe too - our first - how do you tell when they are ready to pick?
Utterly appalling Red Wall breaks for the Tories in today’s Redfield & Wilton:
North East Lab 44% Con 22% North West Lab 52% Con 26% Yorkshire & Humber Lab 47% Con 36% West Midlands Lab 54% Con 31% East Midlands Lab 41% Con 37%
Totally Ratnered.
Will it stay that way?
These stats feel “sticky”.
What amazes me is suddenly how well the Tories are doing in their traditional Blue Wall heartland! This feels like a watershed: was the breaking of the Red Wall simply a one-off?
Now the Tories won't lose Redditch at the next GE, or if they do they'll be down to around 130 seats.
But the die is cast for North Shropshire, I don't think it'll be particularly close. And not in a good way for Boris. Might be a move against him with the absolute pants down shellacking they're about to receive.
I need to think what sort of starter to have for Xmas lunch. Do people have starters with turkey?
I normally have ravioli in brodo (a clear and delicious broth). It somehow does not feel right with turkey. Perhaps I could still persuade Husband to ditch the turkey - or give it away - and we can have a lovely beef joint instead.
Anyway we are now eating lemons from our lemon tree. So there is a small touch of the Mediterranean in the Lakes, as promised.
I just ordered a 2kg Galician sirloin joint, reared for 8 years and aged on the bone for 30 days. It’s gonna be cooked over lump wood somewhere between the 26th -31st.
Now *that’s* what I call a meal fit for the birth of Christ.
I need to think what sort of starter to have for Xmas lunch. Do people have starters with turkey?
I normally have ravioli in brodo (a clear and delicious broth). It somehow does not feel right with turkey. Perhaps I could still persuade Husband to ditch the turkey - or give it away - and we can have a lovely beef joint instead.
Anyway we are now eating lemons from our lemon tree. So there is a small touch of the Mediterranean in the Lakes, as promised.
We have a rib of beef joint ordered from the butchers. Mrs P's 2020 vintage Christmas pudding to follow - yum-yum! No starter - we find it too much for a Christmas dinner.
We have a lemon on our tree that looks ripe too - our first - how do you tell when they are ready to pick?
Hold it gently and twist slightly. Don't pull. If it comes off easily it's ripe.
I need to think what sort of starter to have for Xmas lunch. Do people have starters with turkey?
I normally have ravioli in brodo (a clear and delicious broth). It somehow does not feel right with turkey. Perhaps I could still persuade Husband to ditch the turkey - or give it away - and we can have a lovely beef joint instead.
Anyway we are now eating lemons from our lemon tree. So there is a small touch of the Mediterranean in the Lakes, as promised.
My mother in law traditionally serves smoked wild salmon (on soda bread) as a starter for Christmas, before the boned and rolled roast turkey (and roast ham).
Utterly appalling Red Wall breaks for the Tories in today’s Redfield & Wilton:
North East Lab 44% Con 22% North West Lab 52% Con 26% Yorkshire & Humber Lab 47% Con 36% West Midlands Lab 54% Con 31% East Midlands Lab 41% Con 37%
Totally Ratnered.
Will it stay that way?
These stats feel “sticky”.
What amazes me is suddenly how well the Tories are doing in their traditional Blue Wall heartland! This feels like a watershed: was the breaking of the Red Wall simply a one-off?
Now the Tories won't lose Redditch at the next GE, or if they do they'll be down to around 130 seats.
But the die is cast for North Shropshire, I don't think it'll be particularly close. And not in a good way for Boris. Might be a move against him with the absolute pants down shellacking they're about to receive.
Could the postal votes save them? I mean that the votes may have been cast before his most recent clusterfuck.
Getting messages from NHS about my isolation period. They continue to say you can come out and go back to work even if you still have a cough. But I've never had a cough. Indeed. When I was negative but had symptoms I went for a couple of runs. My muscles ached. But I wasn't noticeably more out of breath than normal. So I couldn't possibly have COVID, right? This is why I suspect omicron not delta.
Utterly appalling Red Wall breaks for the Tories in today’s Redfield & Wilton:
North East Lab 44% Con 22% North West Lab 52% Con 26% Yorkshire & Humber Lab 47% Con 36% West Midlands Lab 54% Con 31% East Midlands Lab 41% Con 37%
Totally Ratnered.
Will it stay that way?
These stats feel “sticky”.
What amazes me is suddenly how well the Tories are doing in their traditional Blue Wall heartland! This feels like a watershed: was the breaking of the Red Wall simply a one-off?
Now the Tories won't lose Redditch at the next GE, or if they do they'll be down to around 130 seats.
But the die is cast for North Shropshire, I don't think it'll be particularly close. And not in a good way for Boris. Might be a move against him with the absolute pants down shellacking they're about to receive.
Do you think it matters that it's the Lib Dems challenging rather than Labour? If Labour were going to win it, I'd tend to think that would be terminal for Johnson, but it's easy to dismiss the Lib Dems as a protest vote.
Just feels to me like the public are angry at the government, but they are far from convinced about Labour.
I think it boils down to Boris. If he goes the Tories win. If he doesn't we're probably looking at a reverse 2010.
One person in the UK has died from omicron. This means the end of the world is nigh. According to some.
Covid numbers (nearly all unvaccinated) on our ICU do seem to be slowly growing. All staff dreading redeployment. Many are having sleepless nights at the prospect of being sent back to covid ICU.
How the fuck are they still almost all unvaccinated with our population denominators.
It's a mixture. The pregnant women get some sympathy, some genuinely mentally ill but some have made a conscious decision not to have the vaccine.
I'll repeat what I posted this morning, because I think we need to be reminded not to go easy on the anti-vaxxers if their demands upon hospital critical care facilities precipitate yet another lockdown.
Concerning the ongoing pressure on hospitals:
We’re going great guns at treating people on the waiting list. And this winter we’re doing more than ever to protect that, as well as dealing with all the other pressures we have. We are holding beds for people on the waiting list who are having surgery. But that raises really difficult ethical dilemmas. Do you hold an intensive care bed for someone with an aneurysm that could kill them at any minute, or bring in someone who’s just arrived through A&E and needs surgery? Is there a bed for someone who comes in and needs a thrombectomy, a potentially life-saving operation after a stroke?
You can imagine how some of our staff feel about unvaccinated people with Covid eating into our supply of ICU beds when you’re making these decisions, about whether someone with stage 4 cancer or an aneurysm can have an operation.
However, Pollard, one of those behind the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, said Covid would still pile pressure on the NHS this winter – with unvaccinated patients requiring intensive care and double-jabbed patients who are older and frail still at risk of “life-threatening” health issues.
“The latest wave of the virus in the UK, which is now rising rapidly in parts of Europe, will directly translate into a stream of mostly unvaccinated patients entering ICU,” he said in the article jointly authored with Prof Brian Angus, professor of infectious disease at the University of Oxford. “To prevent serious illness, these people need first and second doses of the vaccine as soon as possible.
“For those of us fortunate enough to have already been vaccinated, the story now seems very different. For most vaccinated individuals, these mild infections are little more than an unpleasant inconvenience.”
Paging the anti-vaxxers and all those who keep stubbornly insisting that their right to dick about vetoes everybody else's rights to medical care and freedom from lockdowns: please stop.
So every Norwegian has omicron after two weeks? They are going into this like lemmings.
Assuming the Mail is actually reporting the Norwegian public health body correctly, the estimate - if they don't get their way, of course - is between 90k and 300k per day.
The population of Norway is 5.4m, so if 100% of them were susceptible then 300k per day would, crudely speaking, imply the entire population contracting Omicron in 18 days.
Taking into account both that the new infection figures might be towards the lower end of the range, but also that much of the population is likely to be resistant to infection (due to natural or vaccine derived immunity, along with those who are crapping themselves at home and seldom if ever going out,) the Norwegian scientists seem to be inferring that the Omicron wave will pass through the entire remaining susceptible populace by any time between the middle of next week and the end of the month.
You can either dismiss such estimates as preposterous and ignore them, or accept them - with the logical consequence that the disease must be so incredibly infectious to take out that many people that quickly that more restrictions are pointless, because they'll do almost nothing to stop it.
At this point, we have to remember that, even in a March 2020-type tight lockdown, a large fraction of the working population still has to attend a physical workplace, and most people will have to go shopping for essentials. One asymptomatic person in the local Tesco might end up giving the disease to half the other people in there, regardless of whether everyone's got a piece of crumpled blue paper over their mouth or not.
With a disease that will get through your entire population in something like one or two weeks without harsh measures to control it, nothing much short of sealing each citizen in an individual perspex cube, at least twenty feet from anybody else, for a fortnight is going to really slow it down.
"Assuming the Mail is actually reporting ...correctly" rather undemines an otherwise beautifully set out analysis.
Don’t understand why folk eat a North American species for Christmas dinner. We should eat European food at festivals. I’m a big fan of steak pie. Beef Wellington, duck or goose also great. Venison or lamb sounds good too. Maybe hare or wild boar?
Not rabbit or pork.
ISTR reading this is the time of year turkeys were walked to London from Norfolk for sale. Which is why the tradition took off.
I need to think what sort of starter to have for Xmas lunch. Do people have starters with turkey?
I normally have ravioli in brodo (a clear and delicious broth). It somehow does not feel right with turkey. Perhaps I could still persuade Husband to ditch the turkey - or give it away - and we can have a lovely beef joint instead.
Anyway we are now eating lemons from our lemon tree. So there is a small touch of the Mediterranean in the Lakes, as promised.
We have a rib of beef joint ordered from the butchers. Mrs P's 2020 vintage Christmas pudding to follow - yum-yum! No starter - we find it too much for a Christmas dinner.
We have a lemon on our tree that looks ripe too - our first - how do you tell when they are ready to pick?
Don’t understand why folk eat a North American species for Christmas dinner. We should eat European food at festivals. I’m a big fan of steak pie. Beef Wellington, duck or goose also great. Venison or lamb sounds good too. Maybe hare or wild boar?
Not rabbit or pork.
Goose is excellent, if you have a giant oven, a reliable alarm clock, and use for a gallon of fat afterwards.
So every Norwegian has omicron after two weeks? They are going into this like lemmings.
Assuming the Mail is actually reporting the Norwegian public health body correctly, the estimate - if they don't get their way, of course - is between 90k and 300k per day.
The population of Norway is 5.4m, so if 100% of them were susceptible then 300k per day would, crudely speaking, imply the entire population contracting Omicron in 18 days.
Taking into account both that the new infection figures might be towards the lower end of the range, but also that much of the population is likely to be resistant to infection (due to natural or vaccine derived immunity, along with those who are crapping themselves at home and seldom if ever going out,) the Norwegian scientists seem to be inferring that the Omicron wave will pass through the entire remaining susceptible populace by any time between the middle of next week and the end of the month.
You can either dismiss such estimates as preposterous and ignore them, or accept them - with the logical consequence that the disease must be so incredibly infectious to take out that many people that quickly that more restrictions are pointless, because they'll do almost nothing to stop it.
At this point, we have to remember that, even in a March 2020-type tight lockdown, a large fraction of the working population still has to attend a physical workplace, and most people will have to go shopping for essentials. One asymptomatic person in the local Tesco might end up giving the disease to half the other people in there, regardless of whether everyone's got a piece of crumpled blue paper over their mouth or not.
With a disease that will get through your entire population in something like one or two weeks without harsh measures to control it, nothing much short of sealing each citizen in an individual perspex cube, at least twenty feet from anybody else, for a fortnight is going to really slow it down.
"Assuming the Mail is actually reporting ...correctly" rather undemines an otherwise beautifully set out analysis.
In a preliminary scenario, the institute estimated that in about three weeks, there would be up to 90,000 to 300,000 cases per day — a stark increase from the current pace of about 4,700 cases per day, a record for Norway.
Same numbers as reported in the New York Times. I'll see if I can use the power of Google to find further sources that repeat the same Norwegian doomsday warnings.
Don’t understand why folk eat a North American species for Christmas dinner. We should eat European food at festivals. I’m a big fan of steak pie. Beef Wellington, duck or goose also great. Venison or lamb sounds good too. Maybe hare or wild boar?
Not rabbit or pork.
I agree, Turkey isn’t worth it when there are alternatives that feel just as festive and taste 10x better.
We’re having 2 birds between 10 people: a goose and a cockerel. Best of both worlds, all the tasty fat but also white meat and cold leftovers.
No starter, just nibbles throughout the morning.
Biggest risk to Christmas lunch is the statistically high likelihood someone out of the 3 families will catch OMICRON THE DESTROYER OF YULE next week.
Getting messages from NHS about my isolation period. They continue to say you can come out and go back to work even if you still have a cough. But I've never had a cough. Indeed. When I was negative but had symptoms I went for a couple of runs. My muscles ached. But I wasn't noticeably more out of breath than normal. So I couldn't possibly have COVID, right? This is why I suspect omicron not delta.
The cough is only a principal symptom for the unvaccinated
Don’t understand why folk eat a North American species for Christmas dinner. We should eat European food at festivals. I’m a big fan of steak pie. Beef Wellington, duck or goose also great. Venison or lamb sounds good too. Maybe hare or wild boar?
Not rabbit or pork.
ISTR reading this is the time of year turkeys were walked to London from Norfolk for sale. Which is why the tradition took off.
But turkey is rubbish. I suppose it was just cheap compared to beef, lamb etc back then.
I need to think what sort of starter to have for Xmas lunch. Do people have starters with turkey?
I normally have ravioli in brodo (a clear and delicious broth). It somehow does not feel right with turkey. Perhaps I could still persuade Husband to ditch the turkey - or give it away - and we can have a lovely beef joint instead.
Anyway we are now eating lemons from our lemon tree. So there is a small touch of the Mediterranean in the Lakes, as promised.
We have a rib of beef joint ordered from the butchers. Mrs P's 2020 vintage Christmas pudding to follow - yum-yum! No starter - we find it too much for a Christmas dinner.
We have a lemon on our tree that looks ripe too - our first - how do you tell when they are ready to pick?
Hold it gently and twist slightly. Don't pull. If it comes off easily it's ripe.
Thanks - will check the lemon tomorrow morning.
The tree has been moved under glass with a small frost protection heater so we're hoping it will survive the winter ok. As you can tell, it's our first year with it - birthday present for Mrs P, so we'd hate to lose it.
Getting messages from NHS about my isolation period. They continue to say you can come out and go back to work even if you still have a cough. But I've never had a cough. Indeed. When I was negative but had symptoms I went for a couple of runs. My muscles ached. But I wasn't noticeably more out of breath than normal. So I couldn't possibly have COVID, right? This is why I suspect omicron not delta.
The cough is only a principal symptom for the unvaccinated
& loss of taste/smell is actually (minor) brain damage.
Utterly appalling Red Wall breaks for the Tories in today’s Redfield & Wilton:
North East Lab 44% Con 22% North West Lab 52% Con 26% Yorkshire & Humber Lab 47% Con 36% West Midlands Lab 54% Con 31% East Midlands Lab 41% Con 37%
Totally Ratnered.
Will it stay that way?
These stats feel “sticky”.
What amazes me is suddenly how well the Tories are doing in their traditional Blue Wall heartland! This feels like a watershed: was the breaking of the Red Wall simply a one-off?
Now the Tories won't lose Redditch at the next GE, or if they do they'll be down to around 130 seats.
But the die is cast for North Shropshire, I don't think it'll be particularly close. And not in a good way for Boris. Might be a move against him with the absolute pants down shellacking they're about to receive.
Don’t understand why folk eat a North American species for Christmas dinner. We should eat European food at festivals. I’m a big fan of steak pie. Beef Wellington, duck or goose also great. Venison or lamb sounds good too. Maybe hare or wild boar?
Not rabbit or pork.
Goose is excellent, if you have a giant oven, a reliable alarm clock, and use for a gallon of fat afterwards.
And adequate ventilation. One year we did this and we smelt of cooked goose for a week.
Don’t understand why folk eat a North American species for Christmas dinner. We should eat European food at festivals. I’m a big fan of steak pie. Beef Wellington, duck or goose also great. Venison or lamb sounds good too. Maybe hare or wild boar?
Not rabbit or pork.
Goose is excellent, if you have a giant oven, a reliable alarm clock, and use for a gallon of fat afterwards.
Potatoes are always better with proper fat. I did a whole duck at the weekend, used the fat on parmentier potatoes while it was resting. That’s cubed roasties. Lush it was.
If there were 10,000 Omicron infections in London yesterday (as I think Zoe estimates) then at 3 day doubling we’ll be at 160k per day by Christmas Eve, or about 1 in 50 people per day and 1 in 5 being infected in total. At that rate we’d be on the way down by new year and wave over by end of January, in the capital at least.
Utterly appalling Red Wall breaks for the Tories in today’s Redfield & Wilton:
North East Lab 44% Con 22% North West Lab 52% Con 26% Yorkshire & Humber Lab 47% Con 36% West Midlands Lab 54% Con 31% East Midlands Lab 41% Con 37%
Totally Ratnered.
Will it stay that way?
These stats feel “sticky”.
What amazes me is suddenly how well the Tories are doing in their traditional Blue Wall heartland! This feels like a watershed: was the breaking of the Red Wall simply a one-off?
Now the Tories won't lose Redditch at the next GE, or if they do they'll be down to around 130 seats.
But the die is cast for North Shropshire, I don't think it'll be particularly close. And not in a good way for Boris. Might be a move against him with the absolute pants down shellacking they're about to receive.
Could the postal votes save them? I mean that the votes may have been cast before his most recent clusterfuck.
The NS election has never made sense from the moment early on everyone decided it was Tory v LD in a Tory v Lab seat where LDs had come nowhere.
Lab tactics don't make sense, and the punditry doesn't either. Rural, Brexity, true blue in an area well away from LD influence and not fond of metro types telling you what to do. I still think the Tories are in it and should win, but should have found a local candidate who looked like he knew which end of a sheep was which.
Utterly appalling Red Wall breaks for the Tories in today’s Redfield & Wilton:
North East Lab 44% Con 22% North West Lab 52% Con 26% Yorkshire & Humber Lab 47% Con 36% West Midlands Lab 54% Con 31% East Midlands Lab 41% Con 37%
Totally Ratnered.
Will it stay that way?
These stats feel “sticky”.
What amazes me is suddenly how well the Tories are doing in their traditional Blue Wall heartland! This feels like a watershed: was the breaking of the Red Wall simply a one-off?
Now the Tories won't lose Redditch at the next GE, or if they do they'll be down to around 130 seats.
But the die is cast for North Shropshire, I don't think it'll be particularly close. And not in a good way for Boris. Might be a move against him with the absolute pants down shellacking they're about to receive.
Beware of regional cross breaks in individual polls (although they can be of a bit more use in the absence of something betten when averaged over a large number of polls especially from different companies.).
Clearly Lab are nowhere nearly 51% ahead of the LDs in the W Midlands (54% v 3%) for example. If they were, there would be some betting opportunities on Lab on Thursday in Shropshire N, in what would be much more than value bets.
That said, if there is a significant swing back to Labour, I would also expect it to be potentially much greater in seats where a high proportion of the electorate had cast a vote for Labour in the more recent past, compared to ones where very few have ever done so. Those who switched in Red Wall seats have started to see through Johnson and anyway the specific factors behind the exceptional swing (Brexit and distaste for Corbyn) should have started to fade in the first case and will have gone in the second.
Redditch had a Labour MP until 2010 and was a long shot target in 2015. I think it's a case in point of a seat where Labour is capable of an exceptional swing back, well above the national trend, if not a seat that is on the radar for 2024 or earlier.
If there were 10,000 Omicron infections in London yesterday (as I think Zoe estimates) then at 3 day doubling we’ll be at 160k per day by Christmas Eve, or about 1 in 50 people per day and 1 in 5 being infected in total. At that rate we’d be on the way down by new year and wave over by end of January, in the capital at least.
Where as according to Javid / UK HSA, we will all be on our third bout by then....
Utterly appalling Red Wall breaks for the Tories in today’s Redfield & Wilton:
North East Lab 44% Con 22% North West Lab 52% Con 26% Yorkshire & Humber Lab 47% Con 36% West Midlands Lab 54% Con 31% East Midlands Lab 41% Con 37%
Totally Ratnered.
Will it stay that way?
These stats feel “sticky”.
What amazes me is suddenly how well the Tories are doing in their traditional Blue Wall heartland! This feels like a watershed: was the breaking of the Red Wall simply a one-off?
Now the Tories won't lose Redditch at the next GE, or if they do they'll be down to around 130 seats.
But the die is cast for North Shropshire, I don't think it'll be particularly close. And not in a good way for Boris. Might be a move against him with the absolute pants down shellacking they're about to receive.
Could the postal votes save them? I mean that the votes may have been cast before his most recent clusterfuck.
The NS election has never made sense from the moment early on everyone decided it was Tory v LD in a Tory v Lab seat where LDs had come nowhere.
Lab tactics don't make sense, and the punditry doesn't either. Rural, Brexity, true blue in an area well away from LD influence and not fond of metro types telling you what to do. I still think the Tories are in it and should win, but should have found a local candidate who looked like he knew which end of a sheep was which.
That’s why I think only the Lib Dems ever had a chance of beating the Tories there. They’re a safe repository for a Tory protest vote in a way Labour isn’t.
Utterly appalling Red Wall breaks for the Tories in today’s Redfield & Wilton:
North East Lab 44% Con 22% North West Lab 52% Con 26% Yorkshire & Humber Lab 47% Con 36% West Midlands Lab 54% Con 31% East Midlands Lab 41% Con 37%
Totally Ratnered.
Will it stay that way?
These stats feel “sticky”.
What amazes me is suddenly how well the Tories are doing in their traditional Blue Wall heartland! This feels like a watershed: was the breaking of the Red Wall simply a one-off?
Now the Tories won't lose Redditch at the next GE, or if they do they'll be down to around 130 seats.
But the die is cast for North Shropshire, I don't think it'll be particularly close. And not in a good way for Boris. Might be a move against him with the absolute pants down shellacking they're about to receive.
Could the postal votes save them? I mean that the votes may have been cast before his most recent clusterfuck.
The NS election has never made sense from the moment early on everyone decided it was Tory v LD in a Tory v Lab seat where LDs had come nowhere.
Lab tactics don't make sense, and the punditry doesn't either. Rural, Brexity, true blue in an area well away from LD influence and not fond of metro types telling you what to do. I still think the Tories are in it and should win, but should have found a local candidate who looked like he knew which end of a sheep was which.
You don’t want to get that wrong. Sheep have sharp teeth!
Utterly appalling Red Wall breaks for the Tories in today’s Redfield & Wilton:
North East Lab 44% Con 22% North West Lab 52% Con 26% Yorkshire & Humber Lab 47% Con 36% West Midlands Lab 54% Con 31% East Midlands Lab 41% Con 37%
Totally Ratnered.
Will it stay that way?
These stats feel “sticky”.
What amazes me is suddenly how well the Tories are doing in their traditional Blue Wall heartland! This feels like a watershed: was the breaking of the Red Wall simply a one-off?
Now the Tories won't lose Redditch at the next GE, or if they do they'll be down to around 130 seats.
But the die is cast for North Shropshire, I don't think it'll be particularly close. And not in a good way for Boris. Might be a move against him with the absolute pants down shellacking they're about to receive.
Do you think it matters that it's the Lib Dems challenging rather than Labour? If Labour were going to win it, I'd tend to think that would be terminal for Johnson, but it's easy to dismiss the Lib Dems as a protest vote.
Just feels to me like the public are angry at the government, but they are far from convinced about Labour.
I think it boils down to Boris. If he goes the Tories win. If he doesn't we're probably looking at a reverse 2010.
No, Patel or Gove would poll worse than Boris. Truss would poll little better, same with Raab and Hunt.
Only Sunak or maybe Zahawi or Javid would get any real bounce but if Boris gets most adults boosted with no further lockdown by mid January he may get his own bounce
Re those folk being snotty about the Graun earlier - this is what their feed says:
"55m ago 19:46 Late update: The UK Health Security Agency has been in touch to offer final confirmation as to what Sajid Javid meant when he told MPs earlier that “the current number of daily infections are around 200,000”. He did mean that it is estimated that 200,000 people are getting infected with the Omicron variant every day. That is what we thought originally, but we took down the headline on the post (see 4.19am) after it was suggested he meant something else, and it has taken a while to get clarity from officials. A UKHSA spokesperson said Javid was “referring to the number of new infections today [13 December] based on modelling, not the number who are currently infected”. I have amended the wording in the summary as a result."
I cannot see that entry on their Covid feed. Have they perhaps taken it down?
No, still there when I refresh. As of 2053. Or 7 minutes before two bells in the evening watch.
So every Norwegian has omicron after two weeks? They are going into this like lemmings.
Assuming the Mail is actually reporting the Norwegian public health body correctly, the estimate - if they don't get their way, of course - is between 90k and 300k per day.
The population of Norway is 5.4m, so if 100% of them were susceptible then 300k per day would, crudely speaking, imply the entire population contracting Omicron in 18 days.
Taking into account both that the new infection figures might be towards the lower end of the range, but also that much of the population is likely to be resistant to infection (due to natural or vaccine derived immunity, along with those who are crapping themselves at home and seldom if ever going out,) the Norwegian scientists seem to be inferring that the Omicron wave will pass through the entire remaining susceptible populace by any time between the middle of next week and the end of the month.
You can either dismiss such estimates as preposterous and ignore them, or accept them - with the logical consequence that the disease must be so incredibly infectious to take out that many people that quickly that more restrictions are pointless, because they'll do almost nothing to stop it.
At this point, we have to remember that, even in a March 2020-type tight lockdown, a large fraction of the working population still has to attend a physical workplace, and most people will have to go shopping for essentials. One asymptomatic person in the local Tesco might end up giving the disease to half the other people in there, regardless of whether everyone's got a piece of crumpled blue paper over their mouth or not.
With a disease that will get through your entire population in something like one or two weeks without harsh measures to control it, nothing much short of sealing each citizen in an individual perspex cube, at least twenty feet from anybody else, for a fortnight is going to really slow it down.
"Assuming the Mail is actually reporting ...correctly" rather undemines an otherwise beautifully set out analysis.
In a preliminary scenario, the institute estimated that in about three weeks, there would be up to 90,000 to 300,000 cases per day — a stark increase from the current pace of about 4,700 cases per day, a record for Norway.
Same numbers as reported in the New York Times. I'll see if I can use the power of Google to find further sources that repeat the same Norwegian doomsday warnings.
Here we go, straight from the source (the Norwegian Institute of Public Health):
Already in December, the omicron variant will cause an increase in the number of sick people, many hospital admissions, and a significant strain on the healthcare service and society, through widespread sickness absence. Even if the omicron variant were to cause milder disease in the individual, the widespread transmission would still lead to significantly more hospital admissions than today. In a preliminary scenario, we estimate that in three weeks there could be up to 90,000 and 300,000 cases per day and 50 to 200 admissions per day if the measures do not slow the epidemic significantly.
So, not an instantaneous mega tsunami of cases, but 90k to 300k by about the beginning of January - implying the end of the Omicron wave in Norway, accompanied by all the hospitals bursting into flames at once, one or two weeks after that, without more measures. Though, as I said before, if Omicron is really that ridiculously transmissible then you have to wonder what practical measures will do any good against it.
Utterly appalling Red Wall breaks for the Tories in today’s Redfield & Wilton:
North East Lab 44% Con 22% North West Lab 52% Con 26% Yorkshire & Humber Lab 47% Con 36% West Midlands Lab 54% Con 31% East Midlands Lab 41% Con 37%
Totally Ratnered.
Will it stay that way?
These stats feel “sticky”.
What amazes me is suddenly how well the Tories are doing in their traditional Blue Wall heartland! This feels like a watershed: was the breaking of the Red Wall simply a one-off?
Now the Tories won't lose Redditch at the next GE, or if they do they'll be down to around 130 seats.
But the die is cast for North Shropshire, I don't think it'll be particularly close. And not in a good way for Boris. Might be a move against him with the absolute pants down shellacking they're about to receive.
Beware of regional cross breaks in individual polls (although they can be of a bit more use in the absence of something betten when averaged over a large number of polls especially from different companies.).
Clearly Lab are nowhere nearly 51% ahead of the LDs in the W Midlands (54% v 3%) for example. If they were, there would be some betting opportunities on Lab on Thursday in Shropshire N, in what would be much more than value bets.
That said, if there is a significant swing back to Labour, I would also expect it to be potentially much greater in seats where a high proportion of the electorate had cast a vote for Labour in the more recent past, compared to ones where very few have ever done so. Those who switched in Red Wall seats have started to see through Johnson and anyway the specific factors behind the exceptional swing (Brexit and distaste for Corbyn) should have started to fade in the first case and will have gone in the second.
Redditch had a Labour MP until 2010 and was a long shot target in 2015. I think it's a case in point of a seat where Labour is capable of an exceptional swing back, well above the national trend, if not a seat that is on the radar for 2024 or earlier.
Redditch is a marginal seat, not safe Tory by any means, it stayed Labour even in 2005 only going Tory in 2010 like the country
Don’t understand why folk eat a North American species for Christmas dinner. We should eat European food at festivals. I’m a big fan of steak pie. Beef Wellington, duck or goose also great. Venison or lamb sounds good too. Maybe hare or wild boar?
Not rabbit or pork.
If you come to take my turkey away, I might let you live. But if you try to stop me eating potatoes, you're going in the oven too.
I need to think what sort of starter to have for Xmas lunch. Do people have starters with turkey?
I normally have ravioli in brodo (a clear and delicious broth). It somehow does not feel right with turkey. Perhaps I could still persuade Husband to ditch the turkey - or give it away - and we can have a lovely beef joint instead.
Anyway we are now eating lemons from our lemon tree. So there is a small touch of the Mediterranean in the Lakes, as promised.
We have a rib of beef joint ordered from the butchers. Mrs P's 2020 vintage Christmas pudding to follow - yum-yum! No starter - we find it too much for a Christmas dinner.
We have a lemon on our tree that looks ripe too - our first - how do you tell when they are ready to pick?
o_O Where in the world are you ?
You get lemon and orange groves in Aberdeenshire, you know.
Utterly appalling Red Wall breaks for the Tories in today’s Redfield & Wilton:
North East Lab 44% Con 22% North West Lab 52% Con 26% Yorkshire & Humber Lab 47% Con 36% West Midlands Lab 54% Con 31% East Midlands Lab 41% Con 37%
Totally Ratnered.
Will it stay that way?
These stats feel “sticky”.
What amazes me is suddenly how well the Tories are doing in their traditional Blue Wall heartland! This feels like a watershed: was the breaking of the Red Wall simply a one-off?
Now the Tories won't lose Redditch at the next GE, or if they do they'll be down to around 130 seats.
But the die is cast for North Shropshire, I don't think it'll be particularly close. And not in a good way for Boris. Might be a move against him with the absolute pants down shellacking they're about to receive.
Could the postal votes save them? I mean that the votes may have been cast before his most recent clusterfuck.
The NS election has never made sense from the moment early on everyone decided it was Tory v LD in a Tory v Lab seat where LDs had come nowhere.
Lab tactics don't make sense, and the punditry doesn't either. Rural, Brexity, true blue in an area well away from LD influence and not fond of metro types telling you what to do. I still think the Tories are in it and should win, but should have found a local candidate who looked like he knew which end of a sheep was which.
That’s why I think only the Lib Dems ever had a chance of beating the Tories there. They’re a safe repository for a Tory protest vote in a way Labour isn’t.
Exactly. The mistake is to think that the chance of winning necessarily correlates with the number of votes last time. Whereas it correlates more closely with the likelihood of those who didn’t vote for you last time switching this time. However well Labour did last time, in NS there will always be too many people who would never vote Labour, however appalling the Tories might be at the time.
Nurit Baytch @NuritBaytch Today’s omicron report from Denmark compares % of cases that require hospitalization for delta vs omicron. It is HIGHER for omicron, and most of Denmark’s omicron cases were just diagnosed, meaning insufficient time has passed to require hospitalization
Table seems to suggest Denmark believes that pre Omicron there was only 1 hospital acquired infection, and in the last week there have been 8.
Find it hard to believe that is the result of a fair like for like comparison.
I’m not honestly sure how to read this. a quarter of the hospitalised omicron cases tested positive > 48 hrs after admission, so quite likely nosocomial. the others include those testing positive on arrival, a decent % of which could be incidental (“with covid”). so 🤷♂️
Not claiming it's convincing at all. Just a bit of counter-evidence. TBH I'm drifting twds the "omicron is milder" theory. Precisely for that reason I'm especially eager to see counter-evidence.
Utterly appalling Red Wall breaks for the Tories in today’s Redfield & Wilton:
North East Lab 44% Con 22% North West Lab 52% Con 26% Yorkshire & Humber Lab 47% Con 36% West Midlands Lab 54% Con 31% East Midlands Lab 41% Con 37%
Totally Ratnered.
Will it stay that way?
These stats feel “sticky”.
What amazes me is suddenly how well the Tories are doing in their traditional Blue Wall heartland! This feels like a watershed: was the breaking of the Red Wall simply a one-off?
Now the Tories won't lose Redditch at the next GE, or if they do they'll be down to around 130 seats.
But the die is cast for North Shropshire, I don't think it'll be particularly close. And not in a good way for Boris. Might be a move against him with the absolute pants down shellacking they're about to receive.
Could the postal votes save them? I mean that the votes may have been cast before his most recent clusterfuck.
The NS election has never made sense from the moment early on everyone decided it was Tory v LD in a Tory v Lab seat where LDs had come nowhere.
Lab tactics don't make sense, and the punditry doesn't either. Rural, Brexity, true blue in an area well away from LD influence and not fond of metro types telling you what to do. I still think the Tories are in it and should win, but should have found a local candidate who looked like he knew which end of a sheep was which.
You don’t want to get that wrong. Sheep have sharp teeth!
Some time ago now, I did try to warn the good folk PB-on-the-Wold that there was a new variant of Covid from South Africa causing me a tiny bit of concern…
Getting messages from NHS about my isolation period. They continue to say you can come out and go back to work even if you still have a cough. But I've never had a cough. Indeed. When I was negative but had symptoms I went for a couple of runs. My muscles ached. But I wasn't noticeably more out of breath than normal. So I couldn't possibly have COVID, right? This is why I suspect omicron not delta.
The cough is only a principal symptom for the unvaccinated
& loss of taste/smell is actually (minor) brain damage.
Really? I assumed it was to do with damage to the linings of the nose.
I had a bad cold about four year ago where I totally lost my sense of smell - very disconcerting. But it all came back after a few weeks.
Some time ago now, I did try to warn the good folk PB-on-the-Wold that there was a new variant of Covid from South Africa causing me a tiny bit of concern…
How are you feeling tonight? Norway data is worrying.
The Denmark figures of 1% hospitalisation for omicron is worrying but we'll have to see. There should be more natural immunity in the UK but the worry is that the vaccines won't work as well.
Does anyone else find odd the idea that two doses of the vaccine provides little protection three doses is near fullproof?
The Denmark figures of 1% hospitalisation for omicron is worrying but we'll have to see. There should be more natural immunity in the UK but the worry is that the vaccines won't work as well.
Does anyone else find odd the idea that two doses of the vaccine provides little protection three doses is near fullproof?
Don’t understand why folk eat a North American species for Christmas dinner. We should eat European food at festivals. I’m a big fan of steak pie. Beef Wellington, duck or goose also great. Venison or lamb sounds good too. Maybe hare or wild boar?
Not rabbit or pork.
Goose is excellent, if you have a giant oven, a reliable alarm clock, and use for a gallon of fat afterwards.
Potatoes are always better with proper fat. I did a whole duck at the weekend, used the fat on parmentier potatoes while it was resting. That’s cubed roasties. Lush it was.
I need to think what sort of starter to have for Xmas lunch. Do people have starters with turkey?
I normally have ravioli in brodo (a clear and delicious broth). It somehow does not feel right with turkey. Perhaps I could still persuade Husband to ditch the turkey - or give it away - and we can have a lovely beef joint instead.
Anyway we are now eating lemons from our lemon tree. So there is a small touch of the Mediterranean in the Lakes, as promised.
We have a rib of beef joint ordered from the butchers. Mrs P's 2020 vintage Christmas pudding to follow - yum-yum! No starter - we find it too much for a Christmas dinner.
We have a lemon on our tree that looks ripe too - our first - how do you tell when they are ready to pick?
Hold it gently and twist slightly. Don't pull. If it comes off easily it's ripe.
Thanks - will check the lemon tomorrow morning.
The tree has been moved under glass with a small frost protection heater so we're hoping it will survive the winter ok. As you can tell, it's our first year with it - birthday present for Mrs P, so we'd hate to lose it.
I have moved mine into the hall. It gets plenty of light. I don't do anything special re heat as big changes in temperature can stress out plants. Water when dry and mist occasionally. Only moved the citrus inside a week or so ago. Fingers crossed.
The Denmark figures of 1% hospitalisation for omicron is worrying but we'll have to see. There should be more natural immunity in the UK but the worry is that the vaccines won't work as well.
Does anyone else find odd the idea that two doses of the vaccine provides little protection three doses is near fullproof?
The 2xAZ being 0 is off very limited data, with huge errors and an old population. I strongly suspect it will retain some efficacy against symptomatic infection. Time will tell, or maybe won’t if we boost everyone in time...
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 15m Anecdotally, a vast number of people I know personally have tested positive in the past few days - way in excess of anything I've seen at any point in the crisis. Like, multiples of anything I'd noticed before.
Is there any gossip about what new Covid measures Sturgeon will bequeath to a grateful Scottish people tomorrow?
No particular indications, apart from the fact that the Scottish teachers union is demanding that the schools be shut early for Christmas (quelle surprise) and she's said no.
Don’t understand why folk eat a North American species for Christmas dinner. We should eat European food at festivals. I’m a big fan of steak pie. Beef Wellington, duck or goose also great. Venison or lamb sounds good too. Maybe hare or wild boar?
Not rabbit or pork.
If you come to take my turkey away, I might let you live. But if you try to stop me eating potatoes, you're going in the oven too.
I think I’d be a bit tough and chewy.
Potatoes are another American species. Also overrated.
We very rarely eat tatties these days. Mainly used to fill up hungry bairns.
If Swedes could make decent chips it might be another story. God bless Flanders!
Some time ago now, I did try to warn the good folk PB-on-the-Wold that there was a new variant of Covid from South Africa causing me a tiny bit of concern…
Some time ago now, I did try to warn the good folk PB-on-the-Wold that there was a new variant of Covid from South Africa causing me a tiny bit of concern…
Well we'll see. I would be more worried about countries where covid has not yet ripped through and there is less natural immunity. Is Danish ICU filling up?
Don’t understand why folk eat a North American species for Christmas dinner. We should eat European food at festivals. I’m a big fan of steak pie. Beef Wellington, duck or goose also great. Venison or lamb sounds good too. Maybe hare or wild boar?
Not rabbit or pork.
We cook a massive Sri Lankan meal for Christmas Dinner. The kids prefer it to the traditional roast. Curry for Christmas is the way forward.
The Denmark figures of 1% hospitalisation for omicron is worrying but we'll have to see. There should be more natural immunity in the UK but the worry is that the vaccines won't work as well.
Does anyone else find odd the idea that two doses of the vaccine provides little protection three doses is near fullproof?
My triple vaccinated friend is still struggling ten days after a positive.
Some time ago now, I did try to warn the good folk PB-on-the-Wold that there was a new variant of Covid from South Africa causing me a tiny bit of concern…
And you were being paranoid then. The problem is others have become just as paranoid.
Don’t understand why folk eat a North American species for Christmas dinner. We should eat European food at festivals. I’m a big fan of steak pie. Beef Wellington, duck or goose also great. Venison or lamb sounds good too. Maybe hare or wild boar?
Not rabbit or pork.
If you come to take my turkey away, I might let you live. But if you try to stop me eating potatoes, you're going in the oven too.
I think I’d be a bit tough and chewy.
Potatoes are another American species. Also overrated.
We very rarely eat tatties these days. Mainly used to fill up hungry bairns.
If Swedes could make decent chips it might be another story. God bless Flanders!
Yes, it's their Americaness that prompted me to leap to their defence. Also tomatoes. I like my Italian food. Don't spoil that for me too.
I just watched Escape From Sobibor for the first time in about twenty years. I was talking to a mate who's been watching Nazi hunter shows and it made me think of it. It's on youtube in full here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQLQ1DrnvO0
It's a really amazing British TV production from 1987 that tells what I think is the most incredible story of WW2. They break everybody out of a Nazi extermination camp. Lots die doing it, but hundreds escape and it's a story that had to be told. I'm quite surprised that the film's not that well known, and that it hasn't been remade.
Watching it again now has made Stanislaw Szmajzner my top war hero. He was crucial in the escape at just sixteen years old, then helped hunt down two of the Sobibor commandants who had managed to escape to Brazil. He may have stabbed one of them to death. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanisław_Szmajzner
What really amazes me watching it again now is that it does, with a bit of now available related internet research, seem to be a faithful reproduction of what actually happened. I'd assumed that it had some 'Hollywood' added to the story but was mistaken.
I need to think what sort of starter to have for Xmas lunch. Do people have starters with turkey?
I normally have ravioli in brodo (a clear and delicious broth). It somehow does not feel right with turkey. Perhaps I could still persuade Husband to ditch the turkey - or give it away - and we can have a lovely beef joint instead.
Anyway we are now eating lemons from our lemon tree. So there is a small touch of the Mediterranean in the Lakes, as promised.
We have a rib of beef joint ordered from the butchers. Mrs P's 2020 vintage Christmas pudding to follow - yum-yum! No starter - we find it too much for a Christmas dinner.
We have a lemon on our tree that looks ripe too - our first - how do you tell when they are ready to pick?
Hold it gently and twist slightly. Don't pull. If it comes off easily it's ripe.
Thanks - will check the lemon tomorrow morning.
The tree has been moved under glass with a small frost protection heater so we're hoping it will survive the winter ok. As you can tell, it's our first year with it - birthday present for Mrs P, so we'd hate to lose it.
I have moved mine into the hall. It gets plenty of light. I don't do anything special re heat as big changes in temperature can stress out plants. Water when dry and mist occasionally. Only moved the citrus inside a week or so ago. Fingers crossed.
Lost count of the number of citrus and other Mediterranean plants we’ve murdered in our “orangerie”. They thrive outdoors in the long, hot Swedish summers, but they dry out terribly indoors during the long winters. Not aided by the high indoors temperatures that is bog standard in all Scandinavian buildings.
Over the years I’ve got better at winter watering, but the fig only just scraped through last winter.
The Denmark figures of 1% hospitalisation for omicron is worrying but we'll have to see. There should be more natural immunity in the UK but the worry is that the vaccines won't work as well.
Does anyone else find odd the idea that two doses of the vaccine provides little protection three doses is near fullproof?
The Denmark figures of 1% hospitalisation for omicron is worrying but we'll have to see. There should be more natural immunity in the UK but the worry is that the vaccines won't work as well.
Does anyone else find odd the idea that two doses of the vaccine provides little protection three doses is near fullproof?
My triple vaccinated friend is still struggling ten days after a positive.
Not at all surprising. It's still a lottery, just as it's been from day one. The vaccines improve one's chances, that's all.
I need to think what sort of starter to have for Xmas lunch. Do people have starters with turkey?
I normally have ravioli in brodo (a clear and delicious broth). It somehow does not feel right with turkey. Perhaps I could still persuade Husband to ditch the turkey - or give it away - and we can have a lovely beef joint instead.
Anyway we are now eating lemons from our lemon tree. So there is a small touch of the Mediterranean in the Lakes, as promised.
Yes, we tend to have a cold starter, such as blinis with sour cream and lump fish caviar, or a retro classic of prawn avocado. It can be prepared in advance as Turkey and trimmings tends to occupy the kitchen already, in terms of time, personnel, and stove capacity.
I just watched Escape From Sobibor for the first time in about twenty years. I was talking to a mate who's been watching Nazi hunter shows and it made me think of it. It's on youtube in full here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQLQ1DrnvO0
It's a really amazing British TV production from 1987 that tells what I think is the most incredible story of WW2. They break everybody out of a Nazi extermination camp. Lots die doing it, but hundreds escape and it's a story that had to be told. I'm quite surprised that the film's not that well known, and that it hasn't been remade.
Watching it again now has made Stanislaw Szmajzner my top war hero. He was crucial in the escape at just sixteen years old, then helped hunt down two of the Sobibor commandants who had managed to escape to Brazil. He may have stabbed one of them to death. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanisław_Szmajzner
What really amazes me watching it again now is that it does, with a bit of now available related internet research, seem to be a faithful reproduction of what actually happened. I'd assumed that it had some 'Hollywood' added to the story but was mistaken.
I remember watching that at school shortly after it came out. How to utterly silence a class of 14-year olds.
Though if you really want something you'll never forget... 'Come and See'. By a long chalk the single most breathtaking depiction of Nazi terror. Don't watch it if you want to sleep that night, or indeed at any point in the next week.
Is there any gossip about what new Covid measures Sturgeon will bequeath to a grateful Scottish people tomorrow?
No particular indications, apart from the fact that the Scottish teachers union is demanding that the schools be shut early for Christmas (quelle surprise) and she's said no.
Presumably they still wanted to be paid not to do their job.
I need to think what sort of starter to have for Xmas lunch. Do people have starters with turkey?
I normally have ravioli in brodo (a clear and delicious broth). It somehow does not feel right with turkey. Perhaps I could still persuade Husband to ditch the turkey - or give it away - and we can have a lovely beef joint instead.
Anyway we are now eating lemons from our lemon tree. So there is a small touch of the Mediterranean in the Lakes, as promised.
Hark at her, too good for prawn cocktail like the rest of us.
Don’t understand why folk eat a North American species for Christmas dinner. We should eat European food at festivals. I’m a big fan of steak pie. Beef Wellington, duck or goose also great. Venison or lamb sounds good too. Maybe hare or wild boar?
Not rabbit or pork.
We cook a massive Sri Lankan meal for Christmas Dinner. The kids prefer it to the traditional roast. Curry for Christmas is the way forward.
Hot Turkey, cold Turkey, Turkey curry, Turkey risotto. Everything in its place.
Comments
https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1470504405149622276?t=29ycpfrrj-yTTAnnqpaCgg&s=19
"The situation is concerning enough without idiotic junk science exaggerating the threat."
Has the government clarified their clarification yet? I mean - this is beyond absurd, it's dangerous. Talk about ratcheting up fear.
MPs - most of whom are innumerate at the best of times - are about to vote on curtailing our liberties. It's not like it's important or anything.
Just feels to me like the public are angry at the government, but they are far from convinced about Labour.
@NuritBaytch
Today’s omicron report from Denmark compares % of cases that require hospitalization for delta vs omicron. It is HIGHER for omicron, and most of Denmark’s omicron cases were just diagnosed, meaning insufficient time has passed to require hospitalization
Really.
I need to think what sort of starter to have for Xmas lunch. Do people have starters with turkey?
I normally have ravioli in brodo (a clear and delicious broth). It somehow does not feel right with turkey. Perhaps I could still persuade Husband to ditch the turkey - or give it away - and we can have a lovely beef joint instead.
Anyway we are now eating lemons from our lemon tree. So there is a small touch of the Mediterranean in the Lakes, as promised.
It's a fact they're claiming it.
For starter typically some smoked salmon, with a bread roll, olive oil and balsamic.
The population of Norway is 5.4m, so if 100% of them were susceptible then 300k per day would, crudely speaking, imply the entire population contracting Omicron in 18 days.
Taking into account both that the new infection figures might be towards the lower end of the range, but also that much of the population is likely to be resistant to infection (due to natural or vaccine derived immunity, along with those who are crapping themselves at home and seldom if ever going out,) the Norwegian scientists seem to be inferring that the Omicron wave will pass through the entire remaining susceptible populace by any time between the middle of next week and the end of the month.
You can either dismiss such estimates as preposterous and ignore them, or accept them - with the logical consequence that the disease must be so incredibly infectious to take out that many people that quickly that more restrictions are pointless, because they'll do almost nothing to stop it.
At this point, we have to remember that, even in a March 2020-type tight lockdown, a large fraction of the working population still has to attend a physical workplace, and most people will have to go shopping for essentials. One asymptomatic person in the local Tesco might end up giving the disease to half the other people in there, regardless of whether everyone's got a piece of crumpled blue paper over their mouth or not.
With a disease that will get through your entire population in something like one or two weeks without harsh measures to control it, nothing much short of sealing each citizen in an individual perspex cube, at least twenty feet from anybody else, for a fortnight is going to really slow it down.
Find it hard to believe that is the result of a fair like for like comparison.
Brace.
As @Leon would say.
Not really comparable given this is mid-term and that was in the thick of a GE.
Not rabbit or pork.
We have a lemon on our tree that looks ripe too - our first - how do you tell when they are ready to pick?
They continue to say you can come out and go back to work even if you still have a cough.
But I've never had a cough. Indeed. When I was negative but had symptoms I went for a couple of runs. My muscles ached. But I wasn't noticeably more out of breath than normal. So I couldn't possibly have COVID, right?
This is why I suspect omicron not delta.
Liz Truss? Probably yes.
Michael Gove? Hell no.
Concerning the ongoing pressure on hospitals:
We’re going great guns at treating people on the waiting list. And this winter we’re doing more than ever to protect that, as well as dealing with all the other pressures we have. We are holding beds for people on the waiting list who are having surgery. But that raises really difficult ethical dilemmas. Do you hold an intensive care bed for someone with an aneurysm that could kill them at any minute, or bring in someone who’s just arrived through A&E and needs surgery? Is there a bed for someone who comes in and needs a thrombectomy, a potentially life-saving operation after a stroke?
You can imagine how some of our staff feel about unvaccinated people with Covid eating into our supply of ICU beds when you’re making these decisions, about whether someone with stage 4 cancer or an aneurysm can have an operation.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/dec/13/the-secret-nhs-trust-boss-the-strain-on-hospitals-is-visible-and-visceral
However, Pollard, one of those behind the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, said Covid would still pile pressure on the NHS this winter – with unvaccinated patients requiring intensive care and double-jabbed patients who are older and frail still at risk of “life-threatening” health issues.
“The latest wave of the virus in the UK, which is now rising rapidly in parts of Europe, will directly translate into a stream of mostly unvaccinated patients entering ICU,” he said in the article jointly authored with Prof Brian Angus, professor of infectious disease at the University of Oxford. “To prevent serious illness, these people need first and second doses of the vaccine as soon as possible.
“For those of us fortunate enough to have already been vaccinated, the story now seems very different. For most vaccinated individuals, these mild infections are little more than an unpleasant inconvenience.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/23/covid-patients-in-icu-now-almost-all-unvaccinated-says-oxford-scientist
Paging the anti-vaxxers and all those who keep stubbornly insisting that their right to dick about vetoes everybody else's rights to medical care and freedom from lockdowns: please stop.
Same numbers as reported in the New York Times. I'll see if I can use the power of Google to find further sources that repeat the same Norwegian doomsday warnings.
We’re having 2 birds between 10 people: a goose and a cockerel. Best of both worlds, all the tasty fat but also white meat and cold leftovers.
No starter, just nibbles throughout the morning.
Biggest risk to Christmas lunch is the statistically high likelihood someone out of the 3 families will catch OMICRON THE DESTROYER OF YULE next week.
The tree has been moved under glass with a small frost protection heater so we're hoping it will survive the winter ok. As you can tell, it's our first year with it - birthday present for Mrs P, so we'd hate to lose it.
1.To what extent is the NHS overloaded today on an ongoing basis
2. How is that projected to change it one assumes Omicron is as harmful as Delta, and given our best estimates on Omicron R and vaccine evasion?
Of the above, how much demand can be attributed or to the unvaxxed?
I believe I said it would crash and burn.
Lab tactics don't make sense, and the punditry doesn't either. Rural, Brexity, true blue in an area well away from LD influence and not fond of metro types telling you what to do. I still think the Tories are in it and should win, but should have found a local candidate who looked like he knew which end of a sheep was which.
Clearly Lab are nowhere nearly 51% ahead of the LDs in the W Midlands (54% v 3%) for example. If they were, there would be some betting opportunities on Lab on Thursday in Shropshire N, in what would be much more than value bets.
That said, if there is a significant swing back to Labour, I would also expect it to be potentially much greater in seats where a high proportion of the electorate had cast a vote for Labour in the more recent past, compared to ones where very few have ever done so. Those who switched in Red Wall seats have started to see through Johnson and anyway the specific factors behind the exceptional swing (Brexit and distaste for Corbyn) should have started to fade in the first case and will have gone in the second.
Redditch had a Labour MP until 2010 and was a long shot target in 2015. I think it's a case in point of a seat where Labour is capable of an exceptional swing back, well above the national trend, if not a seat that is on the radar for 2024 or earlier.
Say 10 days. If doubling time is 2 days, then this is a factor of 32.
So 1.5k cases confimed caught it 10 days ago, so around 50k now.
If we are only genome testing 25% of positive PCR tests, that gets to 200k cases.
What on earth would the Guardian talk about if it didn't live in a culture of endless blame?
Only Sunak or maybe Zahawi or Javid would get any real bounce but if Boris gets most adults boosted with no further lockdown by mid January he may get his own bounce
Already in December, the omicron variant will cause an increase in the number of sick people, many hospital admissions, and a significant strain on the healthcare service and society, through widespread sickness absence. Even if the omicron variant were to cause milder disease in the individual, the widespread transmission would still lead to significantly more hospital admissions than today. In a preliminary scenario, we estimate that in three weeks there could be up to 90,000 and 300,000 cases per day and 50 to 200 admissions per day if the measures do not slow the epidemic significantly.
https://www.fhi.no/en/news/2021/updated-risk-assessment-about-omicron-variant/
So, not an instantaneous mega tsunami of cases, but 90k to 300k by about the beginning of January - implying the end of the Omicron wave in Norway, accompanied by all the hospitals bursting into flames at once, one or two weeks after that, without more measures. Though, as I said before, if Omicron is really that ridiculously transmissible then you have to wonder what practical measures will do any good against it.
I’m not honestly sure how to read this. a quarter of the hospitalised omicron cases tested positive > 48 hrs after admission, so quite likely nosocomial. the others include those testing positive on arrival, a decent % of which could be incidental (“with covid”). so 🤷♂️
@Andrew_Lilico replying to @JamesWard73
Not claiming it's convincing at all. Just a bit of counter-evidence. TBH I'm drifting twds the "omicron is milder" theory. Precisely for that reason I'm especially eager to see counter-evidence.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/dec/13/natwest-fined-264m-after-admitting-breaching-anti-money-laundering-rules
https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1470520375217897474?s=20
For the avoidance of doubt, I’m absolutely not calling for @Pulpstar to be banned @rcs1000 @MikeSmithson !!
But I remember @StuartDickson ’s long exile for (speaks in hushed tone) er, Caledonian Crossbreaks…
I had a bad cold about four year ago where I totally lost my sense of smell - very disconcerting. But it all came back after a few weeks.
The Denmark figures of 1% hospitalisation for omicron is worrying but we'll have to see. There should be more natural immunity in the UK but the worry is that the vaccines won't work as well.
Does anyone else find odd the idea that two doses of the vaccine provides little protection three doses is near fullproof?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXdjt8ZBQbE
I have 3 mallards in a row in the freezer.
@andrew_lilico
·
15m
Anecdotally, a vast number of people I know personally have tested positive in the past few days - way in excess of anything I've seen at any point in the crisis. Like, multiples of anything I'd noticed before.
https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1470522022346346500?s=20
Potatoes are another American species. Also overrated.
We very rarely eat tatties these days. Mainly used to fill up hungry bairns.
If Swedes could make decent chips it might be another story. God bless Flanders!
Have a good evening everyone.
I'm off to watch the best Christmas movie.
Yippee ki yay.
Also tomatoes. I like my Italian food. Don't spoil that for me too.
It's a really amazing British TV production from 1987 that tells what I think is the most incredible story of WW2. They break everybody out of a Nazi extermination camp. Lots die doing it, but hundreds escape and it's a story that had to be told. I'm quite surprised that the film's not that well known, and that it hasn't been remade.
Watching it again now has made Stanislaw Szmajzner my top war hero. He was crucial in the escape at just sixteen years old, then helped hunt down two of the Sobibor commandants who had managed to escape to Brazil. He may have stabbed one of them to death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanisław_Szmajzner
What really amazes me watching it again now is that it does, with a bit of now available related internet research, seem to be a faithful reproduction of what actually happened. I'd assumed that it had some 'Hollywood' added to the story but was mistaken.
At least The Graun noted the 200k as a 'claimed' number.
Over the years I’ve got better at winter watering, but the fig only just scraped through last winter.
Though if you really want something you'll never forget... 'Come and See'. By a long chalk the single most breathtaking depiction of Nazi terror. Don't watch it if you want to sleep that night, or indeed at any point in the next week.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_and_See
finish the thread.