I don’t know if it’s been mentioned but £60-£100 a month phone contracts are very normal for the red wall. People talking of £10 sim only deals are very much out of touch. Christ.
Who are you speaking to that spends that much on their phone? 😲
My contract is with Sky Mobile and I spend £10 a month getting 10GB a data and that's plenty for me. Any I don't use is rolled over to a pot too, so I have hundreds of GB in my family pot that can be accessed on demand if I have a data-heavy month for some reason.
Hello.
Pre plague I used to use of 600GB of mobile data per month.
I don't think that even fits in a calendar month at 4g speeds does it? You would certainly get an OOM speed boost by hardwiring yourself to your data source.
Plugging TSE into the internet directly via a 10Gb symmetrical connection? Look, even Edward Teller* had things that he thought we shouldn't do.
*This is the guy whose idea of fun was running mini (beer keg sized) research nuclear reactors at trade shows. And demonstrating their safety by yanking the control rod out.** **Imagine the safety review for that one. "We are going to run our TRIGA reactor, live at the trade show. And Edward Teller is going to demonstrate how safe it is by trying to cause a nuclear accident. Several times a day."
Considering the time of year, I'm going to guess that was before 'Elf and Safety' had 'gone made'.
Louis Slotin (or rather his shade) says hi.
Interestingly, the Hanford plant during construction, and in its early years, had a very good safety record by the standards of the time. Before becoming a contaminated nightmare.
Slotin was an idiot. The DuPont engineers said he was cowboy, had designed the predecessors to Godiva already and refused to work with him. After Daghlian, poking critical masses with a screwdriver?
The Scientist vs Engineer thing on the Manhattan project has never really been written about.
"By the standards of the time" - Hanford was always a contaminated nightmare. Just that standards changed around them. If you read Ignition! by John Clarke, just how crazy dangerous the chemical industry was back then, becomes clear.
I think the Tory Party should listen to Mr Thompson, and their next manifesto should be based on his ideas. This would feature:
- huge investment in a turbo-charged, world-beating road building programme that would enable everybody to drive in short order from A to B - absolutely no more investment in pointless travel on railways - unfettered house building - anywhere, any time, any place - each new house must have parking space for at least three cars -last trip out was to a huge private investment in out-of-town shopping malls with huge amounts of parkingGod Bless Doncaster leisure park, so that nobody has to ever go into towns or cities.
I could add to the list. I think this would be a winning manifesto (for the opposition).
I'll be perfectly honest this is completely how I lead my life.
That's great - you can sign up to the PT Party!
Also known as the Conservative Party.
What part of that is not a majority of the country do you think?
Unfettered house building would be hideous, and destroy some of the most beautiful places in the country. OK if you are a philistine perhaps.
While we are at it let's burn some books or paintings we don't like and put roads through peoples land and houses and offer them no compensation, just like in China. Membership of the Peoples' Phil (Istine) Thompson Party will provide for you.
As I've said many times before, people should be able to build on their own land not other people's land.
If someone wants to build on someone else's land they'd need to in my system offer them a fair value to buy it off them. That's the free market working in action.
If someone wants to build on their own land, that should be up to them and nobody else. Their land, their choice.
That you feel the need to bring other people's land into the equation shows the hollowness of your thinking.
Hollowness of MY thinking? What genuine experience have you had of life Phil? From what I can tell of your posting (and the time you have to devote to your ramblings) it is very very limited. Once again you prove you are not a Conservative, just a muddle headed right wing nut job. If anyone can build on THEIR land it would be a fucking free for all. Areas of Outstanding Beauty and National Parks would be desecrated and ruined. Families would be unable to bring their children up in peace without the knowledge some property developer is not going to build a chemical plant or rubbish tip on the neighbouring field. Your "thinking" is absent, it is just based on the latest juvenile and simplistic solution to something that bothers Philistine Thompson. In this case it is housing. Phil's solution? Build anywhere! Your "thinking" is a joke.
International cut-through this morning. First a call with some Belgians, then later with a Frenchman and an American. In both cases "so, is Boris going to resign this week then?" followed by much mirth. He really is a Berlusconi-style laughing stock in the rest of the world.
I don’t know if it’s been mentioned but £60-£100 a month phone contracts are very normal for the red wall. People talking of £10 sim only deals are very much out of touch. Christ.
Who are you speaking to that spends that much on their phone? 😲
My contract is with Sky Mobile and I spend £10 a month getting 10GB a data and that's plenty for me. Any I don't use is rolled over to a pot too, so I have hundreds of GB in my family pot that can be accessed on demand if I have a data-heavy month for some reason.
Hello.
Pre plague I used to use of 600GB of mobile data per month.
I don't think that even fits in a calendar month at 4g speeds does it? You would certainly get an OOM speed boost by hardwiring yourself to your data source.
Can’t find the right period but this was my usage just before the plague.
I'm going to break cover and say that that is unusual...
I also have a £10/month 10gb contract, which rolls over so it is 20gb available for holidays and such.
Are you sure you weren't using it as a mirror to make sure your cummerbund was pleated correctly?
I think the Tory Party should listen to Mr Thompson, and their next manifesto should be based on his ideas. This would feature:
- huge investment in a turbo-charged, world-beating road building programme that would enable everybody to drive in short order from A to B - absolutely no more investment in pointless travel on railways - unfettered house building - anywhere, any time, any place - each new house must have parking space for at least three cars -last trip out was to a huge private investment in out-of-town shopping malls with huge amounts of parkingGod Bless Doncaster leisure park, so that nobody has to ever go into towns or cities.
I could add to the list. I think this would be a winning manifesto (for the opposition).
I'll be perfectly honest this is completely how I lead my life.
That's great - you can sign up to the PT Party!
Also known as the Conservative Party.
What part of that is not a majority of the country do you think?
Unfettered house building would be hideous, and destroy some of the most beautiful places in the country. OK if you are a philistine perhaps.
While we are at it let's burn some books or paintings we don't like and put roads through peoples land and houses and offer them no compensation, just like in China. Membership of the Peoples' Phil (Istine) Thompson Party will provide for you.
Tudor times. The Reformation. Especially with regard to the monasteries!
Philip "liked" your post without realising that you were being ironic! I often think Brexit zealots are very similar to the violent obsessives of the Reformation.
I think the Tory Party should listen to Mr Thompson, and their next manifesto should be based on his ideas. This would feature:
- huge investment in a turbo-charged, world-beating road building programme that would enable everybody to drive in short order from A to B - absolutely no more investment in pointless travel on railways - unfettered house building - anywhere, any time, any place - each new house must have parking space for at least three cars -last trip out was to a huge private investment in out-of-town shopping malls with huge amounts of parkingGod Bless Doncaster leisure park, so that nobody has to ever go into towns or cities.
I could add to the list. I think this would be a winning manifesto (for the opposition).
I'll be perfectly honest this is completely how I lead my life.
That's great - you can sign up to the PT Party!
Also known as the Conservative Party.
What part of that is not a majority of the country do you think?
Unfettered house building would be hideous, and destroy some of the most beautiful places in the country. OK if you are a philistine perhaps.
Many of the most beautiful places in the country were built in days of unfettered house-building. There is a street near me with medieval houses - built in the most wonderful style. And there is a council estate which everyone agrees is a total eyesore, and it passed God knows how many committees and approvals and so on.
The era of restricted building has also been the era of hideous architecture. And while the restrictions have to some extent limited that spread, they certainly haven't stopped it.
The point is that if you own your own home and own your own transport then that is the making of a Conservative voter.
I will shortly do both - and I am the most anti-Tory I've been in my life
I don't see the moral substance of Philip's position anyway. His thesis is that tories are nimbies and vv, so he is cheering on a kind of zombie apocalypse.
No its not my thesis. My thesis is that NIMBYs are a noisy minority who should be told politely to **** **** *** **** off and then to **** **** **** **** themselves some more and then to keep on ***** themselves.
Ignore the NIMBYs. Get houses done, get people onto the property ladder. Its what worked for Thatcher, its what worked for Cameron, its what works.
You talk a good game of rage, but I know that deep down you instinctively approve my vision of a sparsely populated rural landscape of Conservative voters enjoying their richly deserved reward of property price growth as they gaze out at the grazing livestock.
It's the inevitable future, like it or loathe it: beautiful, sparsely populated countryside in 95% of the country, everyone else living at high density in high rise cities serviced by public transport.
Needn't be that high rise- consider outer London. Very desirable, dense enough to support a station with frequent trains or trams within walking distance.
But denser than most new-builds or business parks, sure.
Yes, I was exaggerating for dramatic effect. In broad terms it is already happening and has been doing so for decades in parts of Europe. There was a fascinating animated map doing the rounds on Twitter (from the evergreen Simon Kuestenmacher) showing French population density changes over the last century. The provinces visibly empty out while the big metropoles intensify and expand. Really clear pattern.
But that isn't the nightmare dystopia you just described though.
The metropolises can be expanding with nice semi-detached homes with gardens and a couple of cars each with a lovely suburbia - instead of cramming people into ugly high rises with no gardens and no space for personal transport while abandoning the countryside to be wasted and unused.
Was thinking of a story I read about people being upset with "Negro" being on black pencils or crayons when I came up with this. Sorry.. I didn't have a 'u' for colour!
I understand the Sunak abstention will be explained as a pairing, for convenience.
The decisions what to vote on were made by the "Quad" (Johnson, Sunak, Javid, Barclay) not the Cabinet. Sunak was the only one against the decision, so they grabbed the opportunity to let him abstain rather than resign when his Shadow was sick.
If I was a Tory leadership candidate not named Sunak I would be doing everything possible now to point out the lack of support for the hospitality industry due to Sunak.
If I were on the Labour front bench I'd be pointing this out too. But Labour are just as much "fuck business" as the Tories, whatever words Rachel Reeves occasionally comes out with.
They had a golden opportunity yesterday to make this point and they remained silent.
International cut-through this morning. First a call with some Belgians, then later with a Frenchman and an American. In both cases "so, is Boris going to resign this week then?" followed by much mirth. He really is a Berlusconi-style laughing stock in the rest of the world.
We elect the British PM not the global PM.
The American of course comes from the country which elected Trump, the Frenchman from the country with a vain narcissist as President and where Le Pen could get 45% if she makes the runoff. The Belgian from a country where much of the elite was caught up in an under age sex scandal and could not form a government for a year. As you say elected Berlusconi PM.
Countries should focus on their own leaders not other countries
Back to North Shropshire. The national and Regional Labour party's appear to have done a good job in leaving the seat to the Lib Dems. The problem over the last 10 days is the local party branch, a small group who seem determined to help the Conservatives by boosting their image and vote. No problem with that, it's a free country. An example is distributing literature saying the Lib Dems are "fibbers" when they say its between them and the Cons. Apparently some Lib Dem canvassers found a stiffening in Labour voters response after getting this leaflet. This could be critical , if Labour poll 10 -12% the Conservative should hold comfortably. No doubt the Lib Dems will go back to these folk with the quote of a Shadow Minister saying "Labour cannot win, the Lib Dems could". The other factor is how the small villages will vote, there are indications that some have gone over heavy to the Lib Dems whilst in others little if anything has changed again probably pointing to a much reduced Cons majority. In the meantime the Lib Dem Stakeboards appear in more and more fields and gardens. See the Lib Dems are back as the bookies favourite, albeit by the smallest of margins, a sign probably that punters are going for the party with the better price, expect to see the Tories in front there this afternoon?
Is the local labour party getting out anything more than that one leaflet and are they getting 100% coverage? Critical to the LD performance is delivering a rain forest of leaflets and a flood of stakeboards to quash the idea that they are not the challengers. It should be as simple as that*.
*Note: I am from the by election era where online campaigning wasn't an issue. Is this done in a by election and is it effective?
I think the Tory Party should listen to Mr Thompson, and their next manifesto should be based on his ideas. This would feature:
- huge investment in a turbo-charged, world-beating road building programme that would enable everybody to drive in short order from A to B - absolutely no more investment in pointless travel on railways - unfettered house building - anywhere, any time, any place - each new house must have parking space for at least three cars -last trip out was to a huge private investment in out-of-town shopping malls with huge amounts of parkingGod Bless Doncaster leisure park, so that nobody has to ever go into towns or cities.
I could add to the list. I think this would be a winning manifesto (for the opposition).
I'll be perfectly honest this is completely how I lead my life.
That's great - you can sign up to the PT Party!
Also known as the Conservative Party.
What part of that is not a majority of the country do you think?
Unfettered house building would be hideous, and destroy some of the most beautiful places in the country. OK if you are a philistine perhaps.
Many of the most beautiful places in the country were built in days of unfettered house-building. There is a street near me with medieval houses - built in the most wonderful style. And there is a council estate which everyone agrees is a total eyesore, and it passed God knows how many committees and approvals and so on.
The era of restricted building has also been the era of hideous architecture. And while the restrictions have to some extent limited that spread, they certainly haven't stopped it.
In medieval times the population of UK was just a few million, and it was a feudal system where the people that built houses were the squires. Now it is 60 million. Times have changed a little since then.
I think the Tory Party should listen to Mr Thompson, and their next manifesto should be based on his ideas. This would feature:
- huge investment in a turbo-charged, world-beating road building programme that would enable everybody to drive in short order from A to B - absolutely no more investment in pointless travel on railways - unfettered house building - anywhere, any time, any place - each new house must have parking space for at least three cars -last trip out was to a huge private investment in out-of-town shopping malls with huge amounts of parkingGod Bless Doncaster leisure park, so that nobody has to ever go into towns or cities.
I could add to the list. I think this would be a winning manifesto (for the opposition).
I'll be perfectly honest this is completely how I lead my life.
That's great - you can sign up to the PT Party!
Also known as the Conservative Party.
What part of that is not a majority of the country do you think?
Unfettered house building would be hideous, and destroy some of the most beautiful places in the country. OK if you are a philistine perhaps.
Many of the most beautiful places in the country were built in days of unfettered house-building. There is a street near me with medieval houses - built in the most wonderful style. And there is a council estate which everyone agrees is a total eyesore, and it passed God knows how many committees and approvals and so on.
The era of restricted building has also been the era of hideous architecture. And while the restrictions have to some extent limited that spread, they certainly haven't stopped it.
I think we are due for a hymn of praise to the glories of Brutalist architecture, any minute now.
Modern planners/builder - more shit than Prince Charles at design.
I think the Tory Party should listen to Mr Thompson, and their next manifesto should be based on his ideas. This would feature:
- huge investment in a turbo-charged, world-beating road building programme that would enable everybody to drive in short order from A to B - absolutely no more investment in pointless travel on railways - unfettered house building - anywhere, any time, any place - each new house must have parking space for at least three cars -last trip out was to a huge private investment in out-of-town shopping malls with huge amounts of parkingGod Bless Doncaster leisure park, so that nobody has to ever go into towns or cities.
I could add to the list. I think this would be a winning manifesto (for the opposition).
I'll be perfectly honest this is completely how I lead my life.
That's great - you can sign up to the PT Party!
Also known as the Conservative Party.
What part of that is not a majority of the country do you think?
Unfettered house building would be hideous, and destroy some of the most beautiful places in the country. OK if you are a philistine perhaps.
While we are at it let's burn some books or paintings we don't like and put roads through peoples land and houses and offer them no compensation, just like in China. Membership of the Peoples' Phil (Istine) Thompson Party will provide for you.
Tudor times. The Reformation. Especially with regard to the monasteries!
Philip "liked" your post without realising that you were being ironic! I often think Brexit zealots are very similar to the violent obsessives of the Reformation.
What's ironic about it? The Tudor times and the dissolution of the monasteries was one of the best times for the way the laws were regarding planning. Far better than today.
Society had great amounts of secular building that improved the country in the Tudor times, setting Britain up for great advances in society and development for centuries to come.
I'd far rather planning laws were more comparable to what they were in Tudor times, absolutely. No irony intended.
Back to North Shropshire. The national and Regional Labour party's appear to have done a good job in leaving the seat to the Lib Dems. The problem over the last 10 days is the local party branch, a small group who seem determined to help the Conservatives by boosting their image and vote. No problem with that, it's a free country. An example is distributing literature saying the Lib Dems are "fibbers" when they say its between them and the Cons. Apparently some Lib Dem canvassers found a stiffening in Labour voters response after getting this leaflet. This could be critical , if Labour poll 10 -12% the Conservative should hold comfortably. No doubt the Lib Dems will go back to these folk with the quote of a Shadow Minister saying "Labour cannot win, the Lib Dems could". The other factor is how the small villages will vote, there are indications that some have gone over heavy to the Lib Dems whilst in others little if anything has changed again probably pointing to a much reduced Cons majority. In the meantime the Lib Dem Stakeboards appear in more and more fields and gardens. See the Lib Dems are back as the bookies favourite, albeit by the smallest of margins, a sign probably that punters are going for the party with the better price, expect to see the Tories in front there this afternoon?
I am going to try and do an hour's phoning in North Shropshire this evening
Oh dear. Embarrassing. Still no release for the red list quaranteeners:
"travellers already impounded in hotel quarantine have not yet been formally released.
Some have walked out this morning, saying remaining feels like “a pointless exercise”.
A security guard at one hotel told The Independent: “I’ve had nine walk out on me so far. The police aren’t interested.”"
From The Independent this morning.
These are the guys that landed before 0400 yesterday morning right? Damn right they should walk out. Good luck to them. What an absolutely stupid rule.
And remember that the red rules impounded vaccinated people as well as unvaccinated. So we have people, some vaccinated, held in hotel prisons to see out their ten days to comply with a law which no longer applies. All to allegedly protect us from Omicron when we are riddled with it anyway.
On topic, Boris is sharp and shameless and opportunistic and believes in nothing. His current version of himself is only just now running into the ground, I don't think punters (or his fellow MPs) would be sensible to count him out until they've seen what he comes up with next.
Back to North Shropshire. The national and Regional Labour party's appear to have done a good job in leaving the seat to the Lib Dems. The problem over the last 10 days is the local party branch, a small group who seem determined to help the Conservatives by boosting their image and vote. No problem with that, it's a free country. An example is distributing literature saying the Lib Dems are "fibbers" when they say its between them and the Cons. Apparently some Lib Dem canvassers found a stiffening in Labour voters response after getting this leaflet. This could be critical , if Labour poll 10 -12% the Conservative should hold comfortably. No doubt the Lib Dems will go back to these folk with the quote of a Shadow Minister saying "Labour cannot win, the Lib Dems could". The other factor is how the small villages will vote, there are indications that some have gone over heavy to the Lib Dems whilst in others little if anything has changed again probably pointing to a much reduced Cons majority. In the meantime the Lib Dem Stakeboards appear in more and more fields and gardens. See the Lib Dems are back as the bookies favourite, albeit by the smallest of margins, a sign probably that punters are going for the party with the better price, expect to see the Tories in front there this afternoon?
I am going to try and do an hour's phoning in North Shropshire this evening
Adds a few more Lib Dem votes to the list (I'm joking, well done for finding the time)
What's interesting is that public transport, where it exists in the Red Wall, is primarily buses and not trains. The way to commute in the red wall as shown by that chart is overwhelmingly cars, then walking, then buses.
Trains barely figure at all. Indeed on that chart fewer people use trains in the Red Wall than use bicycles in other types of seat.
Trains are a non-northern obsession. Fuel prices and roads are what matters here.
You've never been to Manchester or Leeds then?
How are Manchester or Leeds "Red Wall"? They're cities, they're the exception they're not the true north.
In the True North they don't have EPL football teams
Given how Manchester is closer to Guernsey than to where I live, I'm calling Manchester the True South.
If you define North and South an a whole-Britain basis then we go back to the days of talking about North Britain instead of Scotland. Often when people talk about "the North" they are actually talking about "the North of England".
And then there's the question as to whether to use geographical distances as a demarcation, or population numbers.
And England as South Britain - but WAles is also there.
Was thinking of a story I read about people being upset with "Negro" being on black pencils or crayons when I came up with this. Sorry.. I didn't have a 'u' for colour!
I remember that, the pencils were written in French not English
On topic, Boris is sharp and shameless and opportunistic and believes in nothing. His current version of himself is only just now running into the ground, I don't think punters (or his fellow MPs) would be sensible to count him out until they've seen what he comes up with next.
On Twitter Tom Kerridge is complaining about 654 cancelled guests over the past 6 days.
We were out last night and were literally the only table except for 3 guests of the hotel in their restaurant.
Many in hospitality will not survive another winter of all this without more Treasury help, of which no sign.
Hospitality has been hung out to dry. The third largest sector in the country - abandoned. Just like that. Who is behind this? Sunak. And the Tories think he will be their saviour?
I doubt if he'll be seen smiling in a pub or restaurant serving non-existent customers any time soon.
I am glad that Daughter will be leaving her place on 24th March when her lease is up. I am only sorry that her last season will have been marred by the government's incompetence and indifference. She works hard and honestly. Those in charge do not. They can whistle for our votes.
Trudy Harrison MP will be hearing from me later. If she can bestir herself for Afghan vets and pets she can pull her fingers out of her arse for businesses and people in her constituency.
Sorry but she has way more important things to do for Boris than support her constituents.
What's interesting is that public transport, where it exists in the Red Wall, is primarily buses and not trains. The way to commute in the red wall as shown by that chart is overwhelmingly cars, then walking, then buses.
Trains barely figure at all. Indeed on that chart fewer people use trains in the Red Wall than use bicycles in other types of seat.
Trains are a non-northern obsession. Fuel prices and roads are what matters here.
You've never been to Manchester or Leeds then?
How are Manchester or Leeds "Red Wall"? They're cities, they're the exception they're not the true north.
In the True North they don't have EPL football teams
Given how Manchester is closer to Guernsey than to where I live, I'm calling Manchester the True South.
If you define North and South an a whole-Britain basis then we go back to the days of talking about North Britain instead of Scotland. Often when people talk about "the North" they are actually talking about "the North of England".
And then there's the question as to whether to use geographical distances as a demarcation, or population numbers.
And England as South Britain - but WAles is also there.
West Britons (along with the Cornish).
Hebrideans the true West Britons shirly?
Ah, well, that depends. Are they Britons at all if they're not on the island of Britain?
I don’t know if it’s been mentioned but £60-£100 a month phone contracts are very normal for the red wall. People talking of £10 sim only deals are very much out of touch. Christ.
Who are you speaking to that spends that much on their phone? 😲
My contract is with Sky Mobile and I spend £10 a month getting 10GB a data and that's plenty for me. Any I don't use is rolled over to a pot too, so I have hundreds of GB in my family pot that can be accessed on demand if I have a data-heavy month for some reason.
Hello.
Pre plague I used to use of 600GB of mobile data per month.
3 are offering unlimited minutes, unlimited texts, unlimited data, SIM only, on a 1 month rolling contract for £28 a month. £20 for a yearly contract....
But Three’s coverage is shit.
Its not shit, but its not EE. I'm on a 3 Business contract. £10+VAT a month for unlimited everything. And a pretty solid 60Mbps signal sat here in my granite-walled office.
Was thinking of a story I read about people being upset with "Negro" being on black pencils or crayons when I came up with this. Sorry.. I didn't have a 'u' for colour!
I remember that, the pencils were written in French not English
“Press conference this afternoon… Unclear yet whether to announce new (but not legally binding) guidance on social contact…”
The next step after that of course is a week or so later, an announcement that it really must for the good of the nation (chuckle) be made legally binding. And the shower that stands for most Conservative MPs will let him get away with it.
@RochdalePioneers Any ideas where Duguid was today? Doesn't seem to have voted. Do you know whether he was paired, abstaining, hiding in a freezer?
Apparently all the Scottish Tories abstained.
Very interesting. Douglas Ross - like his predecessor Ruth Davidson - looks down his nose at The Clown. By abstaining, the Scottish Tory group have achieved 4 goals:
a) looking principled, by not voting on England-only legislation (following the SNP lead)
b) not backing measures in England which they (supposedly) oppose in Scotland
c) they avoid taking sides in the incipient Tory civil war
d) most importantly, thumping The Clown in the goolies. He has made life hell for Scottish Tories and Unionists, and they relish the chance to damage him, hopefully terminally
NEW: The UK government is delaying post-Brexit controls due January 1 on goods entering Great Britain from Ireland, for as long as the discussions on the Northern Ireland protocol continue.
“Press conference this afternoon… Unclear yet whether to announce new (but not legally binding) guidance on social contact…”
The next step after that of course is a week or so later, an announcement that it really must for the good of the nation (chuckle) be made legally binding. And the shower that stands for most Conservative MPs will let him get away with it.
I expect it will just be a reiteration to get your booster.
After last night's vote he will not get another full lockdown past Tory MPs. 1/3 rebelled on vaxports, the majority would rebel against another lockdown and he would lose a VONC
NEW: The UK government is delaying post-Brexit controls due January 1 on goods entering Great Britain from Ireland, for as long as the discussions on the Northern Ireland protocol continue.
I wish they would delay implementing the controls on imports in general. We don't have the Border Control Posts or the staff or the computer system or places to park the trucks to do this.
NEW: The UK government is delaying post-Brexit controls due January 1 on goods entering Great Britain from Ireland, for as long as the discussions on the Northern Ireland protocol continue.
I wish they would delay implementing the controls on imports in general. We don't have the Border Control Posts or the staff or the computer system or places to park the trucks to do this.
I drove past the new in-land truck area in Warrington the other day. It didn't seem to be very busy.
Do you have any idea what they're doing with those places because it didn't seem to have trucks coming and going when I was going past it. Not sure if its operational or not yet?
On Twitter Tom Kerridge is complaining about 654 cancelled guests over the past 6 days.
We were out last night and were literally the only table except for 3 guests of the hotel in their restaurant.
Many in hospitality will not survive another winter of all this without more Treasury help, of which no sign.
Hospitality has been hung out to dry. The third largest sector in the country - abandoned. Just like that. Who is behind this? Sunak. And the Tories think he will be their saviour?
I doubt if he'll be seen smiling in a pub or restaurant serving non-existent customers any time soon.
I am glad that Daughter will be leaving her place on 24th March when her lease is up. I am only sorry that her last season will have been marred by the government's incompetence and indifference. She works hard and honestly. Those in charge do not. They can whistle for our votes.
Trudy Harrison MP will be hearing from me later. If she can bestir herself for Afghan vets and pets she can pull her fingers out of her arse for businesses and people in her constituency.
Sorry but she has way more important things to do for Boris than support her constituents.
I'd find that bleakly funny and appropriately cynical.
Only this is my own flesh and blood I'm talking about here. And it breaks my heart to see how shabbily she and many in her position and their employees are being treated. By people not fit to lick their boots, frankly.
The only good news is that Eldest Son got his booster yesterday: after 2 hours queuing at the Jewish Vegetarian Society in Golders Green.
“Press conference this afternoon… Unclear yet whether to announce new (but not legally binding) guidance on social contact…”
The next step after that of course is a week or so later, an announcement that it really must for the good of the nation (chuckle) be made legally binding. And the shower that stands for most Conservative MPs will let him get away with it.
The next step will be to declare the booster campaign a resounding success that saved the nation from the scourge of Omicron, averting the threat of lockdown.
And then castigate Sadiq Khan for cancelling London's New Year's Eve fireworks.
What's interesting is that public transport, where it exists in the Red Wall, is primarily buses and not trains. The way to commute in the red wall as shown by that chart is overwhelmingly cars, then walking, then buses.
Trains barely figure at all. Indeed on that chart fewer people use trains in the Red Wall than use bicycles in other types of seat.
Trains are a non-northern obsession. Fuel prices and roads are what matters here.
You've never been to Manchester or Leeds then?
How are Manchester or Leeds "Red Wall"? They're cities, they're the exception they're not the true north.
In the True North they don't have EPL football teams
Given how Manchester is closer to Guernsey than to where I live, I'm calling Manchester the True South.
If you define North and South an a whole-Britain basis then we go back to the days of talking about North Britain instead of Scotland. Often when people talk about "the North" they are actually talking about "the North of England".
And then there's the question as to whether to use geographical distances as a demarcation, or population numbers.
And England as South Britain - but WAles is also there.
West Britons (along with the Cornish).
Hebrideans the true West Britons shirly?
Ah, well, that depends. Are they Britons at all if they're not on the island of Britain?
Neil Oliver would fight you to the death over that one.
On Twitter Tom Kerridge is complaining about 654 cancelled guests over the past 6 days.
We were out last night and were literally the only table except for 3 guests of the hotel in their restaurant.
Many in hospitality will not survive another winter of all this without more Treasury help, of which no sign.
Hospitality has been hung out to dry. The third largest sector in the country - abandoned. Just like that. Who is behind this? Sunak. And the Tories think he will be their saviour?
I doubt if he'll be seen smiling in a pub or restaurant serving non-existent customers any time soon.
I am glad that Daughter will be leaving her place on 24th March when her lease is up. I am only sorry that her last season will have been marred by the government's incompetence and indifference. She works hard and honestly. Those in charge do not. They can whistle for our votes.
Trudy Harrison MP will be hearing from me later. If she can bestir herself for Afghan vets and pets she can pull her fingers out of her arse for businesses and people in her constituency.
Sorry but she has way more important things to do for Boris than support her constituents.
I'd find that bleakly funny and appropriately cynical.
Only this is my own flesh and blood I'm talking about here. And it breaks my heart to see how shabbily she and many in her position and their employees are being treated. By people not fit to lick their boots, frankly.
The only good news is that Eldest Son got his booster yesterday: after 2 hours queuing at the Jewish Vegetarian Society in Golders Green.
Last night when on an app I couldn't post on, I saw soneone claiming deaths are doubling every week in South Africa. Just to be clear, this is a coomplete fictiion.
Deaths reported now are lower than the 2nd half of November, and yesterday's number was down week on week, and the average is running at 2-4% of delta peak deaths.
“Press conference this afternoon… Unclear yet whether to announce new (but not legally binding) guidance on social contact…”
The next step after that of course is a week or so later, an announcement that it really must for the good of the nation (chuckle) be made legally binding. And the shower that stands for most Conservative MPs will let him get away with it.
Must be another Downing Street party photo about to hit the press.
Last night when on an app I couldn't post on, I saw soneone claiming deaths are doubling every week in South Africa. Just to be clear, this is a coomplete fictiion.
Deaths reported now are lower than the 2nd half of November, and yesterday's number was down week on week, and the average is running at 2-4% of delta peak deaths.
Any PBers wondering how and why Omicron is spreading so quickly may care to contemplate my experience on returning from South Africa on 7th December.
SA was of course on the red list by that time so like all other passengers on my flight (via Addis Ababa) I was heavily loaded with the appropriate paperwork and certificates of testing. On arrival at Heathrow we all simply joined the queues at Passport Control. It was 6am but the place was packed. I would estimate about 5,000 people were patiently lining up in snake queues. It took me about an hour to reach the front, where I was told that red-list passengers had to form a separate queue. No, I hadn't made a mistake. There had been no warning or notice of this, as the other red-list passengers around me could verify.
So we joined another long queue, in the same crowded hall and waited. It didn't move for an hour because disabilty passengers had to be seen first. There was only one immigration officer on duty at the red queue and no sooner did he process one passenger than another disability priority case took his/her/their place(s). Eventually the non-disability passengers started to complain and two more officers arrived and our queue began to move forward slowly.
It took me three hours to clear immigration. I then had another three hour wait in a disused trolley park inside the airport along with other red-list passengers while we waited for coaches to take us to the Quarantine Hotel. Meanwhile other normal non-red-list passengers wandered past and there was in fact nothing to stop us mingling with them. When the coach eventually became available, we were led through the airport rather like schoolchildren to the coach park. Other passengers were of course brushing closely past us all the way.
In total it took six hours from landing to checking in at the Quarantine Hotel, which is in fact a short walk from the Terminal.
It would be hard to devise a system better calculated to spread the Omicron virus, assuming that's what you wanted to do.
Obviously the cautious prison-like regime that operated subsequently in the Hotel was rendered nonsensical by the fiasco at passport control. No wonder the Government has given up on it.
I expecting to be released within the next hour or so, pending clearance. If I don't get it, I'm walking anyway.
Testing positive from today will mean that you miss Christmas due to isolation. I wonder if we are to see a drop in numbers as people take lateral flows which come back positive but then don't do a PCR so that they can still do Christmas by thinking they might be ok towards the back end of the 10 days?
Any PBers wondering how and why Omicron is spreading so quickly may care to contemplate my experience on returning from South Africa on 7th December.
SA was of course on the red list by that time so like all other passengers on my flight (via Addis Ababa) I was heavily loaded with the appropriate paperwork and certificates of testing. On arrival at Heathrow we all simply joined the queues at Passport Control. It was 6am but the place was packed. I would estimate about 5,000 people were patiently lining up in snake queues. It took me about an hour to reach the front, where I was told that red-list passengers had to form a separate queue. No, I hadn't made a mistake. There had been no warning or notice of this, as the other red-list passengers around me could verify.
So we joined another long queue, in the same crowded hall and waited. It didn't move for an hour because disabilty passengers had to be seen first. There was only one immigration officer on duty at the red queue and no sooner did he process one passenger than another disability priority case took his/her/their place(s). Eventually the non-disability passengers started to complain and two more officers arrived and our queue began to move forward slowly.
It took me three hours to clear immigration. I then had another three hour wait in a disused trolley park inside the airport along with other red-list passengers while we waited for coaches to take us to the Quarantine Hotel. Meanwhile other normal non-red-list passengers wandered past and there was in fact nothing to stop us mingling with them. When the coach eventually became available, we were led through the airport rather like schoolchildren to the coach park. Other passengers were of course brushing closely past us all the way.
In total it took six hours from landing to checking in at the Quarantine Hotel, which is in fact a short walk from the Terminal.
It would be hard to devise a system better calculated to spread the Omicron virus, assuming that's what you wanted to do.
Obviously the cautious prison-like regime that operated subsequently in the Hotel was rendered nonsensical by the fiasco at passport control. No wonder the Government has given up on it.
I expecting to be released within the next hour or so, pending clearance. If I don't get it, I'm walking anyway.
On Twitter Tom Kerridge is complaining about 654 cancelled guests over the past 6 days.
We were out last night and were literally the only table except for 3 guests of the hotel in their restaurant.
Many in hospitality will not survive another winter of all this without more Treasury help, of which no sign.
Hospitality has been hung out to dry. The third largest sector in the country - abandoned. Just like that. Who is behind this? Sunak. And the Tories think he will be their saviour?
I doubt if he'll be seen smiling in a pub or restaurant serving non-existent customers any time soon.
I am glad that Daughter will be leaving her place on 24th March when her lease is up. I am only sorry that her last season will have been marred by the government's incompetence and indifference. She works hard and honestly. Those in charge do not. They can whistle for our votes.
Trudy Harrison MP will be hearing from me later. If she can bestir herself for Afghan vets and pets she can pull her fingers out of her arse for businesses and people in her constituency.
Sorry but she has way more important things to do for Boris than support her constituents.
I'd find that bleakly funny and appropriately cynical.
Only this is my own flesh and blood I'm talking about here. And it breaks my heart to see how shabbily she and many in her position and their employees are being treated. By people not fit to lick their boots, frankly.
The only good news is that Eldest Son got his booster yesterday: after 2 hours queuing at the Jewish Vegetarian Society in Golders Green.
A vaccine that DuraAce might consider ?
One of our Christmas guests is a Jewish vegetarian. I hope and pray that Brussels sprouts are Kosher or we'll never get rid of the damned things. It will be a case of 'one out, all out'.
I think the Tory Party should listen to Mr Thompson, and their next manifesto should be based on his ideas. This would feature:
- huge investment in a turbo-charged, world-beating road building programme that would enable everybody to drive in short order from A to B - absolutely no more investment in pointless travel on railways - unfettered house building - anywhere, any time, any place - each new house must have parking space for at least three cars -last trip out was to a huge private investment in out-of-town shopping malls with huge amounts of parkingGod Bless Doncaster leisure park, so that nobody has to ever go into towns or cities.
I could add to the list. I think this would be a winning manifesto (for the opposition).
I'll be perfectly honest this is completely how I lead my life.
That's great - you can sign up to the PT Party!
Also known as the Conservative Party.
What part of that is not a majority of the country do you think?
Unfettered house building would be hideous, and destroy some of the most beautiful places in the country. OK if you are a philistine perhaps.
Many of the most beautiful places in the country were built in days of unfettered house-building. There is a street near me with medieval houses - built in the most wonderful style. And there is a council estate which everyone agrees is a total eyesore, and it passed God knows how many committees and approvals and so on.
The era of restricted building has also been the era of hideous architecture. And while the restrictions have to some extent limited that spread, they certainly haven't stopped it.
In medieval times the population of UK was just a few million, and it was a feudal system where the people that built houses were the squires. Now it is 60 million. Times have changed a little since then.
What has changed is that houses used to be built by people who owned and lived in them and so cared what they look like beacuse they saw them every day.
Now they are built by companies and public sector bodies who don't give a monkey's what they look like as long as they are cheap.
The obvious solution is to encourage self-build much more, like in most Continental countries. Housebuilding is one of the things our European neighbours do much better than we do.
Someone I once knew stood watches at NORAD. She said they always had CNN (or equivalent) on, because very often they got warnings of world events happening first there. The intelligence agencies had the detail, but that was latter.
Someone I once knew stood watches at NORAD. She said they always had CNN (or equivalent) on, because very often they got warnings of world events happening first there. The intelligence agencies had the detail, but that was latter.
I have seen NOCs with Sky News on with subtitles for the same reason
Last night when on an app I couldn't post on, I saw soneone claiming deaths are doubling every week in South Africa. Just to be clear, this is a coomplete fictiion.
Deaths reported now are lower than the 2nd half of November, and yesterday's number was down week on week, and the average is running at 2-4% of delta peak deaths.
SAGE member predicting, maybe up to 2000 daily hospital admissions.
4000 a day didn't end civilisation last year.
Yeah, but it wasn't f**king good was it....
Neither was the lockdown.
I just hope there aren't too many hospital departmental Christmas parties ending up with the whole department getting the lurgy just in time for the big rush.
Someone I once knew stood watches at NORAD. She said they always had CNN (or equivalent) on, because very often they got warnings of world events happening first there. The intelligence agencies had the detail, but that was latter.
From memory in The West Wing every room had a TV with typically CNN/CSPAN or similar on in the background.
It does seem to make sense to have something like that on.
There were a LOT of Labour abstentions in last night's vote, including some high-flying frontbenchers such as Lammy and PB favourites Rachel, Bridget and Rosena.
I know Rachel is poorly, but what reason do the rest have?
Testing positive from today will mean that you miss Christmas due to isolation. I wonder if we are to see a drop in numbers as people take lateral flows which come back positive but then don't do a PCR so that they can still do Christmas by thinking they might be ok towards the back end of the 10 days?
I lft tested yesterday for Covid before heading out to my social (No symptons). -ve, probably won't bother unless I feel under the weather between now and crimbo.
I think the Tory Party should listen to Mr Thompson, and their next manifesto should be based on his ideas. This would feature:
- huge investment in a turbo-charged, world-beating road building programme that would enable everybody to drive in short order from A to B - absolutely no more investment in pointless travel on railways - unfettered house building - anywhere, any time, any place - each new house must have parking space for at least three cars -last trip out was to a huge private investment in out-of-town shopping malls with huge amounts of parkingGod Bless Doncaster leisure park, so that nobody has to ever go into towns or cities.
I could add to the list. I think this would be a winning manifesto (for the opposition).
I'll be perfectly honest this is completely how I lead my life.
That's great - you can sign up to the PT Party!
Also known as the Conservative Party.
What part of that is not a majority of the country do you think?
Unfettered house building would be hideous, and destroy some of the most beautiful places in the country. OK if you are a philistine perhaps.
While we are at it let's burn some books or paintings we don't like and put roads through peoples land and houses and offer them no compensation, just like in China. Membership of the Peoples' Phil (Istine) Thompson Party will provide for you.
Tudor times. The Reformation. Especially with regard to the monasteries!
Philip "liked" your post without realising that you were being ironic! I often think Brexit zealots are very similar to the violent obsessives of the Reformation.
Yes, the hardcore Puritans/Reformers were looking back to an imagined time before the Church became institutionalised. There was, undoubtedly, a case for reform, but in their zeal they destroyed 90% of the art of England and Wales, much of which had been explanations of the Bible to our ancestors, the then illiterate peasantry. (Charles excepted, of course!)
There were a LOT of Labour abstentions in last night's vote, including some high-flying frontbenchers such as Lammy and PB favourites Rachel, Bridget and Rosena.
I know Rachel is poorly, but what reason do the rest have?
Any PBers wondering how and why Omicron is spreading so quickly may care to contemplate my experience on returning from South Africa on 7th December.
SA was of course on the red list by that time so like all other passengers on my flight (via Addis Ababa) I was heavily loaded with the appropriate paperwork and certificates of testing. On arrival at Heathrow we all simply joined the queues at Passport Control. It was 6am but the place was packed. I would estimate about 5,000 people were patiently lining up in snake queues. It took me about an hour to reach the front, where I was told that red-list passengers had to form a separate queue. No, I hadn't made a mistake. There had been no warning or notice of this, as the other red-list passengers around me could verify.
So we joined another long queue, in the same crowded hall and waited. It didn't move for an hour because disabilty passengers had to be seen first. There was only one immigration officer on duty at the red queue and no sooner did he process one passenger than another disability priority case took his/her/their place(s). Eventually the non-disability passengers started to complain and two more officers arrived and our queue began to move forward slowly.
It took me three hours to clear immigration. I then had another three hour wait in a disused trolley park inside the airport along with other red-list passengers while we waited for coaches to take us to the Quarantine Hotel. Meanwhile other normal non-red-list passengers wandered past and there was in fact nothing to stop us mingling with them. When the coach eventually became available, we were led through the airport rather like schoolchildren to the coach park. Other passengers were of course brushing closely past us all the way.
In total it took six hours from landing to checking in at the Quarantine Hotel, which is in fact a short walk from the Terminal.
It would be hard to devise a system better calculated to spread the Omicron virus, assuming that's what you wanted to do.
Obviously the cautious prison-like regime that operated subsequently in the Hotel was rendered nonsensical by the fiasco at passport control. No wonder the Government has given up on it.
I expecting to be released within the next hour or so, pending clearance. If I don't get it, I'm walking anyway.
Gosh. Thanks for that first-hand insight.
The travel restrictions are not about restricting the spread of the Omicron virus (or the iterations of Covid before). They are, and have always been, about the government creating the impression with the lumpen that they are restricting the spread of the Omicron virus. Not the same thing.
Consider this, if you want a short day trip abroad - e.g. France - you have to take a test prior to departure to France as per French rules - and you can use this very same test result for your return to the UK.
This addiction to vindictive bureaucracy ought to be seen as extraordinarily unconservative.
The whole Government is extraordinarily unconservative.
And vindictive.
It's as if spitefulness has become national policy.
The worst thing about some of these recent moves is they don't even seem to be calculated for political gain, even with the base. They are being done because ministers actually want to make certain people's lives more difficult, even when nobody's looking.
The Home Office always had a bit of that in its DNA but it seems to be multiplying at an alarming rate recently.
Someone I once knew stood watches at NORAD. She said they always had CNN (or equivalent) on, because very often they got warnings of world events happening first there. The intelligence agencies had the detail, but that was latter.
I have seen NOCs with Sky News on with subtitles for the same reason
But a dedicated Bridgen cam is extreme...
During the quiet times, at NORAD they used to play big American Football games on The Big Screen. Not when visitors or VIPs were around.
Sadly, the NoFun people removed the Big Red button they used to get visitors to press.
...Any MP who judges that this is wrong, and a sufficiently grave mistake to demand they vote against it, is saying that they haven’t confidence in the government to select its advisers, listen to and understand their advice and act upon it. They are trying to prevent the government from taking action that ministers believe is essential to the prevention of mass deaths. They are saying that they know better what ought to be done.
This is a legitimate position but it is not compatible with believing that the government should remain in office...
Makes sense to me. I don't see how Boris stays in office beyond next year.
...Any MP who judges that this is wrong, and a sufficiently grave mistake to demand they vote against it, is saying that they haven’t confidence in the government to select its advisers, listen to and understand their advice and act upon it. They are trying to prevent the government from taking action that ministers believe is essential to the prevention of mass deaths. They are saying that they know better what ought to be done.
This is a legitimate position but it is not compatible with believing that the government should remain in office...
Makes sense to me. I don't see how Boris stays in office beyond next year.
Peter Bonehead was on this morning. He says people voting against this don't want rid of BoZo.
And if you think this is a matter of a few cancellations think again - U.K. Hospitality estimates that turnover in December will be down by 40%. Theatres too and other entertainment venues are affected too. This month is one where many such venues make the money that helps them live the rest of the year.
And yet for all the sound and fury at Westminster I can't think of one MP who has bothered to raise this issue.
This addiction to vindictive bureaucracy ought to be seen as extraordinarily unconservative.
The whole Government is extraordinarily unconservative.
And vindictive.
It's as if spitefulness has become national policy.
The worst thing about some of these recent moves is they don't even seem to be calculated for political gain, even with the base. They are being done because ministers actually want to make certain people's lives more difficult, even when nobody's looking.
The Home Office always had a bit of that in its DNA but it seems to be multiplying at an alarming rate recently.
Priti seems to be failing in her job of saying no to all the stupidity that ends up on her desk.
What is it about the Home Office? There's a whole line of illiberal types who have had the job.
Lets go the whole hog and get rid of citizenship and residency. Instead we could let the local Tory party association decide if we are worthy enough to live here for another year, they could do it each Xmas.
So the idea that because SA had huge infection number from Delta meant that Omicron caused less hospitlisations is incorrrect?
No. It's a measure of neutralization - so it shows that having previously caught Delta doesn't stop you from catching Omicron, but it says nothing about how the other parts of the immune system will work to protect you from hospitalization, having been primed by Delta.
We really don't care about infection. Hospitalization is key.
| NEW: Government scientists expect Britain will have between 300,000 and 400,000 new Omicron infections today
SGTF (Suspected Omicron) is probably around 28% today (Extrapolating forward from the daily update). Moving case average ~ 48,500. That's around 13.8k Omicron suspected cases today. Allowing for some uplift, maybe 16k. How do they get to 300, 400k ?!
Edit: I mean the dashboard, daily briefings - the actual written stuff is very very good and rigourous but the crap they come out with in the Commons and to the media...
What's interesting is that public transport, where it exists in the Red Wall, is primarily buses and not trains. The way to commute in the red wall as shown by that chart is overwhelmingly cars, then walking, then buses.
Trains barely figure at all. Indeed on that chart fewer people use trains in the Red Wall than use bicycles in other types of seat.
Trains are a non-northern obsession. Fuel prices and roads are what matters here.
You've never been to Manchester or Leeds then?
How are Manchester or Leeds "Red Wall"? They're cities, they're the exception they're not the true north.
In the True North they don't have EPL football teams
Given how Manchester is closer to Guernsey than to where I live, I'm calling Manchester the True South.
If you define North and South an a whole-Britain basis then we go back to the days of talking about North Britain instead of Scotland. Often when people talk about "the North" they are actually talking about "the North of England".
And then there's the question as to whether to use geographical distances as a demarcation, or population numbers.
And England as South Britain - but WAles is also there.
West Britons (along with the Cornish).
Hebrideans the true West Britons shirly?
Ah, well, that depends. Are they Britons at all if they're not on the island of Britain?
This addiction to vindictive bureaucracy ought to be seen as extraordinarily unconservative.
The whole Government is extraordinarily unconservative.
And vindictive.
It's as if spitefulness has become national policy.
The worst thing about some of these recent moves is they don't even seem to be calculated for political gain, even with the base. They are being done because ministers actually want to make certain people's lives more difficult, even when nobody's looking.
The Home Office always had a bit of that in its DNA but it seems to be multiplying at an alarming rate recently.
Priti seems to be failing in her job of saying no to all the stupidity that ends up on her desk.
What is it about the Home Office? There's a whole line of illiberal types who have had the job.
Essentially, the system is trying to apply the full weight of the immigration comedy to all comers. Think of the empires that can be built to process all that lovely paperwork.....
It's been interesting in my team hearing the Indians and Chinese explaining the systems to the Europeans....
Lets go the whole hog and get rid of citizenship and residency. Instead we could let the local Tory party association decide if we are worthy enough to live here for another year, they could do it each Xmas.
No, no: before Christmas, so that they can send the deportation orders with immediate effect out on 23 December.
On Twitter Tom Kerridge is complaining about 654 cancelled guests over the past 6 days.
We were out last night and were literally the only table except for 3 guests of the hotel in their restaurant.
Many in hospitality will not survive another winter of all this without more Treasury help, of which no sign.
Hospitality has been hung out to dry. The third largest sector in the country - abandoned. Just like that. Who is behind this? Sunak. And the Tories think he will be their saviour?
I doubt if he'll be seen smiling in a pub or restaurant serving non-existent customers any time soon.
I am glad that Daughter will be leaving her place on 24th March when her lease is up. I am only sorry that her last season will have been marred by the government's incompetence and indifference. She works hard and honestly. Those in charge do not. They can whistle for our votes.
Trudy Harrison MP will be hearing from me later. If she can bestir herself for Afghan vets and pets she can pull her fingers out of her arse for businesses and people in her constituency.
Sorry but she has way more important things to do for Boris than support her constituents.
I'd find that bleakly funny and appropriately cynical.
Only this is my own flesh and blood I'm talking about here. And it breaks my heart to see how shabbily she and many in her position and their employees are being treated. By people not fit to lick their boots, frankly.
The only good news is that Eldest Son got his booster yesterday: after 2 hours queuing at the Jewish Vegetarian Society in Golders Green.
A vaccine that DuraAce might consider ?
One of our Christmas guests is a Jewish vegetarian. I hope and pray that Brussels sprouts are Kosher or we'll never get rid of the damned things. It will be a case of 'one out, all out'.
As stuffed cabbage is a Sukkot meal, you should be safe.
| NEW: Government scientists expect Britain will have between 300,000 and 400,000 new Omicron infections today
SGTF (Suspected Omicron) is probably around 28% today (Extrapolating forward from the daily update). Moving case average ~ 48,500. That's around 13.8k Omicron suspected cases today. Allowing for some uplift, maybe 16k. How do they get to 300, 400k ?!
Edit: I mean the dashboard, daily briefings - the actual written stuff is very very good and rigourous but the crap they come out with in the Commons and to the media...
It is trust shattering. I'm doing my best to ignore it.
| NEW: Government scientists expect Britain will have between 300,000 and 400,000 new Omicron infections today
SGTF (Suspected Omicron) is probably around 28% today (Extrapolating forward from the daily update). Moving case average ~ 48,500. That's around 13.8k Omicron suspected cases today. Allowing for some uplift, maybe 16k. How do they get to 300, 400k ?!
Edit: I mean the dashboard, daily briefings - the actual written stuff is very very good and rigourous but the crap they come out with in the Commons and to the media...
It is trust shattering. I'm doing my best to ignore it.
Lets go the whole hog and get rid of citizenship and residency. Instead we could let the local Tory party association decide if we are worthy enough to live here for another year, they could do it each Xmas.
No, no: before Christmas, so that they can send the deportation orders with immediate effect out on 23 December.
On Twitter Tom Kerridge is complaining about 654 cancelled guests over the past 6 days.
We were out last night and were literally the only table except for 3 guests of the hotel in their restaurant.
Many in hospitality will not survive another winter of all this without more Treasury help, of which no sign.
Hospitality has been hung out to dry. The third largest sector in the country - abandoned. Just like that. Who is behind this? Sunak. And the Tories think he will be their saviour?
I doubt if he'll be seen smiling in a pub or restaurant serving non-existent customers any time soon.
I am glad that Daughter will be leaving her place on 24th March when her lease is up. I am only sorry that her last season will have been marred by the government's incompetence and indifference. She works hard and honestly. Those in charge do not. They can whistle for our votes.
Trudy Harrison MP will be hearing from me later. If she can bestir herself for Afghan vets and pets she can pull her fingers out of her arse for businesses and people in her constituency.
Sorry but she has way more important things to do for Boris than support her constituents.
I'd find that bleakly funny and appropriately cynical.
Only this is my own flesh and blood I'm talking about here. And it breaks my heart to see how shabbily she and many in her position and their employees are being treated. By people not fit to lick their boots, frankly.
The only good news is that Eldest Son got his booster yesterday: after 2 hours queuing at the Jewish Vegetarian Society in Golders Green.
A vaccine that DuraAce might consider ?
One of our Christmas guests is a Jewish vegetarian. I hope and pray that Brussels sprouts are Kosher or we'll never get rid of the damned things. It will be a case of 'one out, all out'.
As stuffed cabbage is a Sukkot meal, you should be safe.
Good point, we don't want Xmas spoiled by the unworthy. The turkey and Xmas tree farms are all sorted by the 23rd anyway.
| NEW: Government scientists expect Britain will have between 300,000 and 400,000 new Omicron infections today
SGTF (Suspected Omicron) is probably around 28% today (Extrapolating forward from the daily update). Moving case average ~ 48,500. That's around 13.8k Omicron suspected cases today. Allowing for some uplift, maybe 16k. How do they get to 300, 400k ?!
Edit: I mean the dashboard, daily briefings - the actual written stuff is very very good and rigourous but the crap they come out with in the Commons and to the media...
It is trust shattering. I'm doing my best to ignore it.
Just bigger and bigger numbers to try and terrify the public without the need for statutory measures I think
And if you think this is a matter of a few cancellations think again - U.K. Hospitality estimates that turnover in December will be down by 40%. Theatres too and other entertainment venues are affected too. This month is one where many such venues make the money that helps them live the rest of the year.
And yet for all the sound and fury at Westminster I can't think of one MP who has bothered to raise this issue.
@RochdalePioneers Any ideas where Duguid was today? Doesn't seem to have voted. Do you know whether he was paired, abstaining, hiding in a freezer?
Apparently all the Scottish Tories abstained.
Very interesting. Douglas Ross - like his predecessor Ruth Davidson - looks down his nose at The Clown. By abstaining, the Scottish Tory group have achieved 4 goals:
a) looking principled, by not voting on England-only legislation (following the SNP lead)
b) not backing measures in England which they (supposedly) oppose in Scotland
c) they avoid taking sides in the incipient Tory civil war
d) most importantly, thumping The Clown in the goolies. He has made life hell for Scottish Tories and Unionists, and they relish the chance to damage him, hopefully terminally
I know we disagree on many things but I think you are right on these points.
And if you think this is a matter of a few cancellations think again - U.K. Hospitality estimates that turnover in December will be down by 40%. Theatres too and other entertainment venues are affected too. This month is one where many such venues make the money that helps them live the rest of the year.
And yet for all the sound and fury at Westminster I can't think of one MP who has bothered to raise this issue.
I dont think there is any doubt that people have stopped going out, a couple of GP surgery nurses I know are reporting that their surgeries are very quiet with loads of cancellations. The booster clinics are jam packed.
And if you think this is a matter of a few cancellations think again - U.K. Hospitality estimates that turnover in December will be down by 40%. Theatres too and other entertainment venues are affected too. This month is one where many such venues make the money that helps them live the rest of the year.
And yet for all the sound and fury at Westminster I can't think of one MP who has bothered to raise this issue.
Lib Dems have repeatedly raised this, especially Daisy Cooper.
Pre-settled status EU citizens are automatically granted settled status at the end of 5 years?
Even if they've spent some or all of that abroad?
Why should EU citizens be treated differently to citizens from other countries who have to prove their residence when applying for permanent residence?
| NEW: Government scientists expect Britain will have between 300,000 and 400,000 new Omicron infections today
SGTF (Suspected Omicron) is probably around 28% today (Extrapolating forward from the daily update). Moving case average ~ 48,500. That's around 13.8k Omicron suspected cases today. Allowing for some uplift, maybe 16k. How do they get to 300, 400k ?!
Edit: I mean the dashboard, daily briefings - the actual written stuff is very very good and rigourous but the crap they come out with in the Commons and to the media...
If this is true, and if the immunity escape is sufficient to send a dangerous percentage of infections to hospital, then the NHS is overwhelmed between Christmas and New Year's.
Or they get to announce that the booster vaccinations saved the NHS.
And before anyone replies with the phrase "stopped clock" I know that. But what he says is still right. The government is introducing some appallingly illiberal and pernicious legislation.
Miss Cyclefree, that's the thing. I'm far from persuaded these restrictions are needed, but imposing them with no support for businesses during the busiest time of the year seems practically designed to sink them.
This addiction to vindictive bureaucracy ought to be seen as extraordinarily unconservative.
The whole Government is extraordinarily unconservative.
And vindictive.
It's as if spitefulness has become national policy.
The worst thing about some of these recent moves is they don't even seem to be calculated for political gain, even with the base. They are being done because ministers actually want to make certain people's lives more difficult, even when nobody's looking.
The Home Office always had a bit of that in its DNA but it seems to be multiplying at an alarming rate recently.
Priti seems to be failing in her job of saying no to all the stupidity that ends up on her desk.
What is it about the Home Office? There's a whole line of illiberal types who have had the job.
Essentially, the system is trying to apply the full weight of the immigration comedy to all comers. Think of the empires that can be built to process all that lovely paperwork.....
It's been interesting in my team hearing the Indians and Chinese explaining the systems to the Europeans....
EU citizens deserve better treatment/laxer regulation than citizens from other countries appears to be the argument.
@RochdalePioneers Any ideas where Duguid was today? Doesn't seem to have voted. Do you know whether he was paired, abstaining, hiding in a freezer?
Apparently all the Scottish Tories abstained.
Very interesting. Douglas Ross - like his predecessor Ruth Davidson - looks down his nose at The Clown. By abstaining, the Scottish Tory group have achieved 4 goals:
a) looking principled, by not voting on England-only legislation (following the SNP lead)
b) not backing measures in England which they (supposedly) oppose in Scotland
c) they avoid taking sides in the incipient Tory civil war
d) most importantly, thumping The Clown in the goolies. He has made life hell for Scottish Tories and Unionists, and they relish the chance to damage him, hopefully terminally
Do you think he cares about them? It's surely their fault that the Scots don't bedeck Mr Johnson's path with rose-petals on his occasional triumphal processes up here. And the ScoTories chose Ms Davidson as leader - far, far too similar to him in certain crucial ways to be anything other than a dangerous rival on the UK stage.
Comments
The Scientist vs Engineer thing on the Manhattan project has never really been written about.
"By the standards of the time" - Hanford was always a contaminated nightmare. Just that standards changed around them. If you read Ignition! by John Clarke, just how crazy dangerous the chemical industry was back then, becomes clear.
The era of restricted building has also been the era of hideous architecture. And while the restrictions have to some extent limited that spread, they certainly haven't stopped it.
The metropolises can be expanding with nice semi-detached homes with gardens and a couple of cars each with a lovely suburbia - instead of cramming people into ugly high rises with no gardens and no space for personal transport while abandoning the countryside to be wasted and unused.
Was thinking of a story I read about people being upset with "Negro" being on black pencils or crayons when I came up with this. Sorry.. I didn't have a 'u' for colour!
They had a golden opportunity yesterday to make this point and they remained silent.
The American of course comes from the country which elected Trump, the Frenchman from the country with a vain narcissist as President and where Le Pen could get 45% if she makes the runoff. The Belgian from a country where much of the elite was caught up in an under age sex scandal and could not form a government for a year. As you say elected Berlusconi PM.
Countries should focus on their own leaders not other countries
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59662421
*Note: I am from the by election era where online campaigning wasn't an issue. Is this done in a by election and is it effective?
Modern planners/builder - more shit than Prince Charles at design.
Society had great amounts of secular building that improved the country in the Tudor times, setting Britain up for great advances in society and development for centuries to come.
I'd far rather planning laws were more comparable to what they were in Tudor times, absolutely. No irony intended.
Silver bullet eh?
Bunnco's gal has done very well for herself since then. Though we still seem to have a few of the Turnip Taliban brigade on this website.
Whatever happened to Bunnco? Has he gone or does he post under a different name now?
SAGE member predicting, maybe up to 2000 daily hospital admissions.
4000 a day didn't end civilisation last year.
Probably induces some scenes..... nice beer, though
@HYUFD
“Press conference this afternoon… Unclear yet whether to announce new (but not legally binding) guidance on social contact…”
The next step after that of course is a week or so later, an announcement that it really must for the good of the nation (chuckle) be made legally binding. And the shower that stands for most Conservative MPs will let him get away with it.
a) looking principled, by not voting on England-only legislation (following the SNP lead)
b) not backing measures in England which they (supposedly) oppose in Scotland
c) they avoid taking sides in the incipient Tory civil war
d) most importantly, thumping The Clown in the goolies. He has made life hell for Scottish Tories and Unionists, and they relish the chance to damage him, hopefully terminally
BREXIT IS DONE...NEW: The UK government is delaying post-Brexit controls due January 1 on goods entering Great Britain from Ireland, for as long as the discussions on the Northern Ireland protocol continue.
https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2021-12-15/hcws486
After last night's vote he will not get another full lockdown past Tory MPs. 1/3 rebelled on vaxports, the majority would rebel against another lockdown and he would lose a VONC
Do you have any idea what they're doing with those places because it didn't seem to have trucks coming and going when I was going past it. Not sure if its operational or not yet?
Only this is my own flesh and blood I'm talking about here. And it breaks my heart to see how shabbily she and many in her position and their employees are being treated. By people not fit to lick their boots, frankly.
The only good news is that Eldest Son got his booster yesterday: after 2 hours queuing at the Jewish Vegetarian Society in Golders Green.
And then castigate Sadiq Khan for cancelling London's New Year's Eve fireworks.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/priti-patels-new-rule-is-a-blow-for-eu-citizens-who-live-in-britain-tdgw99z59
Deaths reported now are lower than the 2nd half of November, and yesterday's number was down week on week, and the average is running at 2-4% of delta peak deaths.
https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1471035675382358018
Moderna, king of vaccines against Omicron.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-08/s-african-weekly-excess-deaths-almost-double-amid-omicron-wave
She is a truly dreadful Home Secretary.
SA was of course on the red list by that time so like all other passengers on my flight (via Addis Ababa) I was heavily loaded with the appropriate paperwork and certificates of testing. On arrival at Heathrow we all simply joined the queues at Passport Control. It was 6am but the place was packed. I would estimate about 5,000 people were patiently lining up in snake queues. It took me about an hour to reach the front, where I was told that red-list passengers had to form a separate queue. No, I hadn't made a mistake. There had been no warning or notice of this, as the other red-list passengers around me could verify.
So we joined another long queue, in the same crowded hall and waited. It didn't move for an hour because disabilty passengers had to be seen first. There was only one immigration officer on duty at the red queue and no sooner did he process one passenger than another disability priority case took his/her/their place(s). Eventually the non-disability passengers started to complain and two more officers arrived and our queue began to move forward slowly.
It took me three hours to clear immigration. I then had another three hour wait in a disused trolley park inside the airport along with other red-list passengers while we waited for coaches to take us to the Quarantine Hotel. Meanwhile other normal non-red-list passengers wandered past and there was in fact nothing to stop us mingling with them. When the coach eventually became available, we were led through the airport rather like schoolchildren to the coach park. Other passengers were of course brushing closely past us all the way.
In total it took six hours from landing to checking in at the Quarantine Hotel, which is in fact a short walk from the Terminal.
It would be hard to devise a system better calculated to spread the Omicron virus, assuming that's what you wanted to do.
Obviously the cautious prison-like regime that operated subsequently in the Hotel was rendered nonsensical by the fiasco at passport control. No wonder the Government has given up on it.
I expecting to be released within the next hour or so, pending clearance. If I don't get it, I'm walking anyway.
But what would be in your personal situation room?
Who/what are you tracking in real-time?
Teabag stocks?
Abandoned Lego pieces?
Mrs Brown's Boys?
https://twitter.com/MattChorley/status/1471054828256256002/photo/1
It's as if spitefulness has become national policy.
Now they are built by companies and public sector bodies who don't give a monkey's what they look like as long as they are cheap.
The obvious solution is to encourage self-build much more, like in most Continental countries. Housebuilding is one of the things our European neighbours do much better than we do.
But a dedicated Bridgen cam is extreme...
https://www.nicd.ac.za/diseases-a-z-index/disease-index-covid-19/surveillance-reports/daily-hospital-surveillance-datcov-report/
Week 47: 56
Week 48: 104
Week 49: 210
Week50: Incomplete
Unless I misunderstand the data that looks like it is doubling every week.
I just hope there aren't too many hospital departmental Christmas parties ending up with the whole department getting the lurgy just in time for the big rush.
It does seem to make sense to have something like that on.
I know Rachel is poorly, but what reason do the rest have?
https://votes.parliament.uk/Votes/Commons/Division/1181#notrecorded
There was, undoubtedly, a case for reform, but in their zeal they destroyed 90% of the art of England and Wales, much of which had been explanations of the Bible to our ancestors, the then illiterate peasantry.
(Charles excepted, of course!)
The travel restrictions are not about restricting the spread of the Omicron virus (or the iterations of Covid before). They are, and have always been, about the government creating the impression with the lumpen that they are restricting the spread of the Omicron virus. Not the same thing.
Consider this, if you want a short day trip abroad - e.g. France - you have to take a test prior to departure to France as per French rules - and you can use this very same test result for your return to the UK.
When I think about the abuse I got for assisting Ugandan Asians to escape Amin.......
Meanwhile Sunak can't be bothered to vote and smirks on the sidelines.....
The Home Office always had a bit of that in its DNA but it seems to be multiplying at an alarming rate recently.
Sadly, the NoFun people removed the Big Red button they used to get visitors to press.
...Any MP who judges that this is wrong, and a sufficiently grave mistake to demand they vote against it, is saying that they haven’t confidence in the government to select its advisers, listen to and understand their advice and act upon it. They are trying to prevent the government from taking action that ministers believe is essential to the prevention of mass deaths. They are saying that they know better what ought to be done.
This is a legitimate position but it is not compatible with believing that the government should remain in office...
Makes sense to me.
I don't see how Boris stays in office beyond next year.
They think he is one of them...
And yet for all the sound and fury at Westminster I can't think of one MP who has bothered to raise this issue.
What is it about the Home Office? There's a whole line of illiberal types who have had the job.
This isn't new.
https://www.newstatesman.com/uncategorized/2008/12/home-secretary-police-blunkett
We really don't care about infection. Hospitalization is key.
| NEW: Government scientists expect Britain will have between 300,000 and 400,000 new Omicron infections today
SGTF (Suspected Omicron) is probably around 28% today (Extrapolating forward from the daily update).
Moving case average ~ 48,500.
That's around 13.8k Omicron suspected cases today. Allowing for some uplift, maybe 16k.
How do they get to 300, 400k ?!
Edit: I mean the dashboard, daily briefings - the actual written stuff is very very good and rigourous but the crap they come out with in the Commons and to the media...
It's been interesting in my team hearing the Indians and Chinese explaining the systems to the Europeans....
Christmas bookings cancelled and essential services under pressure as Omicron cases soar
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/15/expect-mass-staff-absences-and-major-shortages-uk-cabinet-told
https://twitter.com/libdemdaisy/status/1469050923964055552?s=20
Pre-settled status EU citizens are automatically granted settled status at the end of 5 years?
Even if they've spent some or all of that abroad?
Why should EU citizens be treated differently to citizens from other countries who have to prove their residence when applying for permanent residence?
Or they get to announce that the booster vaccinations saved the NHS.
My guess is the latter.
https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/1469376302536962050?s=21
I agree.
And before anyone replies with the phrase "stopped clock" I know that. But what he says is still right. The government is introducing some appallingly illiberal and pernicious legislation.
It's wretched.