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The front pages sum up the worries about Christmas – politicalbetting.com

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  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,727
    Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer says the Conservative party is "more concerned with party management at the moment than it is with public health".

    #COVID latest: https://trib.al/4iFNRgp https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1472882265042694150/video/1
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    HYUFD said:

    Rishi is a very strong communicator.
    But he is an Ayn Rand ultra, and supported Brexit from the start. He therefore clearly has a screw loose somewhere.

    I don’t want a plutocrat as PM, I think on balance I’d prefer Truss even though she is actually ghastly.

    If he is an Ayn Rand ultra how come he has spent far more than George Osborne or Philip Hammond did as Chancellor or indeed more than Gordon Brown did in New Labour's first term? He has also raised corporation tax and NI
    Because Covid.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    dixiedean said:

    Cicero said:

    Scott_xP said:

    The whole point of the single market was to remove their ability to act like utter twats.

    Thatcher's greatest achievement.

    Utterly destroyed by those who worshipped her...
    What was the UK's trade balance with the EU in the single market ?
    Are you tacitly dissing Mrs Fatcha for dismantling UK primary and tertiary manufacturing?
    Charles said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Brexit as a political and ideological project is dead.

    It’s now an administrative clear up job, with an inexorable pull back toward closer arrangements with the EU.
    I must have missed Canada becoming a satrapy of the US
    I’m afraid your language reveals why Brexit is not a serious project.

    Canada is not a satrap of the US, the U.K. was never a satrap of the EU.

    Really idiotic stuff.
    Satrap=claptrap.
    As I said upthread, Brexit is dead.
    All it has left is tabloidesque guff like “satrapy”.

    No wonder Philip T has tried to change the subject to “roads” (where is is also fantastically wrong, see also his ideas on housing and labour economics).

    Philip seems to think he lives in Waco, Texas, rather than Warrington, Lancs (that’s right, Lancs).
    Warrington is north of the Mersey, so no argument there, the 1974 mess still has to be fully sorted out
    Far be it from me to be so pedantic on PT's patch, but plenty of Warrington isn't.
    Latchford is slap bang Town centre, South of Mersey. Pretty much half is.
    Been a decade or so since I was last in Warrington, but is the problem there not still that silly roundabout with two bridges over the river?
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,706
    edited December 2021
    Endillion said:

    HYUFD said:

    Rishi is a very strong communicator.
    But he is an Ayn Rand ultra, and supported Brexit from the start. He therefore clearly has a screw loose somewhere.

    I don’t want a plutocrat as PM, I think on balance I’d prefer Truss even though she is actually ghastly.

    If he is an Ayn Rand ultra how come he has spent far more than George Osborne or Philip Hammond did as Chancellor or indeed more than Gordon Brown did in New Labour's first term? He has also raised corporation tax and NI
    Some confusion, I think: Javid is the Ayn Rand ultra; I'm not aware that Sunak is.
    Though in the Cabinet Javid seems most keen on new state imposed Covid restrictions along with Gove, which is hardly Ayn Rand.

    The closest Tory leadership contender to Rand ideology is actually probably Steve Baker
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,837
    Nigelb said:

    eek said:

    Pulpstar said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    Investment isn't a problem - it's throwing money at day to day spending for pet projects that was Brown's and Labour's problem.

    Prime example - to hit our CO2 commitments we need 50% of freight going via rail.

    That requires HS2E and NPR to hit those commitments and we cancelled those within a month of COP26 to be replaced with nothing to fixes the commitment.
    Why do we need any of our freight to go via rail? Let alone 50% of it when rail is currently from memory just 4%?

    Investing in electric HGVs surely gets us there instead.
    What electric HGVs? They don't exist and given the market for them you would expect them to already be here.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Semi

    Coming 2023
    I'll believe it when I see it given they were due in 2020...

    Also it requires a whole new infrastructure so the lorries charge at night - look forward to seeing that created.
    Have some faith!

    Don't you know that self-driving, electric HGVs, charged with fusion-generated electricity are just a few years away?

    That's the way it is, and that's not going to change.
    First you have to build the factories.
    This was still countryside in 2020.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8zx7gnhBpE

    All the major vehicle manufacturers are also now building their equivalents.
    Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    edited December 2021

    On topic there is little practical benefit to putting in restrictions for Christmas at this stage. Plans have been made. People are travelling as we speak. Food has been bought.

    The chances of getting the population to comply this year are nigh on impossible, given how late it is in the day and all the news stories that are coming out about last year (“it was OK for you guys then,” etc…)

    I suspect we’ll get advisory warnings not to mix more than 2 households or whatever which will be promptly ignored by all and sundry.

    I’m not even sure restrictions after Christmas are going to be particularly closely followed. The festive season isn’t just Christmas Day: it’s often a chain of events leading up to and including New Year’s Day.

    The first day where meaningful restrictions can probably be introduced is from 2 January - the miserable weeks where nothing much happens anyway.

    Does Daughter - and all those in her position - order in food and drinks and risk finding herself with unsold stock because at the last minute a curfew is imposed or venues are told to close like last year?

    Or does she simply keep the place closed to minimise losses? It's not as if there are only 5 working days before 4 days of holidays and plans to be made and deadlines to be met. I mean, all the time in the world for governments to faff around like clueless idiots.
  • kinabalu said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    You might like to look up the CV of Rachel Reeves.
    I like Rachel but not labour's throw billions at each and every problem
    She was very unspecific on R4 this morning: "What would Labour do?" "What ever it takes to protect the NHS" "Specifically, what? Waffle, waffle, waffle.
    She said communicate now and clearly what is required to protect the family Christmas and then a plan for after that which ensures the NHS doesn't collapse. She also stressed sick pay as a priority if we need people to self-isolate. It was not a waffly performance. Indeed I think with this new team Starmer is starting to build up a mood of not just "Oh god enough of this shower" but also "Labour would be better." I have Lab majority laid for chunky money @ 6 and I am, for the first time, just beginning to doubt the wisdom of that.

    That said, the government is in a difficult position on this even without the noise from the batshit crazy likes of Dezzy Swayne. With Covid it's better to act early, the history of the pandemic shows us this, but Omicron spreads so fast that acting early - ie now at the latest - means acting when it's still uncertain what and when the peak of cases will otherwise be and how those cases will translate to demands on hospitals. A risk, therefore, of imposing unnecessary measures.

    But if they instead hold off until the projections are firmed up, that's a risk too. If they turn out to be at the milder end on numbers and/or severity, great, the decision to delay was a great one. We've been saved a needless lockdown or near lockdown. OTOH if the firmed up projections say Omicron is set to overwhelm the NHS, now the delay looks like a dereliction of duty, because the measures now need to be more severe, and maybe last longer, and perhaps it's too late anyway and a large number of people die as a direct consequence.

    It's very tricky, the more so because this sort of calculus can't easily be presented to the public. You've got stats, models, confidence levels, probabilities, cost v benefit, upside v downside risk analysis, the whole thing is just very very tricky even ignoring the politics. And with so much riding on it. I just hope Johnson can focus on the matter properly, putting all the other shit to one side, or if he can't that he lets somebody more switched on and competent make the decisions.
    He has a new born. So his brain will be even more scrabbled than usual. Not good timing.

  • glwglw Posts: 9,535
    Cookie said:

    Fascinating how many NHS staff are anti-vaxx.

    I'm in favour of vaccination, though against any compulsion. But I'd say that NHS staff refusing the jab makes the argument of doing things like masking 'out of respect for the NHS' [(c) Burnham] rather harder to make.
    I was in favour of giving them a few days of booking a jab or sacking them, but that was before Omicron. I'd now reduce it to an immediate booking or the boot. Frankly even if they get the jab now I'd want as many of these people out of healthcare as is possible.
  • Cyclefree said:

    Rishi is a very strong communicator.
    But he is an Ayn Rand ultra, and supported Brexit from the start. He therefore clearly has a screw loose somewhere.

    I don’t want a plutocrat as PM, I think on balance I’d prefer Truss even though she is actually ghastly.

    Is he such a good communicator? In the election debates he was pretty ordinary. He is certainly good at getting his photo taken while smiling a lot.
    Good use of flags. Which is more important than good speeches nowadays.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,727
    It was a work meeting. It was drinks after a work meeting. It was a drinks meeting. There were a series of work meetings. The PM was in a suit so it was work.
    https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/gmbs-adil-ray-savages-bumbling-25742015
  • HYUFD said:

    Endillion said:

    HYUFD said:

    Rishi is a very strong communicator.
    But he is an Ayn Rand ultra, and supported Brexit from the start. He therefore clearly has a screw loose somewhere.

    I don’t want a plutocrat as PM, I think on balance I’d prefer Truss even though she is actually ghastly.

    If he is an Ayn Rand ultra how come he has spent far more than George Osborne or Philip Hammond did as Chancellor or indeed more than Gordon Brown did in New Labour's first term? He has also raised corporation tax and NI
    Some confusion, I think: Javid is the Ayn Rand ultra; I'm not aware that Sunak is.
    Though in the Cabinet Javid seems most keen on new state imposed Covid restrictions along with Gove, which is hardly Ayn Rand.

    The closest Tory leadership contender to Rand ideology is actually probably Steve Baker
    That a lunatic like Rand even features on the reading lists of potential leadership contenders shows how far the Tories have drifted from the mainstream.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,873

    Cyclefree said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    You might like to look up the CV of Rachel Reeves.
    I like Rachel but not labour's throw billions at each and every problem
    £37 billion thrown at Test and Trace. Described as an "eye watering waste of money" which failed to achieve its objective.

    But at least the money was spent with the "right sort of people" ;)
    The issue with trying to use test and trace has been an issue all along - asymptomatic and pre-symtpomatic transmission. Once you have that in mix I'd argue its almost impossible to shut down transmission chains with the interconnected lives we lead. Even with the original strain, even with the first lockdown, we didn't reach zero covid, even in Scotland.
    However, it is possible to see an effect. In the SW, the scandal of the testing failures at Immensa genuinly did seem to lead to an increase in cases as false negatives went about their business and spread the disease. I was wrong on the surge that followed - I initially thought it was just catch up testing, but the scale suggests it wasn't.

    We are not at the point where the question needs to be - what do we gain by testing 1.6M a day? Transmission of omicron is so potent, and the original issues remain and asympto and pre-symptomatic spread. I'd argue now we should focus on testing in secondary care at point of admission, and use the money saved to improve ventilationg and air filtration in places where it might do some good - care homes, hospitals and schools.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,111
    Phil said:

    moonshine said:

    Phil said:

    moonshine said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    Investment isn't a problem - it's throwing money at day to day spending for pet projects that was Brown's and Labour's problem.

    Prime example - to hit our CO2 commitments we need 50% of freight going via rail.

    That requires HS2E and NPR to hit those commitments and we cancelled those within a month of COP26 to be replaced with nothing to fixes the commitment.
    Why do we need any of our freight to go via rail? Let alone 50% of it when rail is currently from memory just 4%?

    Investing in electric HGVs surely gets us there instead.
    10% of all freight "tonne-kilometres" last year according to Statistica.

    (pre-pandemic 2018 is much the same).

    I believe rail freight in theis country is pretty much supply constrained - if we had more capacity then industry would use it.
    The UK is a different freight market to the US. But I’m pretty confident that Tesla Semis will be bankrupting the US rail freight industry in pretty short order.

    The Tesla Semi that they’ve effectively pushed into the long grass? That they promised for 2019 originally, but are now saying they might start producing them in 2023?

    US rail freight is dominated by bulk goods. A 2 mile long freight train full to the brim of aggregate, bricks, steel, is going to outperform 200+ Teslsa trucks every time - the economics just don’t work any other way.

    If they can make those trucks driverless? Then maybe, just maybe the economics might shift, but even then you’re shipping extra weight and complexity for no good reason compared to a train.

    Freight goes by train for a reason though.

    You’ll see.
    Man, Musk lickers are all the same. No actual arguments, just pure, un-adultered belief in a Musk-ridden future.

    Go on, explain to me /why/ the Tesla Semi will drive US rail freight out of business. How is that going to work? Is there actually sufficient road capacity in the US to take that rail freight in the first place? If so, how expensive is it going to be to roll out these trucks & what do the amortised costs look like compared to current freight costs?

    If it’s so obvious, then the numbers must be staring people in the face. Where are they?
    Ever seen an American freight train? They can be a mile long with three massive locos all connected by radio and operated from the front loco IIRC. And the loading gauge is bigger so the trucks are wider and higher. Huge reduction in road usage and staffing.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Carnyx said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    Investment isn't a problem - it's throwing money at day to day spending for pet projects that was Brown's and Labour's problem.

    Prime example - to hit our CO2 commitments we need 50% of freight going via rail.

    That requires HS2E and NPR to hit those commitments and we cancelled those within a month of COP26 to be replaced with nothing to fixes the commitment.
    Why do we need any of our freight to go via rail? Let alone 50% of it when rail is currently from memory just 4%?

    Investing in electric HGVs surely gets us there instead.
    Because 1 train can take scores of HGVs off the road. And there will be no electric HGVs - hydrogen is the only realistic play.
    Interestingly, the Germans are trialling installing overhead power lines above the outer lanes of motorways to power long distance vehicles. Currently experimental, but something we might see rolled out in the future.
    Good luck doing that in this country. Have you seen our railway electrification project success rate on existing infrastructure?
    Ah, but as demonstrated so clearly in this discussion, roads are special & benefit from a kind of limitless futurism that trains don’t.

    Driverless electric cars may well be to the 2020s as flying cars were to the 1950s - an excuse to not invest in technology that we know works because “flying cars / driverless electric trucks” are coming real soon now!
    Like this flying taxi? I wonder how many people can afford to ride in it.

    https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/air-taxi-arrives-smithsonian-180978703/
    Anything flying is going to be really noisy, and anything that takes off or lands vertically is going to be downright annoyingly noisy, such is the nature of moving air around quickly enough to lift the vehicle weight.
  • On topic there is little practical benefit to putting in restrictions for Christmas at this stage. Plans have been made. People are travelling as we speak. Food has been bought.

    The chances of getting the population to comply this year are nigh on impossible, given how late it is in the day and all the news stories that are coming out about last year (“it was OK for you guys then,” etc…)

    I suspect we’ll get advisory warnings not to mix more than 2 households or whatever which will be promptly ignored by all and sundry.

    I’m not even sure restrictions after Christmas are going to be particularly closely followed. The festive season isn’t just Christmas Day: it’s often a chain of events leading up to and including New Year’s Day.

    The first day where meaningful restrictions can probably be introduced is from 2 January - the miserable weeks where nothing much happens anyway.

    Yeh, as I have posted before, 3rd Jan seems most likely date for lockdown IV.

  • glw said:

    Cookie said:

    Fascinating how many NHS staff are anti-vaxx.

    I'm in favour of vaccination, though against any compulsion. But I'd say that NHS staff refusing the jab makes the argument of doing things like masking 'out of respect for the NHS' [(c) Burnham] rather harder to make.
    I was in favour of giving them a few days of booking a jab or sacking them, but that was before Omicron. I'd now reduce it to an immediate booking or the boot. Frankly even if they get the jab now I'd want as many of these people out of healthcare as is possible.
    The government should have mandated it at the same time as care home staff.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    Scott_xP said:

    It was a work meeting. It was drinks after a work meeting. It was a drinks meeting. There were a series of work meetings. The PM was in a suit so it was work.
    https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/gmbs-adil-ray-savages-bumbling-25742015


    But Carrie was there - what is she doing in a work meeting?
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    Carnyx said:

    Phil said:

    moonshine said:

    Phil said:

    moonshine said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    Investment isn't a problem - it's throwing money at day to day spending for pet projects that was Brown's and Labour's problem.

    Prime example - to hit our CO2 commitments we need 50% of freight going via rail.

    That requires HS2E and NPR to hit those commitments and we cancelled those within a month of COP26 to be replaced with nothing to fixes the commitment.
    Why do we need any of our freight to go via rail? Let alone 50% of it when rail is currently from memory just 4%?

    Investing in electric HGVs surely gets us there instead.
    10% of all freight "tonne-kilometres" last year according to Statistica.

    (pre-pandemic 2018 is much the same).

    I believe rail freight in theis country is pretty much supply constrained - if we had more capacity then industry would use it.
    The UK is a different freight market to the US. But I’m pretty confident that Tesla Semis will be bankrupting the US rail freight industry in pretty short order.

    The Tesla Semi that they’ve effectively pushed into the long grass? That they promised for 2019 originally, but are now saying they might start producing them in 2023?

    US rail freight is dominated by bulk goods. A 2 mile long freight train full to the brim of aggregate, bricks, steel, is going to outperform 200+ Teslsa trucks every time - the economics just don’t work any other way.

    If they can make those trucks driverless? Then maybe, just maybe the economics might shift, but even then you’re shipping extra weight and complexity for no good reason compared to a train.

    Freight goes by train for a reason though.

    You’ll see.
    Man, Musk lickers are all the same. No actual arguments, just pure, un-adultered belief in a Musk-ridden future.

    Go on, explain to me /why/ the Tesla Semi will drive US rail freight out of business. How is that going to work? Is there actually sufficient road capacity in the US to take that rail freight in the first place? If so, how expensive is it going to be to roll out these trucks & what do the amortised costs look like compared to current freight costs?

    If it’s so obvious, then the numbers must be staring people in the face. Where are they?
    Ever seen an American freight train? They can be a mile long with three massive locos all connected by radio and operated from the front loco IIRC. And the loading gauge is bigger so the trucks are wider and higher. Huge reduction in road usage and staffing.
    New UK freight trains can be 750 metres long now see https://www.globalrailwayreview.com/news/124322/775m-long-freight-trains-uk-rail/
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074

    Cyclefree said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    You might like to look up the CV of Rachel Reeves.
    I like Rachel but not labour's throw billions at each and every problem
    £37 billion thrown at Test and Trace. Described as an "eye watering waste of money" which failed to achieve its objective.

    But at least the money was spent with the "right sort of people" ;)
    Yup - who you know is now far more important than anything else.
  • PhilPhil Posts: 1,919

    eek said:

    ydoethur said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    eek said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    Investment isn't a problem - it's throwing money at day to day spending for pet projects that was Brown's and Labour's problem.

    Prime example - to hit our CO2 commitments we need 50% of freight going via rail.

    That requires HS2E and NPR to hit those commitments and we cancelled those within a month of COP26 to be replaced with nothing to fixes the commitment.
    Why do we need any of our freight to go via rail? Let alone 50% of it when rail is currently from memory just 4%?

    Investing in electric HGVs surely gets us there instead.
    Getting long-distance freight off the roads and onto rail should be a priority. HS2 is needed for that reason alone, and government need to sell it as such.

    Trucks add to congestion and are responsible for pretty much all the wear on the roads (which is related to the fourth power of axle weight).

    Where you are totally correct though, is that voters in Red Wall towns (not cities) almost exclusively travel primarily by car, and that they see road improvements as a much higher priority than rail. Levelling up means investment in roads, which also has the political advantage of not taking several decades to come to fruition.
    The problem is there isn't really such a thing as long distance transportation in England.

    In Canada or America where freight is transported thousands of miles that's one thing, but in this country nowhere is thousands of miles from anywhere else.

    A very good point that roads don't take decades too though.
    It’s definitely much easier to justify in larger countries, where road shipping can take several days - but there’s definitely a case for rail freight, which is currently capacity constrained by the need to accommodate higher-speed passenger traffic on the same lines.

    Going from Southampton or Felixstowe to Manchester or Newcastle, would be much easier by rail than road.
    And make the lives of many car drivers much pleasanter. My totally unscientific guess is that it would cut congestion on the local motorways and the A5 by 40%, given their size and speeds. Think what a difference that would make to us all.*

    And at the same time solve many of the problems around driver shortages.

    *and it would bankrupt the M6 Toll. So no downside whatsoever.
    Which shows the flaw in your logic.

    Currently rail transportation is between 4-10% of of all tonne-miles transportation depending upon how you measure it. Currently road transportation is ~90%.

    How are you going to remove 40% of all road transportation off the roads? What increase in rail capacity would be required to achieve that?

    There seems to be a thought of "invest in rails and HGVs will disappear" but that's quite simply not going to happen.
    Remarkably little.

    HS2E will allow 4 freight trains an hour on ECML and 4 on Midland mainline.

    At 30 to 45 container per train that's 240 to 360 containers an hour or 3-6000+ a day...
    And what percentage of road transportation is that removed from the roads? Is that 100% of freight taken of the motorways? 95%? 1%?
    NB. Picking a few random traffic census points like https://roadtrafficstats.uk/traffic-statistics-nottingham-m1-nottingham-73866#.YcBgPYqnwck suggests that the M1 gets about 15,000 trucks a day (North+South bound).

    For each census point, that’s a mix of local and long distance traffic. This does suggest that pulling 3-6000 trucks off the N/S motorways a day is a sigificant chunk of the total long distance traffic.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    Sandpit said:

    ydoethur said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    eek said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    Investment isn't a problem - it's throwing money at day to day spending for pet projects that was Brown's and Labour's problem.

    Prime example - to hit our CO2 commitments we need 50% of freight going via rail.

    That requires HS2E and NPR to hit those commitments and we cancelled those within a month of COP26 to be replaced with nothing to fixes the commitment.
    Why do we need any of our freight to go via rail? Let alone 50% of it when rail is currently from memory just 4%?

    Investing in electric HGVs surely gets us there instead.
    Getting long-distance freight off the roads and onto rail should be a priority. HS2 is needed for that reason alone, and government need to sell it as such.

    Trucks add to congestion and are responsible for pretty much all the wear on the roads (which is related to the fourth power of axle weight).

    Where you are totally correct though, is that voters in Red Wall towns (not cities) almost exclusively travel primarily by car, and that they see road improvements as a much higher priority than rail. Levelling up means investment in roads, which also has the political advantage of not taking several decades to come to fruition.
    The problem is there isn't really such a thing as long distance transportation in England.

    In Canada or America where freight is transported thousands of miles that's one thing, but in this country nowhere is thousands of miles from anywhere else.

    A very good point that roads don't take decades too though.
    It’s definitely much easier to justify in larger countries, where road shipping can take several days - but there’s definitely a case for rail freight, which is currently capacity constrained by the need to accommodate higher-speed passenger traffic on the same lines.

    Going from Southampton or Felixstowe to Manchester or Newcastle, would be much easier by rail than road.
    And make the lives of many car drivers much pleasanter. My totally unscientific guess is that it would cut congestion on the local motorways and the A5 by 40%, given their size and speeds. Think what a difference that would make to us all.*

    And at the same time solve many of the problems around driver shortages.

    *and it would bankrupt the M6 Toll. So no downside whatsoever.
    The M6 Toll is my favourite British road. The only thing wrong with it, is that it has a speed limit.
    The southbound M40 is good for Vmax runs as there is a long stretch where is no place for the pigs to hide.
  • EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,960

    HYUFD said:

    Endillion said:

    HYUFD said:

    Rishi is a very strong communicator.
    But he is an Ayn Rand ultra, and supported Brexit from the start. He therefore clearly has a screw loose somewhere.

    I don’t want a plutocrat as PM, I think on balance I’d prefer Truss even though she is actually ghastly.

    If he is an Ayn Rand ultra how come he has spent far more than George Osborne or Philip Hammond did as Chancellor or indeed more than Gordon Brown did in New Labour's first term? He has also raised corporation tax and NI
    Some confusion, I think: Javid is the Ayn Rand ultra; I'm not aware that Sunak is.
    Though in the Cabinet Javid seems most keen on new state imposed Covid restrictions along with Gove, which is hardly Ayn Rand.

    The closest Tory leadership contender to Rand ideology is actually probably Steve Baker
    That a lunatic like Rand even features on the reading lists of potential leadership contenders shows how far the Tories have drifted from the mainstream.
    That's unfair. How many plausible future Labour leaders have, at some point, read Karl Marx and thought he made some great points? Is it all of them?
  • ydoethur said:

    eek said:

    ydoethur said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    eek said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    Investment isn't a problem - it's throwing money at day to day spending for pet projects that was Brown's and Labour's problem.

    Prime example - to hit our CO2 commitments we need 50% of freight going via rail.

    That requires HS2E and NPR to hit those commitments and we cancelled those within a month of COP26 to be replaced with nothing to fixes the commitment.
    Why do we need any of our freight to go via rail? Let alone 50% of it when rail is currently from memory just 4%?

    Investing in electric HGVs surely gets us there instead.
    Getting long-distance freight off the roads and onto rail should be a priority. HS2 is needed for that reason alone, and government need to sell it as such.

    Trucks add to congestion and are responsible for pretty much all the wear on the roads (which is related to the fourth power of axle weight).

    Where you are totally correct though, is that voters in Red Wall towns (not cities) almost exclusively travel primarily by car, and that they see road improvements as a much higher priority than rail. Levelling up means investment in roads, which also has the political advantage of not taking several decades to come to fruition.
    The problem is there isn't really such a thing as long distance transportation in England.

    In Canada or America where freight is transported thousands of miles that's one thing, but in this country nowhere is thousands of miles from anywhere else.

    A very good point that roads don't take decades too though.
    It’s definitely much easier to justify in larger countries, where road shipping can take several days - but there’s definitely a case for rail freight, which is currently capacity constrained by the need to accommodate higher-speed passenger traffic on the same lines.

    Going from Southampton or Felixstowe to Manchester or Newcastle, would be much easier by rail than road.
    And make the lives of many car drivers much pleasanter. My totally unscientific guess is that it would cut congestion on the local motorways and the A5 by 40%, given their size and speeds. Think what a difference that would make to us all.*

    And at the same time solve many of the problems around driver shortages.

    *and it would bankrupt the M6 Toll. So no downside whatsoever.
    Which shows the flaw in your logic.

    Currently rail transportation is between 4-10% of of all tonne-miles transportation depending upon how you measure it. Currently road transportation is ~90%.

    How are you going to remove 40% of all road transportation off the roads? What increase in rail capacity would be required to achieve that?

    There seems to be a thought of "invest in rails and HGVs will disappear" but that's quite simply not going to happen.
    Remarkably little.

    HS2E will allow 4 freight trains an hour on ECML and 4 on Midland mainline.

    At 30 to 45 container per train that's 240 to 360 containers an hour or 3-6000+ a day...
    And what percentage of road transportation is that removed from the roads? Is that 100% of freight taken of the motorways? 95%? 1%?
    17 billion miles in 2017 according to this.

    https://www.fueltek.co.uk/population-of-lorries-on-uk-roads-whats-the-impact/

    Let's assume each container weighs 25 tons on average. 25 x 17 gives 425 billion ton miles.

    Let's then assume that these 5,000 containers on the railways are carried 200 miles each. That's 10,000 miles, times 25, that's 2.5 million ton miles per day, multiplied by 300 (for the number of days used after Sundays and public holidays) I make that 7.5 billion ton miles or 40% of road freight.

    Those figures are very rough and may easily be wrong (you're the mathematician not me) but anywhere in that ballpark would make a pretty significant different.

    Edit - well, now I look at it that 10,000 figure is clearly BS, should have been 100,000!
    I'm skeptical about the bulk of your calculations but considering Leeds to Birmingham isn't 200 miles in distance in the first place, I'm curious how the average would be 200 miles achieved on average from HS2E?

    This is the problem, we're aren't a country where goods want to be moved 200 miles on average in the first place anyway.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    Cyclefree said:

    On topic there is little practical benefit to putting in restrictions for Christmas at this stage. Plans have been made. People are travelling as we speak. Food has been bought.

    The chances of getting the population to comply this year are nigh on impossible, given how late it is in the day and all the news stories that are coming out about last year (“it was OK for you guys then,” etc…)

    I suspect we’ll get advisory warnings not to mix more than 2 households or whatever which will be promptly ignored by all and sundry.

    I’m not even sure restrictions after Christmas are going to be particularly closely followed. The festive season isn’t just Christmas Day: it’s often a chain of events leading up to and including New Year’s Day.

    The first day where meaningful restrictions can probably be introduced is from 2 January - the miserable weeks where nothing much happens anyway.

    Does Daughter - and all those in her position - order in food and drinks and risk finding herself with unsold stock because at the last minute a curfew is imposed or venues are told to close like last year?

    Or does she simply keep the place closed to minimise losses? It's not as if there are only 5 working days before 4 days of holidays and plans to be made and deadlines to be met. I mean, all the time in the world for governments to faff around like clueless idiots.
    And it's not as if she needs to order food for the 27th / 28th now because suppliers won't be open on then.

    It's a tough decision with zero right answers - personally I would probably be skipping the food and doing drinks (but I know that's not where the profit is).
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,727
    Dura_Ace said:

    Sandpit said:

    ydoethur said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    eek said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    Investment isn't a problem - it's throwing money at day to day spending for pet projects that was Brown's and Labour's problem.

    Prime example - to hit our CO2 commitments we need 50% of freight going via rail.

    That requires HS2E and NPR to hit those commitments and we cancelled those within a month of COP26 to be replaced with nothing to fixes the commitment.
    Why do we need any of our freight to go via rail? Let alone 50% of it when rail is currently from memory just 4%?

    Investing in electric HGVs surely gets us there instead.
    Getting long-distance freight off the roads and onto rail should be a priority. HS2 is needed for that reason alone, and government need to sell it as such.

    Trucks add to congestion and are responsible for pretty much all the wear on the roads (which is related to the fourth power of axle weight).

    Where you are totally correct though, is that voters in Red Wall towns (not cities) almost exclusively travel primarily by car, and that they see road improvements as a much higher priority than rail. Levelling up means investment in roads, which also has the political advantage of not taking several decades to come to fruition.
    The problem is there isn't really such a thing as long distance transportation in England.

    In Canada or America where freight is transported thousands of miles that's one thing, but in this country nowhere is thousands of miles from anywhere else.

    A very good point that roads don't take decades too though.
    It’s definitely much easier to justify in larger countries, where road shipping can take several days - but there’s definitely a case for rail freight, which is currently capacity constrained by the need to accommodate higher-speed passenger traffic on the same lines.

    Going from Southampton or Felixstowe to Manchester or Newcastle, would be much easier by rail than road.
    And make the lives of many car drivers much pleasanter. My totally unscientific guess is that it would cut congestion on the local motorways and the A5 by 40%, given their size and speeds. Think what a difference that would make to us all.*

    And at the same time solve many of the problems around driver shortages.

    *and it would bankrupt the M6 Toll. So no downside whatsoever.
    The M6 Toll is my favourite British road. The only thing wrong with it, is that it has a speed limit.
    The southbound M40 is good for Vmax runs as there is a long stretch where is no place for the pigs to hide.
    The Tamworth Two did OK for a fair while :wink:
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 5,779

    Cyclefree said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    You might like to look up the CV of Rachel Reeves.
    I like Rachel but not labour's throw billions at each and every problem
    £37 billion thrown at Test and Trace. Described as an "eye watering waste of money" which failed to achieve its objective.

    But at least the money was spent with the "right sort of people" ;)
    That £37 billion was the total budget for two years.

    Actual year one expenditure was about £14 billion, and most of that was on testing, rather than tracing.

    I'm of the view much of the tracing was a waste of money once we abandoned the zero-covid strategy, and I'm sure some consultants made a fortune. But the 37 number is wrong.
  • A third dose of Moderna Inc.’s Covid-19 vaccine increased antibody levels against the omicron variant, results the company described as reassuring while it works on a shot tailored to the new strain.

    A 50 microgram booster dose - the authorized amount, which is half the dose used for primary immunization - saw a 37-fold increase in neutralizing antibodies, the company said in a statement Monday. The company also tested a 100 microgram dose, which increased antibody levels 83-fold compared with the primary two-dose course.


    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-20/moderna-booster-increases-antibodies-37-fold-against-omicron
  • Pulpstar said:

    Nigelb said:

    eek said:

    Pulpstar said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    Investment isn't a problem - it's throwing money at day to day spending for pet projects that was Brown's and Labour's problem.

    Prime example - to hit our CO2 commitments we need 50% of freight going via rail.

    That requires HS2E and NPR to hit those commitments and we cancelled those within a month of COP26 to be replaced with nothing to fixes the commitment.
    Why do we need any of our freight to go via rail? Let alone 50% of it when rail is currently from memory just 4%?

    Investing in electric HGVs surely gets us there instead.
    What electric HGVs? They don't exist and given the market for them you would expect them to already be here.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Semi

    Coming 2023
    I'll believe it when I see it given they were due in 2020...

    Also it requires a whole new infrastructure so the lorries charge at night - look forward to seeing that created.
    Have some faith!

    Don't you know that self-driving, electric HGVs, charged with fusion-generated electricity are just a few years away?

    That's the way it is, and that's not going to change.
    First you have to build the factories.
    This was still countryside in 2020.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8zx7gnhBpE

    All the major vehicle manufacturers are also now building their equivalents.
    Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
    Omicron-mandias?
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Dura_Ace said:

    Sandpit said:

    ydoethur said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    eek said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    Investment isn't a problem - it's throwing money at day to day spending for pet projects that was Brown's and Labour's problem.

    Prime example - to hit our CO2 commitments we need 50% of freight going via rail.

    That requires HS2E and NPR to hit those commitments and we cancelled those within a month of COP26 to be replaced with nothing to fixes the commitment.
    Why do we need any of our freight to go via rail? Let alone 50% of it when rail is currently from memory just 4%?

    Investing in electric HGVs surely gets us there instead.
    Getting long-distance freight off the roads and onto rail should be a priority. HS2 is needed for that reason alone, and government need to sell it as such.

    Trucks add to congestion and are responsible for pretty much all the wear on the roads (which is related to the fourth power of axle weight).

    Where you are totally correct though, is that voters in Red Wall towns (not cities) almost exclusively travel primarily by car, and that they see road improvements as a much higher priority than rail. Levelling up means investment in roads, which also has the political advantage of not taking several decades to come to fruition.
    The problem is there isn't really such a thing as long distance transportation in England.

    In Canada or America where freight is transported thousands of miles that's one thing, but in this country nowhere is thousands of miles from anywhere else.

    A very good point that roads don't take decades too though.
    It’s definitely much easier to justify in larger countries, where road shipping can take several days - but there’s definitely a case for rail freight, which is currently capacity constrained by the need to accommodate higher-speed passenger traffic on the same lines.

    Going from Southampton or Felixstowe to Manchester or Newcastle, would be much easier by rail than road.
    And make the lives of many car drivers much pleasanter. My totally unscientific guess is that it would cut congestion on the local motorways and the A5 by 40%, given their size and speeds. Think what a difference that would make to us all.*

    And at the same time solve many of the problems around driver shortages.

    *and it would bankrupt the M6 Toll. So no downside whatsoever.
    The M6 Toll is my favourite British road. The only thing wrong with it, is that it has a speed limit.
    The southbound M40 is good for Vmax runs as there is a long stretch where is no place for the pigs to hide.
    The bit that’s dead straight for a couple of miles through the cutting, from memory just north of High Wycombe?
  • Cyclefree said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    You might like to look up the CV of Rachel Reeves.
    I like Rachel but not labour's throw billions at each and every problem
    £37 billion thrown at Test and Trace. Described as an "eye watering waste of money" which failed to achieve its objective.

    But at least the money was spent with the "right sort of people" ;)
    The issue with trying to use test and trace has been an issue all along - asymptomatic and pre-symtpomatic transmission. Once you have that in mix I'd argue its almost impossible to shut down transmission chains with the interconnected lives we lead. Even with the original strain, even with the first lockdown, we didn't reach zero covid, even in Scotland.
    However, it is possible to see an effect. In the SW, the scandal of the testing failures at Immensa genuinly did seem to lead to an increase in cases as false negatives went about their business and spread the disease. I was wrong on the surge that followed - I initially thought it was just catch up testing, but the scale suggests it wasn't.

    We are not at the point where the question needs to be - what do we gain by testing 1.6M a day? Transmission of omicron is so potent, and the original issues remain and asympto and pre-symptomatic spread. I'd argue now we should focus on testing in secondary care at point of admission, and use the money saved to improve ventilationg and air filtration in places where it might do some good - care homes, hospitals and schools.
    It would have been more effective to hand out LFTs to every household. People do seem to use them and would tell their friends and family. Even the 20 year olds I know do it because they worry about parents and grandparents.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,111
    Sandpit said:

    Carnyx said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    Investment isn't a problem - it's throwing money at day to day spending for pet projects that was Brown's and Labour's problem.

    Prime example - to hit our CO2 commitments we need 50% of freight going via rail.

    That requires HS2E and NPR to hit those commitments and we cancelled those within a month of COP26 to be replaced with nothing to fixes the commitment.
    Why do we need any of our freight to go via rail? Let alone 50% of it when rail is currently from memory just 4%?

    Investing in electric HGVs surely gets us there instead.
    Because 1 train can take scores of HGVs off the road. And there will be no electric HGVs - hydrogen is the only realistic play.
    Interestingly, the Germans are trialling installing overhead power lines above the outer lanes of motorways to power long distance vehicles. Currently experimental, but something we might see rolled out in the future.
    Good luck doing that in this country. Have you seen our railway electrification project success rate on existing infrastructure?
    Ah, but as demonstrated so clearly in this discussion, roads are special & benefit from a kind of limitless futurism that trains don’t.

    Driverless electric cars may well be to the 2020s as flying cars were to the 1950s - an excuse to not invest in technology that we know works because “flying cars / driverless electric trucks” are coming real soon now!
    Like this flying taxi? I wonder how many people can afford to ride in it.

    https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/air-taxi-arrives-smithsonian-180978703/
    Anything flying is going to be really noisy, and anything that takes off or lands vertically is going to be downright annoyingly noisy, such is the nature of moving air around quickly enough to lift the vehicle weight.
    Back in 1965 or so, the future of flying cars was going to be just round the corner. And there would be VTOL airliners from central London. This brings back happy memories of my childhood Airfix kit of the Fairey Rotodyne with really nice box art showing it over, roughly, Tooley's Wharf after lifting off from, I assume, Battersea Heliport. Shame about the howling of the jet exhausts at the ends of the rotors (though apparently not quite as bad as often alleged).
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,727

    ydoethur said:

    eek said:

    ydoethur said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    eek said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    Investment isn't a problem - it's throwing money at day to day spending for pet projects that was Brown's and Labour's problem.

    Prime example - to hit our CO2 commitments we need 50% of freight going via rail.

    That requires HS2E and NPR to hit those commitments and we cancelled those within a month of COP26 to be replaced with nothing to fixes the commitment.
    Why do we need any of our freight to go via rail? Let alone 50% of it when rail is currently from memory just 4%?

    Investing in electric HGVs surely gets us there instead.
    Getting long-distance freight off the roads and onto rail should be a priority. HS2 is needed for that reason alone, and government need to sell it as such.

    Trucks add to congestion and are responsible for pretty much all the wear on the roads (which is related to the fourth power of axle weight).

    Where you are totally correct though, is that voters in Red Wall towns (not cities) almost exclusively travel primarily by car, and that they see road improvements as a much higher priority than rail. Levelling up means investment in roads, which also has the political advantage of not taking several decades to come to fruition.
    The problem is there isn't really such a thing as long distance transportation in England.

    In Canada or America where freight is transported thousands of miles that's one thing, but in this country nowhere is thousands of miles from anywhere else.

    A very good point that roads don't take decades too though.
    It’s definitely much easier to justify in larger countries, where road shipping can take several days - but there’s definitely a case for rail freight, which is currently capacity constrained by the need to accommodate higher-speed passenger traffic on the same lines.

    Going from Southampton or Felixstowe to Manchester or Newcastle, would be much easier by rail than road.
    And make the lives of many car drivers much pleasanter. My totally unscientific guess is that it would cut congestion on the local motorways and the A5 by 40%, given their size and speeds. Think what a difference that would make to us all.*

    And at the same time solve many of the problems around driver shortages.

    *and it would bankrupt the M6 Toll. So no downside whatsoever.
    Which shows the flaw in your logic.

    Currently rail transportation is between 4-10% of of all tonne-miles transportation depending upon how you measure it. Currently road transportation is ~90%.

    How are you going to remove 40% of all road transportation off the roads? What increase in rail capacity would be required to achieve that?

    There seems to be a thought of "invest in rails and HGVs will disappear" but that's quite simply not going to happen.
    Remarkably little.

    HS2E will allow 4 freight trains an hour on ECML and 4 on Midland mainline.

    At 30 to 45 container per train that's 240 to 360 containers an hour or 3-6000+ a day...
    And what percentage of road transportation is that removed from the roads? Is that 100% of freight taken of the motorways? 95%? 1%?
    17 billion miles in 2017 according to this.

    https://www.fueltek.co.uk/population-of-lorries-on-uk-roads-whats-the-impact/

    Let's assume each container weighs 25 tons on average. 25 x 17 gives 425 billion ton miles.

    Let's then assume that these 5,000 containers on the railways are carried 200 miles each. That's 10,000 miles, times 25, that's 2.5 million ton miles per day, multiplied by 300 (for the number of days used after Sundays and public holidays) I make that 7.5 billion ton miles or 40% of road freight.

    Those figures are very rough and may easily be wrong (you're the mathematician not me) but anywhere in that ballpark would make a pretty significant different.

    Edit - well, now I look at it that 10,000 figure is clearly BS, should have been 100,000!
    I'm skeptical about the bulk of your calculations but considering Leeds to Birmingham isn't 200 miles in distance in the first place, I'm curious how the average would be 200 miles achieved on average from HS2E?

    This is the problem, we're aren't a country where goods want to be moved 200 miles on average in the first place anyway.
    HS2E is in effect London to Leeds, in terms of the capacity it opens up. 194 miles by road although just 170 by rail (there's another saving for you right there).
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Have to say the garden party excuses are laughable. Come on Tory MPs put Boris out of our misery.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,080
    Scott_xP said:

    but of course Brexit is over because we are no longer part of the EU, and we are not going back.

    If Brexit was over we wouldn't need Truss to negotiate Brexit...
    Any relationship with EuCo is always continually negotiated; the nature of the beast. Isn't that just an expectation?

    Brussels put its whole setup with Switzerland back into play because it wanted it to change.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,585
    ydoethur said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Sandpit said:

    ydoethur said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    eek said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    Investment isn't a problem - it's throwing money at day to day spending for pet projects that was Brown's and Labour's problem.

    Prime example - to hit our CO2 commitments we need 50% of freight going via rail.

    That requires HS2E and NPR to hit those commitments and we cancelled those within a month of COP26 to be replaced with nothing to fixes the commitment.
    Why do we need any of our freight to go via rail? Let alone 50% of it when rail is currently from memory just 4%?

    Investing in electric HGVs surely gets us there instead.
    Getting long-distance freight off the roads and onto rail should be a priority. HS2 is needed for that reason alone, and government need to sell it as such.

    Trucks add to congestion and are responsible for pretty much all the wear on the roads (which is related to the fourth power of axle weight).

    Where you are totally correct though, is that voters in Red Wall towns (not cities) almost exclusively travel primarily by car, and that they see road improvements as a much higher priority than rail. Levelling up means investment in roads, which also has the political advantage of not taking several decades to come to fruition.
    The problem is there isn't really such a thing as long distance transportation in England.

    In Canada or America where freight is transported thousands of miles that's one thing, but in this country nowhere is thousands of miles from anywhere else.

    A very good point that roads don't take decades too though.
    It’s definitely much easier to justify in larger countries, where road shipping can take several days - but there’s definitely a case for rail freight, which is currently capacity constrained by the need to accommodate higher-speed passenger traffic on the same lines.

    Going from Southampton or Felixstowe to Manchester or Newcastle, would be much easier by rail than road.
    And make the lives of many car drivers much pleasanter. My totally unscientific guess is that it would cut congestion on the local motorways and the A5 by 40%, given their size and speeds. Think what a difference that would make to us all.*

    And at the same time solve many of the problems around driver shortages.

    *and it would bankrupt the M6 Toll. So no downside whatsoever.
    The M6 Toll is my favourite British road. The only thing wrong with it, is that it has a speed limit.
    The southbound M40 is good for Vmax runs as there is a long stretch where is no place for the pigs to hide.
    The Tamworth Two did OK for a fair while :wink:
    Ha.

    Reminds me of when some wild boar escaped in Wiltshire. The police went to a local hunter and tried to borrow something suitable to shoot them with - 5.56 would just upset a wild boar. He told them to do one - it wasn't long after the Raoul Moat thing - where a gun dealer had been prosecuted and treated like a criminal - for providing the *police* with a specialist *non lethal* weapon.

  • The message about being a fatty in relation to covid seems to totally gone by the wayside...

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/08/health/covid-fat-obesity.html
  • .

    HYUFD said:

    Endillion said:

    HYUFD said:

    Rishi is a very strong communicator.
    But he is an Ayn Rand ultra, and supported Brexit from the start. He therefore clearly has a screw loose somewhere.

    I don’t want a plutocrat as PM, I think on balance I’d prefer Truss even though she is actually ghastly.

    If he is an Ayn Rand ultra how come he has spent far more than George Osborne or Philip Hammond did as Chancellor or indeed more than Gordon Brown did in New Labour's first term? He has also raised corporation tax and NI
    Some confusion, I think: Javid is the Ayn Rand ultra; I'm not aware that Sunak is.
    Though in the Cabinet Javid seems most keen on new state imposed Covid restrictions along with Gove, which is hardly Ayn Rand.

    The closest Tory leadership contender to Rand ideology is actually probably Steve Baker
    That a lunatic like Rand even features on the reading lists of potential leadership contenders shows how far the Tories have drifted from the mainstream.
    Rand is one of the greatest authors of the 20th century. 👍

    No wonder leftwing loonies despise her. They'd rather be reading Marx.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,182

    On topic there is little practical benefit to putting in restrictions for Christmas at this stage. Plans have been made. People are travelling as we speak. Food has been bought.

    The chances of getting the population to comply this year are nigh on impossible, given how late it is in the day and all the news stories that are coming out about last year (“it was OK for you guys then,” etc…)

    I suspect we’ll get advisory warnings not to mix more than 2 households or whatever which will be promptly ignored by all and sundry.

    I’m not even sure restrictions after Christmas are going to be particularly closely followed. The festive season isn’t just Christmas Day: it’s often a chain of events leading up to and including New Year’s Day.

    The first day where meaningful restrictions can probably be introduced is from 2 January - the miserable weeks where nothing much happens anyway.

    No, I won't accept that 'nothing much happens anyway'. (Even though that will be entirely the case for me.) Up and down the country there will be thousands of opportunities for life missed; thousands of birthday parties cancelled; thousands of events un-had. Saying 'I don't mind too much because I'm not planning anything' is the approach which leads to doom. We should oppose these impositions on principle as far outside the remit of a government to implement, and in practice because the effect they will have on reducing deaths will be almost nil.
  • A third dose of Moderna Inc.’s Covid-19 vaccine increased antibody levels against the omicron variant, results the company described as reassuring while it works on a shot tailored to the new strain.

    A 50 microgram booster dose - the authorized amount, which is half the dose used for primary immunization - saw a 37-fold increase in neutralizing antibodies, the company said in a statement Monday. The company also tested a 100 microgram dose, which increased antibody levels 83-fold compared with the primary two-dose course.


    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-20/moderna-booster-increases-antibodies-37-fold-against-omicron

    Should we have been having a full third dose then?
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,873

    Cyclefree said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    You might like to look up the CV of Rachel Reeves.
    I like Rachel but not labour's throw billions at each and every problem
    £37 billion thrown at Test and Trace. Described as an "eye watering waste of money" which failed to achieve its objective.

    But at least the money was spent with the "right sort of people" ;)
    The issue with trying to use test and trace has been an issue all along - asymptomatic and pre-symtpomatic transmission. Once you have that in mix I'd argue its almost impossible to shut down transmission chains with the interconnected lives we lead. Even with the original strain, even with the first lockdown, we didn't reach zero covid, even in Scotland.
    However, it is possible to see an effect. In the SW, the scandal of the testing failures at Immensa genuinly did seem to lead to an increase in cases as false negatives went about their business and spread the disease. I was wrong on the surge that followed - I initially thought it was just catch up testing, but the scale suggests it wasn't.

    We are not at the point where the question needs to be - what do we gain by testing 1.6M a day? Transmission of omicron is so potent, and the original issues remain and asympto and pre-symptomatic spread. I'd argue now we should focus on testing in secondary care at point of admission, and use the money saved to improve ventilationg and air filtration in places where it might do some good - care homes, hospitals and schools.
    It would have been more effective to hand out LFTs to every household. People do seem to use them and would tell their friends and family. Even the 20 year olds I know do it because they worry about parents and grandparents.
    We are pretty much doing that now. School kids and workplaces. I'd also suggest that a vast proportion of negatve tests are not reported.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,727
    If @DavidGHFrost has gone because he could not accept collective responsibility for #covid plan B, was he just going to pretend that he did until January, which was when he originally planned to stand down?
    https://twitter.com/GlennBBC/status/1472885431054258177
    https://twitter.com/bbcpolitics/status/1472880775951536132
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 5,779

    Cyclefree said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    You might like to look up the CV of Rachel Reeves.
    I like Rachel but not labour's throw billions at each and every problem
    £37 billion thrown at Test and Trace. Described as an "eye watering waste of money" which failed to achieve its objective.

    But at least the money was spent with the "right sort of people" ;)
    The issue with trying to use test and trace has been an issue all along - asymptomatic and pre-symtpomatic transmission. Once you have that in mix I'd argue its almost impossible to shut down transmission chains with the interconnected lives we lead. Even with the original strain, even with the first lockdown, we didn't reach zero covid, even in Scotland.
    However, it is possible to see an effect. In the SW, the scandal of the testing failures at Immensa genuinly did seem to lead to an increase in cases as false negatives went about their business and spread the disease. I was wrong on the surge that followed - I initially thought it was just catch up testing, but the scale suggests it wasn't.

    We are not at the point where the question needs to be - what do we gain by testing 1.6M a day? Transmission of omicron is so potent, and the original issues remain and asympto and pre-symptomatic spread. I'd argue now we should focus on testing in secondary care at point of admission, and use the money saved to improve ventilationg and air filtration in places where it might do some good - care homes, hospitals and schools.
    It would have been more effective to hand out LFTs to every household. People do seem to use them and would tell their friends and family. Even the 20 year olds I know do it because they worry about parents and grandparents.
    There is a LFT "census" idea being floated in Scotland. Everyone does one on the same day.

    I really like the idea from an analytical perspective, but it does feel a bit Big Brother.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226
    Phil said:

    moonshine said:

    Phil said:

    moonshine said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    Investment isn't a problem - it's throwing money at day to day spending for pet projects that was Brown's and Labour's problem.

    Prime example - to hit our CO2 commitments we need 50% of freight going via rail.

    That requires HS2E and NPR to hit those commitments and we cancelled those within a month of COP26 to be replaced with nothing to fixes the commitment.
    Why do we need any of our freight to go via rail? Let alone 50% of it when rail is currently from memory just 4%?

    Investing in electric HGVs surely gets us there instead.
    10% of all freight "tonne-kilometres" last year according to Statistica.

    (pre-pandemic 2018 is much the same).

    I believe rail freight in theis country is pretty much supply constrained - if we had more capacity then industry would use it.
    The UK is a different freight market to the US. But I’m pretty confident that Tesla Semis will be bankrupting the US rail freight industry in pretty short order.

    The Tesla Semi that they’ve effectively pushed into the long grass? That they promised for 2019 originally, but are now saying they might start producing them in 2023?

    US rail freight is dominated by bulk goods. A 2 mile long freight train full to the brim of aggregate, bricks, steel, is going to outperform 200+ Teslsa trucks every time - the economics just don’t work any other way.

    If they can make those trucks driverless? Then maybe, just maybe the economics might shift, but even then you’re shipping extra weight and complexity for no good reason compared to a train.

    Freight goes by train for a reason though.

    You’ll see.
    Man, Musk lickers are all the same. No actual arguments, just pure, un-adultered belief in a Musk-ridden future.

    Go on, explain to me /why/ the Tesla Semi will drive US rail freight out of business. How is that going to work? Is there actually sufficient road capacity in the US to take that rail freight in the first place? If so, how expensive is it going to be to roll out these trucks & what do the amortised costs look like compared to current freight costs?

    If it’s so obvious, then the numbers must be staring people in the face. Where are they?
    I spent quite a bit of time here explaining why the stock was a screaming buy when the market cap was probably about £50bn. Do your own research this time.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,585
    Endillion said:

    HYUFD said:

    Endillion said:

    HYUFD said:

    Rishi is a very strong communicator.
    But he is an Ayn Rand ultra, and supported Brexit from the start. He therefore clearly has a screw loose somewhere.

    I don’t want a plutocrat as PM, I think on balance I’d prefer Truss even though she is actually ghastly.

    If he is an Ayn Rand ultra how come he has spent far more than George Osborne or Philip Hammond did as Chancellor or indeed more than Gordon Brown did in New Labour's first term? He has also raised corporation tax and NI
    Some confusion, I think: Javid is the Ayn Rand ultra; I'm not aware that Sunak is.
    Though in the Cabinet Javid seems most keen on new state imposed Covid restrictions along with Gove, which is hardly Ayn Rand.

    The closest Tory leadership contender to Rand ideology is actually probably Steve Baker
    That a lunatic like Rand even features on the reading lists of potential leadership contenders shows how far the Tories have drifted from the mainstream.
    That's unfair. How many plausible future Labour leaders have, at some point, read Karl Marx and thought he made some great points? Is it all of them?
    Karl Marx made some good points *for his time* - most were superseded by later economic theory and proved not to be correct.

    Ayn Rand made some interesting points about the modern society - in which suppressing the activities of innovators is structural.

    It's almost as if human knowledge is accumulated, *progressively*, in an on going process.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    edited December 2021

    .

    HYUFD said:

    Endillion said:

    HYUFD said:

    Rishi is a very strong communicator.
    But he is an Ayn Rand ultra, and supported Brexit from the start. He therefore clearly has a screw loose somewhere.

    I don’t want a plutocrat as PM, I think on balance I’d prefer Truss even though she is actually ghastly.

    If he is an Ayn Rand ultra how come he has spent far more than George Osborne or Philip Hammond did as Chancellor or indeed more than Gordon Brown did in New Labour's first term? He has also raised corporation tax and NI
    Some confusion, I think: Javid is the Ayn Rand ultra; I'm not aware that Sunak is.
    Though in the Cabinet Javid seems most keen on new state imposed Covid restrictions along with Gove, which is hardly Ayn Rand.

    The closest Tory leadership contender to Rand ideology is actually probably Steve Baker
    That a lunatic like Rand even features on the reading lists of potential leadership contenders shows how far the Tories have drifted from the mainstream.
    Rand is one of the greatest authors of the 20th century. 👍

    No wonder leftwing loonies despise her. They'd rather be reading Marx.
    I’m currently reading “Rationality” by Steven Pinker - very relevant to current times, with lots of examples of how data does not match with perception, especially on things which are influenced by news media.

    A huge number of Americans think that more people die in plane crashes than in car crashes, and most Westerners don’t see that the number of people living in poverty (actual poverty, rather than inequality), has never been lower even as the population increases. Fewer people die in war today, than at almost any time in history, and the pace of technological change now means that even subsistence farmers in Africa have mobile phones with internet access.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,706
    edited December 2021
    Endillion said:

    HYUFD said:

    Endillion said:

    HYUFD said:

    Rishi is a very strong communicator.
    But he is an Ayn Rand ultra, and supported Brexit from the start. He therefore clearly has a screw loose somewhere.

    I don’t want a plutocrat as PM, I think on balance I’d prefer Truss even though she is actually ghastly.

    If he is an Ayn Rand ultra how come he has spent far more than George Osborne or Philip Hammond did as Chancellor or indeed more than Gordon Brown did in New Labour's first term? He has also raised corporation tax and NI
    Some confusion, I think: Javid is the Ayn Rand ultra; I'm not aware that Sunak is.
    Though in the Cabinet Javid seems most keen on new state imposed Covid restrictions along with Gove, which is hardly Ayn Rand.

    The closest Tory leadership contender to Rand ideology is actually probably Steve Baker
    That a lunatic like Rand even features on the reading lists of potential leadership contenders shows how far the Tories have drifted from the mainstream.
    That's unfair. How many plausible future Labour leaders have, at some point, read Karl Marx and thought he made some great points? Is it all of them?
    Indeed, Labour was even led by a leader who was effectively a socialist or even a Marxist from late 2015-early 2020.

    It is no surprise the Tories have a few leadership contenders who are effectively pure libertarian, ultra capitalist, small state Ayn Rand fans on the other extreme
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    edited December 2021
    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    eek said:

    ydoethur said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    eek said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    Investment isn't a problem - it's throwing money at day to day spending for pet projects that was Brown's and Labour's problem.

    Prime example - to hit our CO2 commitments we need 50% of freight going via rail.

    That requires HS2E and NPR to hit those commitments and we cancelled those within a month of COP26 to be replaced with nothing to fixes the commitment.
    Why do we need any of our freight to go via rail? Let alone 50% of it when rail is currently from memory just 4%?

    Investing in electric HGVs surely gets us there instead.
    Getting long-distance freight off the roads and onto rail should be a priority. HS2 is needed for that reason alone, and government need to sell it as such.

    Trucks add to congestion and are responsible for pretty much all the wear on the roads (which is related to the fourth power of axle weight).

    Where you are totally correct though, is that voters in Red Wall towns (not cities) almost exclusively travel primarily by car, and that they see road improvements as a much higher priority than rail. Levelling up means investment in roads, which also has the political advantage of not taking several decades to come to fruition.
    The problem is there isn't really such a thing as long distance transportation in England.

    In Canada or America where freight is transported thousands of miles that's one thing, but in this country nowhere is thousands of miles from anywhere else.

    A very good point that roads don't take decades too though.
    It’s definitely much easier to justify in larger countries, where road shipping can take several days - but there’s definitely a case for rail freight, which is currently capacity constrained by the need to accommodate higher-speed passenger traffic on the same lines.

    Going from Southampton or Felixstowe to Manchester or Newcastle, would be much easier by rail than road.
    And make the lives of many car drivers much pleasanter. My totally unscientific guess is that it would cut congestion on the local motorways and the A5 by 40%, given their size and speeds. Think what a difference that would make to us all.*

    And at the same time solve many of the problems around driver shortages.

    *and it would bankrupt the M6 Toll. So no downside whatsoever.
    Which shows the flaw in your logic.

    Currently rail transportation is between 4-10% of of all tonne-miles transportation depending upon how you measure it. Currently road transportation is ~90%.

    How are you going to remove 40% of all road transportation off the roads? What increase in rail capacity would be required to achieve that?

    There seems to be a thought of "invest in rails and HGVs will disappear" but that's quite simply not going to happen.
    Remarkably little.

    HS2E will allow 4 freight trains an hour on ECML and 4 on Midland mainline.

    At 30 to 45 container per train that's 240 to 360 containers an hour or 3-6000+ a day...
    And what percentage of road transportation is that removed from the roads? Is that 100% of freight taken of the motorways? 95%? 1%?
    17 billion miles in 2017 according to this.

    https://www.fueltek.co.uk/population-of-lorries-on-uk-roads-whats-the-impact/

    Let's assume each container weighs 25 tons on average. 25 x 17 gives 425 billion ton miles.

    Let's then assume that these 5,000 containers on the railways are carried 200 miles each. That's 10,000 miles, times 25, that's 2.5 million ton miles per day, multiplied by 300 (for the number of days used after Sundays and public holidays) I make that 7.5 billion ton miles or 40% of road freight.

    Those figures are very rough and may easily be wrong (you're the mathematician not me) but anywhere in that ballpark would make a pretty significant different.

    Edit - well, now I look at it that 10,000 figure is clearly BS, should have been 100,000!
    I'm skeptical about the bulk of your calculations but considering Leeds to Birmingham isn't 200 miles in distance in the first place, I'm curious how the average would be 200 miles achieved on average from HS2E?

    This is the problem, we're aren't a country where goods want to be moved 200 miles on average in the first place anyway.
    HS2E is in effect London to Leeds, in terms of the capacity it opens up. 194 miles by road although just 170 by rail (there's another saving for you right there).
    Nope, for freight it's actually Tilbury / Bristol / Southampton / Daventry to Daventry / Leeds/ Sheffield / York because of the routes it opens up.

    For passengers it's Everywhere to anywhere that isn't London / Sheffield / Nottingham / Leeds on the ECML / Midland mainline because it will allow those stations to actually have consistent regular train services.

    Daventry is why HS2E is going anywhere at all - not that the IPR tells you that on any page of the document...
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,873

    A third dose of Moderna Inc.’s Covid-19 vaccine increased antibody levels against the omicron variant, results the company described as reassuring while it works on a shot tailored to the new strain.

    A 50 microgram booster dose - the authorized amount, which is half the dose used for primary immunization - saw a 37-fold increase in neutralizing antibodies, the company said in a statement Monday. The company also tested a 100 microgram dose, which increased antibody levels 83-fold compared with the primary two-dose course.


    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-20/moderna-booster-increases-antibodies-37-fold-against-omicron

    Should we have been having a full third dose then?
    Quite possibly, although I wouldn't get hung up on 37x vs 83x. There would be very little difference in practical terms in the neutralisation from this.
  • John Rentoul
    @JohnRentoul
    ·
    2m
    If there were a Tory leadership election now, who would run? Sunak, Truss, Mordaunt, Hunt, Javid, Raab, Gove, Zahawi...?
  • BurgessianBurgessian Posts: 2,394

    .

    HYUFD said:

    Endillion said:

    HYUFD said:

    Rishi is a very strong communicator.
    But he is an Ayn Rand ultra, and supported Brexit from the start. He therefore clearly has a screw loose somewhere.

    I don’t want a plutocrat as PM, I think on balance I’d prefer Truss even though she is actually ghastly.

    If he is an Ayn Rand ultra how come he has spent far more than George Osborne or Philip Hammond did as Chancellor or indeed more than Gordon Brown did in New Labour's first term? He has also raised corporation tax and NI
    Some confusion, I think: Javid is the Ayn Rand ultra; I'm not aware that Sunak is.
    Though in the Cabinet Javid seems most keen on new state imposed Covid restrictions along with Gove, which is hardly Ayn Rand.

    The closest Tory leadership contender to Rand ideology is actually probably Steve Baker
    That a lunatic like Rand even features on the reading lists of potential leadership contenders shows how far the Tories have drifted from the mainstream.
    Rand is one of the greatest authors of the 20th century. 👍

    No wonder leftwing loonies despise her. They'd rather be reading Marx.
    I was once lent a copy of "Atlas Shrugged" by an American friend. It's one of the few books I have ever given up on. Found it quite unreadable. Had the same sort of experience when I was once taken to a service at a church with the service fronted by a preacher-man type. Maybe I'm just too British.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,873
    Eabhal said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    You might like to look up the CV of Rachel Reeves.
    I like Rachel but not labour's throw billions at each and every problem
    £37 billion thrown at Test and Trace. Described as an "eye watering waste of money" which failed to achieve its objective.

    But at least the money was spent with the "right sort of people" ;)
    The issue with trying to use test and trace has been an issue all along - asymptomatic and pre-symtpomatic transmission. Once you have that in mix I'd argue its almost impossible to shut down transmission chains with the interconnected lives we lead. Even with the original strain, even with the first lockdown, we didn't reach zero covid, even in Scotland.
    However, it is possible to see an effect. In the SW, the scandal of the testing failures at Immensa genuinly did seem to lead to an increase in cases as false negatives went about their business and spread the disease. I was wrong on the surge that followed - I initially thought it was just catch up testing, but the scale suggests it wasn't.

    We are not at the point where the question needs to be - what do we gain by testing 1.6M a day? Transmission of omicron is so potent, and the original issues remain and asympto and pre-symptomatic spread. I'd argue now we should focus on testing in secondary care at point of admission, and use the money saved to improve ventilationg and air filtration in places where it might do some good - care homes, hospitals and schools.
    It would have been more effective to hand out LFTs to every household. People do seem to use them and would tell their friends and family. Even the 20 year olds I know do it because they worry about parents and grandparents.
    There is a LFT "census" idea being floated in Scotland. Everyone does one on the same day.

    I really like the idea from an analytical perspective, but it does feel a bit Big Brother.
    And then 6 hours later all those who were pre-symptomatic would show positive...
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,111
    HYUFD said:

    Endillion said:

    HYUFD said:

    Endillion said:

    HYUFD said:

    Rishi is a very strong communicator.
    But he is an Ayn Rand ultra, and supported Brexit from the start. He therefore clearly has a screw loose somewhere.

    I don’t want a plutocrat as PM, I think on balance I’d prefer Truss even though she is actually ghastly.

    If he is an Ayn Rand ultra how come he has spent far more than George Osborne or Philip Hammond did as Chancellor or indeed more than Gordon Brown did in New Labour's first term? He has also raised corporation tax and NI
    Some confusion, I think: Javid is the Ayn Rand ultra; I'm not aware that Sunak is.
    Though in the Cabinet Javid seems most keen on new state imposed Covid restrictions along with Gove, which is hardly Ayn Rand.

    The closest Tory leadership contender to Rand ideology is actually probably Steve Baker
    That a lunatic like Rand even features on the reading lists of potential leadership contenders shows how far the Tories have drifted from the mainstream.
    That's unfair. How many plausible future Labour leaders have, at some point, read Karl Marx and thought he made some great points? Is it all of them?
    Indeed, Labour was even led by a leader who was effectively a socialist or even a Marxist from late 2015-early 2020.

    It is no surprise the Tories have a few leadership contenders who are effectively pure libertarian, ultra capitalist, small state Ayn Rand fans on the other extreme
    Exactly. Raving extremists and subversives seeking to destroy the body politic, the lot of them.
  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,005

    HYUFD said:

    Endillion said:

    HYUFD said:

    Rishi is a very strong communicator.
    But he is an Ayn Rand ultra, and supported Brexit from the start. He therefore clearly has a screw loose somewhere.

    I don’t want a plutocrat as PM, I think on balance I’d prefer Truss even though she is actually ghastly.

    If he is an Ayn Rand ultra how come he has spent far more than George Osborne or Philip Hammond did as Chancellor or indeed more than Gordon Brown did in New Labour's first term? He has also raised corporation tax and NI
    Some confusion, I think: Javid is the Ayn Rand ultra; I'm not aware that Sunak is.
    Though in the Cabinet Javid seems most keen on new state imposed Covid restrictions along with Gove, which is hardly Ayn Rand.

    The closest Tory leadership contender to Rand ideology is actually probably Steve Baker
    That a lunatic like Rand even features on the reading lists of potential leadership contenders shows how far the Tories have drifted from the mainstream.
    I think she has some interesting ideas - as does Marx. I don't believe she was much of a novelist though.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,837

    A third dose of Moderna Inc.’s Covid-19 vaccine increased antibody levels against the omicron variant, results the company described as reassuring while it works on a shot tailored to the new strain.

    A 50 microgram booster dose - the authorized amount, which is half the dose used for primary immunization - saw a 37-fold increase in neutralizing antibodies, the company said in a statement Monday. The company also tested a 100 microgram dose, which increased antibody levels 83-fold compared with the primary two-dose course.


    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-20/moderna-booster-increases-antibodies-37-fold-against-omicron

    Should we have been having a full third dose then?
    Hmm, given the Mike Tysonesque side effects it's debatable. I'd have chosen the full dose, but I think many would opt for half if they had to do it again.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,546
    edited December 2021

    Cyclefree said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    You might like to look up the CV of Rachel Reeves.
    I like Rachel but not labour's throw billions at each and every problem
    £37 billion thrown at Test and Trace. Described as an "eye watering waste of money" which failed to achieve its objective.

    But at least the money was spent with the "right sort of people" ;)
    The issue with trying to use test and trace has been an issue all along - asymptomatic and pre-symtpomatic transmission. Once you have that in mix I'd argue its almost impossible to shut down transmission chains with the interconnected lives we lead. Even with the original strain, even with the first lockdown, we didn't reach zero covid, even in Scotland.
    However, it is possible to see an effect. In the SW, the scandal of the testing failures at Immensa genuinly did seem to lead to an increase in cases as false negatives went about their business and spread the disease. I was wrong on the surge that followed - I initially thought it was just catch up testing, but the scale suggests it wasn't.

    We are not at the point where the question needs to be - what do we gain by testing 1.6M a day? Transmission of omicron is so potent, and the original issues remain and asympto and pre-symptomatic spread. I'd argue now we should focus on testing in secondary care at point of admission, and use the money saved to improve ventilationg and air filtration in places where it might do some good - care homes, hospitals and schools.
    It would have been more effective to hand out LFTs to every household. People do seem to use them and would tell their friends and family. Even the 20 year olds I know do it because they worry about parents and grandparents.
    As I said over a year ago.
    Would have been a great deal cheaper, too.
  • Scott_xP said:
    Scary graph...next slide please...scary graph....next slide please.....
  • HYUFD said:

    Endillion said:

    HYUFD said:

    Rishi is a very strong communicator.
    But he is an Ayn Rand ultra, and supported Brexit from the start. He therefore clearly has a screw loose somewhere.

    I don’t want a plutocrat as PM, I think on balance I’d prefer Truss even though she is actually ghastly.

    If he is an Ayn Rand ultra how come he has spent far more than George Osborne or Philip Hammond did as Chancellor or indeed more than Gordon Brown did in New Labour's first term? He has also raised corporation tax and NI
    Some confusion, I think: Javid is the Ayn Rand ultra; I'm not aware that Sunak is.
    Though in the Cabinet Javid seems most keen on new state imposed Covid restrictions along with Gove, which is hardly Ayn Rand.

    The closest Tory leadership contender to Rand ideology is actually probably Steve Baker
    That a lunatic like Rand even features on the reading lists of potential leadership contenders shows how far the Tories have drifted from the mainstream.
    I think she has some interesting ideas - as does Marx. I don't believe she was much of a novelist though.
    I tried Atlas Shrugged once - couldn't get beyond about the sixth paragraph.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,873
    Sandpit said:

    .

    HYUFD said:

    Endillion said:

    HYUFD said:

    Rishi is a very strong communicator.
    But he is an Ayn Rand ultra, and supported Brexit from the start. He therefore clearly has a screw loose somewhere.

    I don’t want a plutocrat as PM, I think on balance I’d prefer Truss even though she is actually ghastly.

    If he is an Ayn Rand ultra how come he has spent far more than George Osborne or Philip Hammond did as Chancellor or indeed more than Gordon Brown did in New Labour's first term? He has also raised corporation tax and NI
    Some confusion, I think: Javid is the Ayn Rand ultra; I'm not aware that Sunak is.
    Though in the Cabinet Javid seems most keen on new state imposed Covid restrictions along with Gove, which is hardly Ayn Rand.

    The closest Tory leadership contender to Rand ideology is actually probably Steve Baker
    That a lunatic like Rand even features on the reading lists of potential leadership contenders shows how far the Tories have drifted from the mainstream.
    Rand is one of the greatest authors of the 20th century. 👍

    No wonder leftwing loonies despise her. They'd rather be reading Marx.
    I’m currently reading “Rationality” by Steven Pinker - very relevant to current times, with lots of examples of how data does not match with perception, especially on things which are influenced by news media.

    A huge number of Americans think that more people die in plane crashes than in car crashes, and most Westerners don’t see that the number of people living in poverty (actual poverty, rather than inequality), has never been lower even as the population increases.
    Poverty has been redefined so that it can never be eliminated. If its defined as "earning less than 60% of the median income" (Joseph Rowntree foundation) then there is likely always to be poverty. One of the issues is what the average person thinks is poverty vs the reality. So a family with a 42 inch TV and Sky, smoking and drinking etc will not appear to be in poverty to many, whereas they can be defined as such.
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 5,779

    Eabhal said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    You might like to look up the CV of Rachel Reeves.
    I like Rachel but not labour's throw billions at each and every problem
    £37 billion thrown at Test and Trace. Described as an "eye watering waste of money" which failed to achieve its objective.

    But at least the money was spent with the "right sort of people" ;)
    The issue with trying to use test and trace has been an issue all along - asymptomatic and pre-symtpomatic transmission. Once you have that in mix I'd argue its almost impossible to shut down transmission chains with the interconnected lives we lead. Even with the original strain, even with the first lockdown, we didn't reach zero covid, even in Scotland.
    However, it is possible to see an effect. In the SW, the scandal of the testing failures at Immensa genuinly did seem to lead to an increase in cases as false negatives went about their business and spread the disease. I was wrong on the surge that followed - I initially thought it was just catch up testing, but the scale suggests it wasn't.

    We are not at the point where the question needs to be - what do we gain by testing 1.6M a day? Transmission of omicron is so potent, and the original issues remain and asympto and pre-symptomatic spread. I'd argue now we should focus on testing in secondary care at point of admission, and use the money saved to improve ventilationg and air filtration in places where it might do some good - care homes, hospitals and schools.
    It would have been more effective to hand out LFTs to every household. People do seem to use them and would tell their friends and family. Even the 20 year olds I know do it because they worry about parents and grandparents.
    There is a LFT "census" idea being floated in Scotland. Everyone does one on the same day.

    I really like the idea from an analytical perspective, but it does feel a bit Big Brother.
    And then 6 hours later all those who were pre-symptomatic would show positive...
    No doubt. But I think the objective would be to get a clear picture of how many people are symptomatic at one time and compare to the usual data we have for calibration.

    Not sure whether the ONS random testing sample size is large enough for Scotland-level analysis. I might have a dig into it this afternoon...
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,585

    NIMS vs ONS and why London in particular may be better vaccinated than believed:



    https://ukandeu.ac.uk/vaccination-have-a-third-of-londoners-really-not-had-any-covid-19-jabs/

    Using ONS mid 2020, the unprotected as percentages....

    image
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,080
    Probably something that needs to be managed carefully.

    The mandate does not arrive until April.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535
    Sandpit said:

    A huge number of Americans think that more people die in plane crashes than in car crashes,

    That really surprises me, air travel has long been pitched as "the safest form of transport", and car crashes are common enough that most people probably see one or the results of one every few months or so.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    .

    HYUFD said:

    Endillion said:

    HYUFD said:

    Rishi is a very strong communicator.
    But he is an Ayn Rand ultra, and supported Brexit from the start. He therefore clearly has a screw loose somewhere.

    I don’t want a plutocrat as PM, I think on balance I’d prefer Truss even though she is actually ghastly.

    If he is an Ayn Rand ultra how come he has spent far more than George Osborne or Philip Hammond did as Chancellor or indeed more than Gordon Brown did in New Labour's first term? He has also raised corporation tax and NI
    Some confusion, I think: Javid is the Ayn Rand ultra; I'm not aware that Sunak is.
    Though in the Cabinet Javid seems most keen on new state imposed Covid restrictions along with Gove, which is hardly Ayn Rand.

    The closest Tory leadership contender to Rand ideology is actually probably Steve Baker
    That a lunatic like Rand even features on the reading lists of potential leadership contenders shows how far the Tories have drifted from the mainstream.
    Rand is one of the greatest authors of the 20th century. 👍

    No wonder leftwing loonies despise her. They'd rather be reading Marx.
    It’s not really possible to have a rounded knowledge of economics, politics or history without some familiarity with Marx.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    On the difficulty of deciding on a lockdown given currently available information


    Prof. Christina Pagel
    @chrischirp
    Using deaths or hopsitalisations (which are very lagged indicators) as a marker of Omicron wave's potential severity when cases have risen so rapidly and only reached high levels in the last week is pure abuse of statistics from Heneghan.

    Simply put the publicly available data isn't good enough to make any decision regardless of people's viewpoints.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941
    MattW said:

    Probably something that needs to be managed carefully.

    The mandate does not arrive until April.
    40 midwives in a single unit? That sounds like an awfully large number of vaccine refusers given the national take-up rate.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,546
    .

    HYUFD said:

    Endillion said:

    HYUFD said:

    Rishi is a very strong communicator.
    But he is an Ayn Rand ultra, and supported Brexit from the start. He therefore clearly has a screw loose somewhere.

    I don’t want a plutocrat as PM, I think on balance I’d prefer Truss even though she is actually ghastly.

    If he is an Ayn Rand ultra how come he has spent far more than George Osborne or Philip Hammond did as Chancellor or indeed more than Gordon Brown did in New Labour's first term? He has also raised corporation tax and NI
    Some confusion, I think: Javid is the Ayn Rand ultra; I'm not aware that Sunak is.
    Though in the Cabinet Javid seems most keen on new state imposed Covid restrictions along with Gove, which is hardly Ayn Rand.

    The closest Tory leadership contender to Rand ideology is actually probably Steve Baker
    That a lunatic like Rand even features on the reading lists of potential leadership contenders shows how far the Tories have drifted from the mainstream.
    I think she has some interesting ideas - as does Marx. I don't believe she was much of a novelist though.
    I tried Atlas Shrugged once - couldn't get beyond about the sixth paragraph.
    I shrugged, too.
  • Sandpit said:

    .

    HYUFD said:

    Endillion said:

    HYUFD said:

    Rishi is a very strong communicator.
    But he is an Ayn Rand ultra, and supported Brexit from the start. He therefore clearly has a screw loose somewhere.

    I don’t want a plutocrat as PM, I think on balance I’d prefer Truss even though she is actually ghastly.

    If he is an Ayn Rand ultra how come he has spent far more than George Osborne or Philip Hammond did as Chancellor or indeed more than Gordon Brown did in New Labour's first term? He has also raised corporation tax and NI
    Some confusion, I think: Javid is the Ayn Rand ultra; I'm not aware that Sunak is.
    Though in the Cabinet Javid seems most keen on new state imposed Covid restrictions along with Gove, which is hardly Ayn Rand.

    The closest Tory leadership contender to Rand ideology is actually probably Steve Baker
    That a lunatic like Rand even features on the reading lists of potential leadership contenders shows how far the Tories have drifted from the mainstream.
    Rand is one of the greatest authors of the 20th century. 👍

    No wonder leftwing loonies despise her. They'd rather be reading Marx.
    I’m currently reading “Rationality” by Steven Pinker - very relevant to current times, with lots of examples of how data does not match with perception, especially on things which are influenced by news media.

    A huge number of Americans think that more people die in plane crashes than in car crashes, and most Westerners don’t see that the number of people living in poverty (actual poverty, rather than inequality), has never been lower even as the population increases. Fewer people die in war today, than at almost any time in history, and the pace of technological change now means that even subsistence farmers in Africa have mobile phones with internet access.
    Factfulness covers similar ground very well.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,727
    edited December 2021
    eek said:

    On the difficulty of deciding on a lockdown given currently available information


    Prof. Christina Pagel
    @chrischirp
    Using deaths or hopsitalisations (which are very lagged indicators) as a marker of Omicron wave's potential severity when cases have risen so rapidly and only reached high levels in the last week is pure abuse of statistics from Heneghan.

    Simply put the publicly available data isn't good enough to make any decision regardless of people's viewpoints.

    She doesn't understand irony, does she?
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,727

    John Rentoul
    @JohnRentoul
    ·
    2m
    If there were a Tory leadership election now, who would run? Sunak, Truss, Mordaunt, Hunt, Javid, Raab, Gove, Zahawi...?

    Zahawi is the interesting one

    Impeccable Brexit credentials.

    Good Covid record.
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 5,779

    Sandpit said:

    .

    HYUFD said:

    Endillion said:

    HYUFD said:

    Rishi is a very strong communicator.
    But he is an Ayn Rand ultra, and supported Brexit from the start. He therefore clearly has a screw loose somewhere.

    I don’t want a plutocrat as PM, I think on balance I’d prefer Truss even though she is actually ghastly.

    If he is an Ayn Rand ultra how come he has spent far more than George Osborne or Philip Hammond did as Chancellor or indeed more than Gordon Brown did in New Labour's first term? He has also raised corporation tax and NI
    Some confusion, I think: Javid is the Ayn Rand ultra; I'm not aware that Sunak is.
    Though in the Cabinet Javid seems most keen on new state imposed Covid restrictions along with Gove, which is hardly Ayn Rand.

    The closest Tory leadership contender to Rand ideology is actually probably Steve Baker
    That a lunatic like Rand even features on the reading lists of potential leadership contenders shows how far the Tories have drifted from the mainstream.
    Rand is one of the greatest authors of the 20th century. 👍

    No wonder leftwing loonies despise her. They'd rather be reading Marx.
    I’m currently reading “Rationality” by Steven Pinker - very relevant to current times, with lots of examples of how data does not match with perception, especially on things which are influenced by news media.

    A huge number of Americans think that more people die in plane crashes than in car crashes, and most Westerners don’t see that the number of people living in poverty (actual poverty, rather than inequality), has never been lower even as the population increases.
    Poverty has been redefined so that it can never be eliminated. If its defined as "earning less than 60% of the median income" (Joseph Rowntree foundation) then there is likely always to be poverty. One of the issues is what the average person thinks is poverty vs the reality. So a family with a 42 inch TV and Sky, smoking and drinking etc will not appear to be in poverty to many, whereas they can be defined as such.
    Yup, it's a measure of inequality. If the median income increases, poverty actually goes up. It can lead to perverse policy decisions.

    It's also often reported 'after housing costs'. So overstates poverty levels in urban areas compared with rural ones (where transport might be a more important expense).
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Sandpit said:

    .

    HYUFD said:

    Endillion said:

    HYUFD said:

    Rishi is a very strong communicator.
    But he is an Ayn Rand ultra, and supported Brexit from the start. He therefore clearly has a screw loose somewhere.

    I don’t want a plutocrat as PM, I think on balance I’d prefer Truss even though she is actually ghastly.

    If he is an Ayn Rand ultra how come he has spent far more than George Osborne or Philip Hammond did as Chancellor or indeed more than Gordon Brown did in New Labour's first term? He has also raised corporation tax and NI
    Some confusion, I think: Javid is the Ayn Rand ultra; I'm not aware that Sunak is.
    Though in the Cabinet Javid seems most keen on new state imposed Covid restrictions along with Gove, which is hardly Ayn Rand.

    The closest Tory leadership contender to Rand ideology is actually probably Steve Baker
    That a lunatic like Rand even features on the reading lists of potential leadership contenders shows how far the Tories have drifted from the mainstream.
    Rand is one of the greatest authors of the 20th century. 👍

    No wonder leftwing loonies despise her. They'd rather be reading Marx.
    I’m currently reading “Rationality” by Steven Pinker - very relevant to current times, with lots of examples of how data does not match with perception, especially on things which are influenced by news media.

    A huge number of Americans think that more people die in plane crashes than in car crashes, and most Westerners don’t see that the number of people living in poverty (actual poverty, rather than inequality), has never been lower even as the population increases.
    Poverty has been redefined so that it can never be eliminated. If its defined as "earning less than 60% of the median income" (Joseph Rowntree foundation) then there is likely always to be poverty. One of the issues is what the average person thinks is poverty vs the reality. So a family with a 42 inch TV and Sky, smoking and drinking etc will not appear to be in poverty to many, whereas they can be defined as such.
    Yes, campaign groups have redefined the word ‘poverty’ to mean ‘inequality’. In 2009, at the height of the recession, the number of people living in ‘poverty’ went down, even as unemployment went up. The reason being, solely that the median income fell because of the recession causing unemployment!
  • Cookie said:

    On topic there is little practical benefit to putting in restrictions for Christmas at this stage. Plans have been made. People are travelling as we speak. Food has been bought.

    The chances of getting the population to comply this year are nigh on impossible, given how late it is in the day and all the news stories that are coming out about last year (“it was OK for you guys then,” etc…)

    I suspect we’ll get advisory warnings not to mix more than 2 households or whatever which will be promptly ignored by all and sundry.

    I’m not even sure restrictions after Christmas are going to be particularly closely followed. The festive season isn’t just Christmas Day: it’s often a chain of events leading up to and including New Year’s Day.

    The first day where meaningful restrictions can probably be introduced is from 2 January - the miserable weeks where nothing much happens anyway.

    No, I won't accept that 'nothing much happens anyway'. (Even though that will be entirely the case for me.) Up and down the country there will be thousands of opportunities for life missed; thousands of birthday parties cancelled; thousands of events un-had. Saying 'I don't mind too much because I'm not planning anything' is the approach which leads to doom. We should oppose these impositions on principle as far outside the remit of a government to implement, and in practice because the effect they will have on reducing deaths will be almost nil.
    I was being somewhat flippant with that comment and I wasn’t arguing for restrictions in the new year, merely getting into the heads of policy makers (a scary place!)

    I have lots I want to do in January too. Indeed I often find January more enjoyable than the Christmas period as the forced extended jollity doesn’t really float my boat. But you can’t argue that people are going to be more pliant in those weeks than they would be if they get the rug pulled from under them re Christmas.
  • ydoethur said:

    eek said:

    On the difficulty of deciding on a lockdown given currently available information


    Prof. Christina Pagel
    @chrischirp
    Using deaths or hopsitalisations (which are very lagged indicators) as a marker of Omicron wave's potential severity when cases have risen so rapidly and only reached high levels in the last week is pure abuse of statistics from Heneghan.

    Simply put the publicly available data isn't good enough to make any decision regardless of people's viewpoints.

    She doesn't understand irony, does she?
    Is hospitalisations "very lagged"?

    7 - 14 days iirc.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,456

    John Rentoul
    @JohnRentoul
    ·
    2m
    If there were a Tory leadership election now, who would run? Sunak, Truss, Mordaunt, Hunt, Javid, Raab, Gove, Zahawi...?

    Although one can never tell who will be ok until they actually do the job, the ones that come over as ok for me are:

    Sunak, Hunt, Javid, Zahawi

    Those who are a no-no are:

    Raab, Gove

    As for the other two I have mixed feelings about Truss and I don't know enough about Mordaunt, but generally feel positive.
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 5,779
    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    .

    HYUFD said:

    Endillion said:

    HYUFD said:

    Rishi is a very strong communicator.
    But he is an Ayn Rand ultra, and supported Brexit from the start. He therefore clearly has a screw loose somewhere.

    I don’t want a plutocrat as PM, I think on balance I’d prefer Truss even though she is actually ghastly.

    If he is an Ayn Rand ultra how come he has spent far more than George Osborne or Philip Hammond did as Chancellor or indeed more than Gordon Brown did in New Labour's first term? He has also raised corporation tax and NI
    Some confusion, I think: Javid is the Ayn Rand ultra; I'm not aware that Sunak is.
    Though in the Cabinet Javid seems most keen on new state imposed Covid restrictions along with Gove, which is hardly Ayn Rand.

    The closest Tory leadership contender to Rand ideology is actually probably Steve Baker
    That a lunatic like Rand even features on the reading lists of potential leadership contenders shows how far the Tories have drifted from the mainstream.
    Rand is one of the greatest authors of the 20th century. 👍

    No wonder leftwing loonies despise her. They'd rather be reading Marx.
    I’m currently reading “Rationality” by Steven Pinker - very relevant to current times, with lots of examples of how data does not match with perception, especially on things which are influenced by news media.

    A huge number of Americans think that more people die in plane crashes than in car crashes, and most Westerners don’t see that the number of people living in poverty (actual poverty, rather than inequality), has never been lower even as the population increases.
    Poverty has been redefined so that it can never be eliminated. If its defined as "earning less than 60% of the median income" (Joseph Rowntree foundation) then there is likely always to be poverty. One of the issues is what the average person thinks is poverty vs the reality. So a family with a 42 inch TV and Sky, smoking and drinking etc will not appear to be in poverty to many, whereas they can be defined as such.
    Yes, campaign groups have redefined the word ‘poverty’ to mean ‘inequality’. In 2009, at the height of the recession, the number of people living in ‘poverty’ went down, even as unemployment went up. The reason being, solely that the median income fell because of the recession causing unemployment!
    Snap
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,727

    ydoethur said:

    eek said:

    On the difficulty of deciding on a lockdown given currently available information


    Prof. Christina Pagel
    @chrischirp
    Using deaths or hopsitalisations (which are very lagged indicators) as a marker of Omicron wave's potential severity when cases have risen so rapidly and only reached high levels in the last week is pure abuse of statistics from Heneghan.

    Simply put the publicly available data isn't good enough to make any decision regardless of people's viewpoints.

    She doesn't understand irony, does she?
    Is hospitalisations "very lagged"?

    7 - 14 days iirc.
    I was thinking more of the 'pure abuse of statistics.'

    Her accusing somebody else of that is a bit like SeanT accusing somebody else of drinking too much.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    Spurs kicked out of Europe.
    Pretty strict. But it would have helped with Vax rates if the FA had been so firm.
    Would have helped EFC too.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited December 2021
    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    .

    HYUFD said:

    Endillion said:

    HYUFD said:

    Rishi is a very strong communicator.
    But he is an Ayn Rand ultra, and supported Brexit from the start. He therefore clearly has a screw loose somewhere.

    I don’t want a plutocrat as PM, I think on balance I’d prefer Truss even though she is actually ghastly.

    If he is an Ayn Rand ultra how come he has spent far more than George Osborne or Philip Hammond did as Chancellor or indeed more than Gordon Brown did in New Labour's first term? He has also raised corporation tax and NI
    Some confusion, I think: Javid is the Ayn Rand ultra; I'm not aware that Sunak is.
    Though in the Cabinet Javid seems most keen on new state imposed Covid restrictions along with Gove, which is hardly Ayn Rand.

    The closest Tory leadership contender to Rand ideology is actually probably Steve Baker
    That a lunatic like Rand even features on the reading lists of potential leadership contenders shows how far the Tories have drifted from the mainstream.
    Rand is one of the greatest authors of the 20th century. 👍

    No wonder leftwing loonies despise her. They'd rather be reading Marx.
    I’m currently reading “Rationality” by Steven Pinker - very relevant to current times, with lots of examples of how data does not match with perception, especially on things which are influenced by news media.

    A huge number of Americans think that more people die in plane crashes than in car crashes, and most Westerners don’t see that the number of people living in poverty (actual poverty, rather than inequality), has never been lower even as the population increases.
    Poverty has been redefined so that it can never be eliminated. If its defined as "earning less than 60% of the median income" (Joseph Rowntree foundation) then there is likely always to be poverty. One of the issues is what the average person thinks is poverty vs the reality. So a family with a 42 inch TV and Sky, smoking and drinking etc will not appear to be in poverty to many, whereas they can be defined as such.
    Yes, campaign groups have redefined the word ‘poverty’ to mean ‘inequality’. In 2009, at the height of the recession, the number of people living in ‘poverty’ went down, even as unemployment went up. The reason being, solely that the median income fell because of the recession causing unemployment!
    Even the academic who originally came up with this idea has disavowed its use in this manner. It was originally used in the way wuhan report used the term "mild".
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,138
    ydoethur said:

    eek said:

    On the difficulty of deciding on a lockdown given currently available information


    Prof. Christina Pagel
    @chrischirp
    Using deaths or hopsitalisations (which are very lagged indicators) as a marker of Omicron wave's potential severity when cases have risen so rapidly and only reached high levels in the last week is pure abuse of statistics from Heneghan.

    Simply put the publicly available data isn't good enough to make any decision regardless of people's viewpoints.

    She doesn't understand irony, does she?
    Doesn't seem to understand that people in countries other than the UK, like South Africa for example, are also human beings who generate useful Omicron data.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    edited December 2021

    ydoethur said:

    eek said:

    On the difficulty of deciding on a lockdown given currently available information


    Prof. Christina Pagel
    @chrischirp
    Using deaths or hopsitalisations (which are very lagged indicators) as a marker of Omicron wave's potential severity when cases have risen so rapidly and only reached high levels in the last week is pure abuse of statistics from Heneghan.

    Simply put the publicly available data isn't good enough to make any decision regardless of people's viewpoints.

    She doesn't understand irony, does she?
    Is hospitalisations "very lagged"?

    7 - 14 days iirc.
    Both hospitalisations lag behind positive results by 1 to 6.7 days but equally important hospital admission data seems to take a week to arrive compared to the nearly instant lft /pcr infection rates results.

    So we see rapidly increasing infection rate results but have a 1-14 day lag on what the impact on hospitalisations will be.

    Which means that actually guessing what you need to do is impossible with the available data - you have only have models based on guesstimates to work with.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,182
    eek said:

    On the difficulty of deciding on a lockdown given currently available information


    Prof. Christina Pagel
    @chrischirp
    Using deaths or hopsitalisations (which are very lagged indicators) as a marker of Omicron wave's potential severity when cases have risen so rapidly and only reached high levels in the last week is pure abuse of statistics from Heneghan.

    Simply put the publicly available data isn't good enough to make any decision regardless of people's viewpoints.

    I have no time whatsoever for Pagel. But I probably agree with her last paragraph.

    My conclusion would be that you don't take a decision which will go far beyond reasonable impositions of the state on individuals, ruin countless livelihoods and do incalculable long-term damage without rather more evidence than you currently have.
    Both decisions have an element of risk. Not locking down may be damaging. But locking down will definitely be damaging.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,706
    edited December 2021

    HYUFD said:

    Endillion said:

    HYUFD said:

    Rishi is a very strong communicator.
    But he is an Ayn Rand ultra, and supported Brexit from the start. He therefore clearly has a screw loose somewhere.

    I don’t want a plutocrat as PM, I think on balance I’d prefer Truss even though she is actually ghastly.

    If he is an Ayn Rand ultra how come he has spent far more than George Osborne or Philip Hammond did as Chancellor or indeed more than Gordon Brown did in New Labour's first term? He has also raised corporation tax and NI
    Some confusion, I think: Javid is the Ayn Rand ultra; I'm not aware that Sunak is.
    Though in the Cabinet Javid seems most keen on new state imposed Covid restrictions along with Gove, which is hardly Ayn Rand.

    The closest Tory leadership contender to Rand ideology is actually probably Steve Baker
    That a lunatic like Rand even features on the reading lists of potential leadership contenders shows how far the Tories have drifted from the mainstream.
    I think she has some interesting ideas - as does Marx. I don't believe she was much of a novelist though.
    I tried Atlas Shrugged once - couldn't get beyond about the sixth paragraph.
    You don't even need to read it, there is now Atlas Shrugged the movie

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged:_Part_I
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W07bFa4TzM
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,784
    Lots of COVID war stories on a call this morning - half the remote team and tales of Christmas parties that went ahead: 10 on the call, 5 anecdotes, 37 new cases mentioned.

    It's definitely rife in Mancunia.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited December 2021
    dixiedean said:

    Spurs kicked out of Europe.
    Pretty strict. But it would have helped with Vax rates if the FA had been so firm.
    Would have helped EFC too.

    EPL should have followed US sports approach. Basically not vaxxed you can't practice / travel./ attend meetings withour a whole load of hassle and if your team has an outbreak and you aren't vaxxed, the unvaxxed get the blame. So it quickly terms into a collective thing, you either get on board for the good of the whole team or you are risking the whole team.

    US sports are now 90+ % vaxxed.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,837
    RobD said:

    MattW said:

    Probably something that needs to be managed carefully.

    The mandate does not arrive until April.
    40 midwives in a single unit? That sounds like an awfully large number of vaccine refusers given the national take-up rate.
    National take up tilts higher as you get up to retirees though, and also out of the cities. I'd rather midwives did take all reasonable protections as they're dealing with a cohort (Pregnant women) that has a very low take up rate itself though.
  • eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    It was a work meeting. It was drinks after a work meeting. It was a drinks meeting. There were a series of work meetings. The PM was in a suit so it was work.
    https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/gmbs-adil-ray-savages-bumbling-25742015


    But Carrie was there - what is she doing in a work meeting?
    jumping out of a cake?

    sorry..

    I'll get my coat..
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    glw said:

    Sandpit said:

    A huge number of Americans think that more people die in plane crashes than in car crashes,

    That really surprises me, air travel has long been pitched as "the safest form of transport", and car crashes are common enough that most people probably see one or the results of one every few months or so.
    Indeed so. But if you add up deaths in plane crashes and deaths in car crashes, purely from watching the national evening news, the reported plane crash deaths are a much higher number.

    It’s totally irrational, but the reality is that 30,000 people die on US roads each year, two orders of magnitude more than die on commercial aircraft. Even including private planes and sporting aviation, the number of aircraft deaths is still usually only three figures.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941
    Scott_xP said:

    John Rentoul
    @JohnRentoul
    ·
    2m
    If there were a Tory leadership election now, who would run? Sunak, Truss, Mordaunt, Hunt, Javid, Raab, Gove, Zahawi...?

    Zahawi is the interesting one

    Impeccable Brexit credentials.

    Good Covid record.
    I remember your predictions of disaster when he was appointed vaccines minister.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,837
    edited December 2021

    dixiedean said:

    Spurs kicked out of Europe.
    Pretty strict. But it would have helped with Vax rates if the FA had been so firm.
    Would have helped EFC too.

    EPL should have followed US sports approach. Basically not vaxxed you can't practice / travel./ attend meetings withour a whole load of hassle and if your team has an outbreak and you aren't vaxxed, the unvaxxed get the blame. So it quickly terms into a collective thing, you either get on board for the good of the whole team or you are risking the whole team.

    US sports are now 90+ % vaxxed.
    Vaccinated players can clear infections very quickly too. Beckham is expecting to play for the Rams with their rearranged match, he had Covid very recently.
    The high profile antivaxxers - Rodgers, Cousins, Beasley, Brown are notable by their prominence.
  • maaarshmaaarsh Posts: 3,391
    eek said:

    On the difficulty of deciding on a lockdown given currently available information


    Prof. Christina Pagel
    @chrischirp
    Using deaths or hopsitalisations (which are very lagged indicators) as a marker of Omicron wave's potential severity when cases have risen so rapidly and only reached high levels in the last week is pure abuse of statistics from Heneghan.

    Simply put the publicly available data isn't good enough to make any decision regardless of people's viewpoints.

    So Pagel accepts there's no available evidence for her bias to action? It's a start I suppose.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    eek said:

    Cyclefree said:

    On topic there is little practical benefit to putting in restrictions for Christmas at this stage. Plans have been made. People are travelling as we speak. Food has been bought.

    The chances of getting the population to comply this year are nigh on impossible, given how late it is in the day and all the news stories that are coming out about last year (“it was OK for you guys then,” etc…)

    I suspect we’ll get advisory warnings not to mix more than 2 households or whatever which will be promptly ignored by all and sundry.

    I’m not even sure restrictions after Christmas are going to be particularly closely followed. The festive season isn’t just Christmas Day: it’s often a chain of events leading up to and including New Year’s Day.

    The first day where meaningful restrictions can probably be introduced is from 2 January - the miserable weeks where nothing much happens anyway.

    Does Daughter - and all those in her position - order in food and drinks and risk finding herself with unsold stock because at the last minute a curfew is imposed or venues are told to close like last year?

    Or does she simply keep the place closed to minimise losses? It's not as if there are only 5 working days before 4 days of holidays and plans to be made and deadlines to be met. I mean, all the time in the world for governments to faff around like clueless idiots.
    And it's not as if she needs to order food for the 27th / 28th now because suppliers won't be open on then.

    It's a tough decision with zero right answers - personally I would probably be skipping the food and doing drinks (but I know that's not where the profit is).
    Closure looks the most likely. What on earth is the point of carrying on? She may as well have some rest at home. She certainly deserves it.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,243

    Selebian said:

    Another model:

    Long-term forecasting of the COVID-19 epidemic
    Dynamic Causal Modelling, UCL, UK


    Note on Omicron: if contact rates continue to fall as predicted, hospital admissions will peak on 7 Jan 2022 at 1,279 per day—with deaths peaking at 137 per day. These (7-day average) estimates are likely to rise if case rates do not fall within the next few days.

    The real-time estimate of the R-number is 0.96 (credible interval from 0.77 to 1.16) on 18 Dec 2021.
    The 7-day average of daily deaths will remain at about 150 per day over the next weeks and then fall slowly, reaching a minimum (of about 40 per day) in April 2022.


    https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/covid-19/forecasting/

    Damn scientists and their doom-laden modelling :wink:
    That seems too optimistic in the other direction to the doom forecasts of we're basically all dead by next wednesday...
    Quite possibly. Good to see it though. Reasonable assumptions should show model outputs on both sides of the most likely reality; it was all looking a bit one-sided up to this point.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,727
    RobD said:

    I remember your predictions of disaster when he was appointed vaccines minister.

    Based on personal experience, but yes, he didn't fuck it up.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,080
    edited December 2021

    ydoethur said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Sandpit said:

    ydoethur said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    eek said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    Investment isn't a problem - it's throwing money at day to day spending for pet projects that was Brown's and Labour's problem.

    Prime example - to hit our CO2 commitments we need 50% of freight going via rail.

    That requires HS2E and NPR to hit those commitments and we cancelled those within a month of COP26 to be replaced with nothing to fixes the commitment.
    Why do we need any of our freight to go via rail? Let alone 50% of it when rail is currently from memory just 4%?

    Investing in electric HGVs surely gets us there instead.
    Getting long-distance freight off the roads and onto rail should be a priority. HS2 is needed for that reason alone, and government need to sell it as such.

    Trucks add to congestion and are responsible for pretty much all the wear on the roads (which is related to the fourth power of axle weight).

    Where you are totally correct though, is that voters in Red Wall towns (not cities) almost exclusively travel primarily by car, and that they see road improvements as a much higher priority than rail. Levelling up means investment in roads, which also has the political advantage of not taking several decades to come to fruition.
    The problem is there isn't really such a thing as long distance transportation in England.

    In Canada or America where freight is transported thousands of miles that's one thing, but in this country nowhere is thousands of miles from anywhere else.

    A very good point that roads don't take decades too though.
    It’s definitely much easier to justify in larger countries, where road shipping can take several days - but there’s definitely a case for rail freight, which is currently capacity constrained by the need to accommodate higher-speed passenger traffic on the same lines.

    Going from Southampton or Felixstowe to Manchester or Newcastle, would be much easier by rail than road.
    And make the lives of many car drivers much pleasanter. My totally unscientific guess is that it would cut congestion on the local motorways and the A5 by 40%, given their size and speeds. Think what a difference that would make to us all.*

    And at the same time solve many of the problems around driver shortages.

    *and it would bankrupt the M6 Toll. So no downside whatsoever.
    The M6 Toll is my favourite British road. The only thing wrong with it, is that it has a speed limit.
    The southbound M40 is good for Vmax runs as there is a long stretch where is no place for the pigs to hide.
    The Tamworth Two did OK for a fair while :wink:
    Ha.

    Reminds me of when some wild boar escaped in Wiltshire. The police went to a local hunter and tried to borrow something suitable to shoot them with - 5.56 would just upset a wild boar. He told them to do one - it wasn't long after the Raoul Moat thing - where a gun dealer had been prosecuted and treated like a criminal - for providing the *police* with a specialist *non lethal* weapon.

    That RM one was on Theresa May's watch. He was testing experimental Tasers for the Home Office and supplied them to the police forces in breach of his license conditions. He killed himself.
    https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/jun/01/inquest-peter-boatman-tasers-raoul-moat
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,585
    ydoethur said:

    eek said:

    On the difficulty of deciding on a lockdown given currently available information


    Prof. Christina Pagel
    @chrischirp
    Using deaths or hopsitalisations (which are very lagged indicators) as a marker of Omicron wave's potential severity when cases have risen so rapidly and only reached high levels in the last week is pure abuse of statistics from Heneghan.

    Simply put the publicly available data isn't good enough to make any decision regardless of people's viewpoints.

    She doesn't understand irony, does she?
    As to why dead and hospitalisation haven't taken off (yet)

    image
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited December 2021
    Pulpstar said:

    dixiedean said:

    Spurs kicked out of Europe.
    Pretty strict. But it would have helped with Vax rates if the FA had been so firm.
    Would have helped EFC too.

    EPL should have followed US sports approach. Basically not vaxxed you can't practice / travel./ attend meetings withour a whole load of hassle and if your team has an outbreak and you aren't vaxxed, the unvaxxed get the blame. So it quickly terms into a collective thing, you either get on board for the good of the whole team or you are risking the whole team.

    US sports are now 90+ % vaxxed.
    Vaccinated players can clear infections very quickly too. Beckham is expecting to play for the Rams with their rearranged match, he had Covid very recently.
    The high profile antivaxxers - Rodgers, Cousins, Beasley, Brown are notable by their prominence.
    If I was Karl Darlow at Newcastle I would be incredibly pissed at my team mates. Hospitalised between jabs, months to recover and still huge number of them refuse to get vaccinated.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,080
    Eabhal said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Jonathan said:

    Jonathan said:

    FF43 said:

    Brexit is dead, isn’t it?
    I mean, really dead.

    I think Stuart’s right. In 10 years time nobody will remember having voted for it. Not even Charles.

    Boris is a corpse, too. He’ll be lucky to last into Spring.

    What a frabjous day, though it’s a bit chilly here in Portugal after several days of balmy, t-shirt weather.

    I don't see how brexit is dead. Its over. We are out. To make brexit dead surely implies rejoin?
    Indeed we will be dealing with it forever. Brexit might one day be over as a state of mind, but the fact of it remains.

    I'm not convinced a Tory coup where anti lockdown Truss or Sunak gets chosen in the midst of a pandemic meltdown is optimal timing.
    The quicker Johnson is gone, the better.
    Even Rishi and Truss are improvements.

    Neither will restore Tory fortunes; but that’s a different matter.
    I suspect his mps want him to continue for a while to absorb the flak and I would expect post the May locals they will act
    I agree with you.
    Also best for Truss, as the NI changes will have kicked in.
    I prefer Rishi but that choice is upto his mps and then the members which this time I will not be one
    Rishi represents the polish and connections that money can buy. If you like that and think that's helpful in solving the nation's problems then go for it. I think that there others that might be a little more connected.
    It would also suggest he knows how to deal with finance unlike labour whose only answer to any question is spend billions and billions with no care as to how it is paid for
    You might like to look up the CV of Rachel Reeves.
    I like Rachel but not labour's throw billions at each and every problem
    £37 billion thrown at Test and Trace. Described as an "eye watering waste of money" which failed to achieve its objective.

    But at least the money was spent with the "right sort of people" ;)
    The issue with trying to use test and trace has been an issue all along - asymptomatic and pre-symtpomatic transmission. Once you have that in mix I'd argue its almost impossible to shut down transmission chains with the interconnected lives we lead. Even with the original strain, even with the first lockdown, we didn't reach zero covid, even in Scotland.
    However, it is possible to see an effect. In the SW, the scandal of the testing failures at Immensa genuinly did seem to lead to an increase in cases as false negatives went about their business and spread the disease. I was wrong on the surge that followed - I initially thought it was just catch up testing, but the scale suggests it wasn't.

    We are not at the point where the question needs to be - what do we gain by testing 1.6M a day? Transmission of omicron is so potent, and the original issues remain and asympto and pre-symptomatic spread. I'd argue now we should focus on testing in secondary care at point of admission, and use the money saved to improve ventilationg and air filtration in places where it might do some good - care homes, hospitals and schools.
    It would have been more effective to hand out LFTs to every household. People do seem to use them and would tell their friends and family. Even the 20 year olds I know do it because they worry about parents and grandparents.
    There is a LFT "census" idea being floated in Scotland. Everyone does one on the same day.

    I really like the idea from an analytical perspective, but it does feel a bit Big Brother.
    How is this different from the population monitoring already being done?
This discussion has been closed.