The Tories are just making this worse by pretending that work involves bottles of wine, who is running the comms?!?
Have you never had a work meeting with wine?
That's sad.
This government absolutely should go, but the idea that work and wine are incompatible is absurd.
If I was working whilst drinking I'd be fired
You might be OK. The usual excuse is, 'I wasn't drinking while working, I was working while drinking.'
My Dad says when he worked as an engineer on secondment in Germany in late 1960s nearly everyone had beers on the go at their desks. Considered totally normal.
There’s a reasonably common meme in C20th British films and novels of an old twit embedded in his urinous Parker Knoll poring over a Daily Mail pull-out map of world conflict, moving little pins with flags around theatres of war. It comes to mind more and more after a visit here.
‘Bloody Frogs, totally unreliable.’ ‘Bloody Jerries, with their efficiency.’ ‘Bloody Jocks/Taffs/Paddies, doing their own thing just to be different.’ ‘Bloody boffins, too clever by half.’ ‘Bloody etc, etc.’ ‘Mother, we’ve retaken Tobruk!!’
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.
That does sound perhaps the way to go.
Just a question from somebody who knows not much about the catering trade -
Would an option be to just shut down, lie low or do something else for a while, then when Covid looks reliably over, and if the desire and ambition remains, fire up again using the contacts and expertise amassed?
Her lease comes to an end in March. She will not be renewing. She will be using the contacts she has amassed and the experience she has gained to move on to something else - as yet undecided. Certainly many of her customers - experienced professionals not prone to giving undeserved compliments - have said that she should have no difficulty getting something worthwhile and will succeed at whatever she does.
She did originally have plans to expand the venue - and had lots of ideas for it - and was thinking of getting someone to invest with her and she would move into being an overall manager rather than doing all the day to day stuff, having first built up the business and reputation. She has certainly done the latter but it is hard to see who would want to invest in this sector at such a time.
Though in reality it is - if you can get in at the right price - quite a good time to develop the venue. Where we live will soon be in the Lake District National Park, tourism is expanding and there is some government investment in the area. But another year of fighting to keep the place alive with all this uncertainty, no support, price increases etc - no, she's had enough of that. Time to take stock and do what is best for her.
Every pub landlord/lady in UK must be thinking that at the moment. Sad times.
Every restaurant, cafe, travel business, hotel too. And many in the arts sector too.
It is indeed very sad.
I want to have a relaxing time at Xmas for her and her siblings above all. They have had a shitty two years. I am beyond depressed at this continuing.
So hold on, Carrie Johnson just wanders into work meetings involving Government business, isn't this a major security issue?!?
The wife of the PM a security risk in her own garden? I mean I detest Johnson as much as the next decent fellow but I think that is pushing it a bit. Do you think she has to wear earplugs in case he talks in his sleep...
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.
But what if waiting until you know how bad it is means - if it is bad - that either it's now too late to act or you have to act stronger and for longer? I think this is the dilemma we have. Really difficult.
It's a risk. But you can't go doing something as fundamentally illiberal and damaging as a lockdown 'just in case'. You have to have some pretty strong evidence that the reverse will be worse, and we don't have that. My suspicion is that we never will, but that is based upon early indications from South Africa etc. where I concede the context is different. 50% of our population are triple jabbed. 90%+ have antibodies of some sort. The population is changing its behaviour anyway. Deaths are the lowest that they've been since mid-August (they may rise, but they may not). Hospitalisations are within the bounds they have been since summer, and far, far short of what was thought to be acceptable when we opened up.
There is certainly a risk. But we can't go forwards with the threat of lockdown always hanging over us whenever there is a risk, because there will always be a risk.
I have some sympathy for policymakers, because it's much easier to say this as an anonymous bloke on the internet than as the person who will be the target for both real outrage and manufactured outrage and who may lose their job as a result. Though they should be far, far better at questioning the models than they are. I have less sympathy with civil servants and modellers who appear to be trying to cook the books to engineer a lockdown.
I really don't buy this 'cooking the books' thing but otherwise plenty of common ground on what you say here. A legal lockdown must never drift into being considered a routine part of the tool box for alleviating winter pressures on the health service. It should only ever be an 'in extremis' emergency measure used to mitigate the very real risk of it collapsing. I'm satisfied the 2 we've had were done for that reason and were justified. This one, if it happens, which I'm not convinced it will, I reserve judgement on until the mists have cleared somewhat. Long term, this is a question we'll have to address unless we're prepared to run the NHS with lots of surplus capacity, so it's more resilient when stuff like this happens, bit like making banks hold more capital after the 08 crash.
OK, let's park the cooking the books! I think we can broadly agree. I'm not satisfied the two (three? - late Autumn 2020 definitely wasn't) we had were justified but that's basically just a difference in where we place the bar (as, really, is so much in politics - should public spending be 38% or 42% of GDP? Important questions, yes, but not something to make mortal enemies out of!)
The Tories are just making this worse by pretending that work involves bottles of wine, who is running the comms?!?
Have you never had a work meeting with wine?
That's sad.
This government absolutely should go, but the idea that work and wine are incompatible is absurd.
If I was working whilst drinking I'd be fired
Really? Our office has a pretty nice beer/premix fridge for post-3pm.
On a daily basis?
We drink at the office after work is completed on one day a week, we'd never pop the wine open and have a full on meeting
Yeah, as long as it's after 3pm. I guess no one cares and we're all assumed to be responsible enough to not take the piss.
That was what it was like at the company i worked for during my gap year. They trusted you to be responsible and we all had deadlines for projects, as long as they were met, nobody cared how long your lunch break was or if you had a drink...
That been said, the photo plays into exactly what i said was the cast with #10 during pandemic, that boris fostered a culture of we are all working hard, chaps and chapettes, nothing wrong with a drink especially as the pubs are shut and this has then become a regular thing and morphed into piss ups in the office / parties.
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.
That does sound perhaps the way to go.
Just a question from somebody who knows not much about the catering trade -
Would an option be to just shut down, lie low or do something else for a while, then when Covid looks reliably over, and if the desire and ambition remains, fire up again using the contacts and expertise amassed?
Her lease comes to an end in March. She will not be renewing. She will be using the contacts she has amassed and the experience she has gained to move on to something else - as yet undecided. Certainly many of her customers - experienced professionals not prone to giving undeserved compliments - have said that she should have no difficulty getting something worthwhile and will succeed at whatever she does.
She did originally have plans to expand the venue - and had lots of ideas for it - and was thinking of getting someone to invest with her and she would move into being an overall manager rather than doing all the day to day stuff, having first built up the business and reputation. She has certainly done the latter but it is hard to see who would want to invest in this sector at such a time.
Though in reality it is - if you can get in at the right price - quite a good time to develop the venue. Where we live will soon be in the Lake District National Park, tourism is expanding and there is some government investment in the area. But another year of fighting to keep the place alive with all this uncertainty, no support, price increases etc - no, she's had enough of that. Time to take stock and do what is best for her.
Every pub landlord/lady in UK must be thinking that at the moment. Sad times.
Every restaurant, cafe, travel business, hotel too. And many in the arts sector too.
It is indeed very sad.
I want to have a relaxing time at Xmas for her and her siblings above all. They have had a shitty two years. I am beyond depressed at this continuing.
Come to the Algarve; take your whole family.
It’s sunny and airy and nobody cares about the insane incompetence of Boris-land. There’s an element of surreal hysteria permeating the whole U.K. right now.
Seriously. My grief and stress collapsed the moment I exited Faro airport.
The Fabian Society commissioned a GB-wide poll from YouGov with a specially-commissioned sub-group of the 125 seats in England and Wales where Labour came closest to winning in 2019. The survey was conducted on 8 to 13 December before the North Shropshire byelection and 668 people living in the Labour target seats took part. We found that Labour leads the Conservatives by nine percentage points in the 125 seats (Labour 43, Conservative 34). By contrast, at the 2019 election the Conservatives led in these seats by 12 points (Labour 37, Conservative 49).
The public might tell the Government to sod off if they try and impose new restrictions with Number Ten staffers having been caught out blatantly disregarding their own lockdown last time.
The Tories are just making this worse by pretending that work involves bottles of wine, who is running the comms?!?
Have you never had a work meeting with wine?
That's sad.
This government absolutely should go, but the idea that work and wine are incompatible is absurd.
If I was working whilst drinking I'd be fired
You might be OK. The usual excuse is, 'I wasn't drinking while working, I was working while drinking.'
My Dad says when he worked as an engineer on secondment in Germany in late 1960s nearly everyone had beers on the go at their desks. Considered totally normal.
Well, that was normal in German industry in the nineteenth century as the quality of the water was very poor, far worse than in this country - surprising though people may find that - and the beer was germ free. So they served beer instead. This did lead to a number of accidents and is why many of the early German trade union movements had strong temperance elements.
But it continued for many years, as your Dad found.
There is more than her in that link, but what i can see very few papers as lead author and hardly any citations on them. Also most of the ones are just 2-3 page comment pieces for the likes of the BMJ, not full peer review research.
So the answer seems not a lot.
Those are papers in which she is a co-author. It is the nature of modern science that research is generally highly collaborative and papers may have many authors. The list does include comment pieces (but only comment pieces in academic journals). Given these are papers published in 2020-1, it’s not surprising if they don’t have many citations. It can take time for citations to come through.
Overall, it’s an impressive publication record. (Way better than mine!)
Mmm ... she completed her PhD in 2002.
I don't think her publication record is impressive for a 46 year old researching in a very high profile area with lots of funding (== lots of postdocs who cite you. My guess is citations probably go like N^2 where N is the number of people on your grants).
In her defence, she has changed fields -- but then, her papers on the solar wind are actually pretty well-cited!
I think the two things one needs to look for, in order of importance, are (1) a press conference and (2) a recall of Parliament. Without them there’s going to be nothing more than guidance this side of Christmas
Based on the weekend reports could be a Cabinet row. Sunak, Truss and Rees Mogg and Kwarteng opposed to more restrictions, only Gove and Javid in favour.
Obviously I am not a cheer leader for the government, and I will hate lockdown on my holiday plans. But to be fair, Doesn’t a lot of this chatter on PB about covid and restrictions, though seems very good to me on the stats and understanding of bugs and drugs, and the needs to balance liberalism in the decisions, actually miss the big elephant in the room about political dangers of calling it wrong?
For example, if there is a surge on NHS capacity in next couple of months, people dying on trolleys in corridors before they treated, same with those in ambulances waiting outside, and the ambulances outside tied up and 999 waiting times in tatters, the government party could forget all about winning any elections, mid term, local, general election for the next fifteen years with their book badly blotted like that?
Surely there is immense long term political danger in making the wrong call this week - that is also on their minds as they weight up all the considerations at 2pm?
Maybe a tad to easy to advise via blog posts or criticise from back benches when don’t have to carry the can for BIG decision makings?
The trouble is that there is only one route to take if all you are concerned about is the politics - and that is lockdown. Running a country on a permanent basis of safety first in any and all situations is a recipe for disaster. Indeed it already has been a disaster. So I am sure you are correct that that is the route they will go. But it doesn't make it right for the country
👍🏻 I do get that. Like what’s the right thing to do for the country, the school children, the businesses, all our mental health. But then what’s the right thing to do for the party.
Like that scene in Chernobile series, local party bosses made decision to keep everyone in town and not evacuate?
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.
That does sound perhaps the way to go.
Just a question from somebody who knows not much about the catering trade -
Would an option be to just shut down, lie low or do something else for a while, then when Covid looks reliably over, and if the desire and ambition remains, fire up again using the contacts and expertise amassed?
Her lease comes to an end in March. She will not be renewing. She will be using the contacts she has amassed and the experience she has gained to move on to something else - as yet undecided. Certainly many of her customers - experienced professionals not prone to giving undeserved compliments - have said that she should have no difficulty getting something worthwhile and will succeed at whatever she does.
She did originally have plans to expand the venue - and had lots of ideas for it - and was thinking of getting someone to invest with her and she would move into being an overall manager rather than doing all the day to day stuff, having first built up the business and reputation. She has certainly done the latter but it is hard to see who would want to invest in this sector at such a time.
Though in reality it is - if you can get in at the right price - quite a good time to develop the venue. Where we live will soon be in the Lake District National Park, tourism is expanding and there is some government investment in the area. But another year of fighting to keep the place alive with all this uncertainty, no support, price increases etc - no, she's had enough of that. Time to take stock and do what is best for her.
Every pub landlord/lady in UK must be thinking that at the moment. Sad times.
Every restaurant, cafe, travel business, hotel too. And many in the arts sector too.
It is indeed very sad.
I want to have a relaxing time at Xmas for her and her siblings above all. They have had a shitty two years. I am beyond depressed at this continuing.
Come to the Algarve; take your whole family.
It’s sunny and airy and nobody cares about the insane incompetence of Boris-land. There’s an element of surreal hysteria permeating the whole U.K. right now.
Seriously. My grief and stress collapsed the moment I exited Faro airport.
The hysteria is primarily driven by the dodgy data models and ministers too stupid to ask the right questions of the modellers. The scientists really will have a lot to answer for in the post-COVID inquiries, especially now that we know they are deliberately excluding likely but favourable scenarios from their forecasts.
The public might tell the Government to sod off if they try and impose new restrictions with Number Ten staffers having been caught out blatantly disregarding their own lockdown last time.
That doesn't help Hospitality, which needs a government (well, local authority) licence to operate.
I was in Asda briefly this morning and despite Drakeford's mask mandate many were just not wearing them and some seem to think they are worn below the nose
I really do not understand people who have a disregard for their fellow citizens
Because bluntly G, a number of us don’t give a fuck any more. You, me and everyone else will be catching omicron. At great expense you’ve been protected with lockdowns to buy time to give you three vaccines. It’s time to move on. If you’re that worried then wear an FFP3 or stay at home.
The Fabian Society commissioned a GB-wide poll from YouGov with a specially-commissioned sub-group of the 125 seats in England and Wales where Labour came closest to winning in 2019. The survey was conducted on 8 to 13 December before the North Shropshire byelection and 668 people living in the Labour target seats took part. We found that Labour leads the Conservatives by nine percentage points in the 125 seats (Labour 43, Conservative 34). By contrast, at the 2019 election the Conservatives led in these seats by 12 points (Labour 37, Conservative 49).
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.
That does sound perhaps the way to go.
Just a question from somebody who knows not much about the catering trade -
Would an option be to just shut down, lie low or do something else for a while, then when Covid looks reliably over, and if the desire and ambition remains, fire up again using the contacts and expertise amassed?
Her lease comes to an end in March. She will not be renewing. She will be using the contacts she has amassed and the experience she has gained to move on to something else - as yet undecided. Certainly many of her customers - experienced professionals not prone to giving undeserved compliments - have said that she should have no difficulty getting something worthwhile and will succeed at whatever she does.
She did originally have plans to expand the venue - and had lots of ideas for it - and was thinking of getting someone to invest with her and she would move into being an overall manager rather than doing all the day to day stuff, having first built up the business and reputation. She has certainly done the latter but it is hard to see who would want to invest in this sector at such a time.
Though in reality it is - if you can get in at the right price - quite a good time to develop the venue. Where we live will soon be in the Lake District National Park, tourism is expanding and there is some government investment in the area. But another year of fighting to keep the place alive with all this uncertainty, no support, price increases etc - no, she's had enough of that. Time to take stock and do what is best for her.
Every pub landlord/lady in UK must be thinking that at the moment. Sad times.
Every restaurant, cafe, travel business, hotel too. And many in the arts sector too.
It is indeed very sad.
I want to have a relaxing time at Xmas for her and her siblings above all. They have had a shitty two years. I am beyond depressed at this continuing.
Or anyone who went up as an undergraduate to a University in 2019.
COVID has eaten up almost all their University years. And there has been no fee remission, not even in part.
Fraser Nelson deserves an OBE or a knighthood for his questioning of SAGE modelling. After those questions and answers every model from SAGE needs to be thrown out and told to go back to the drawing board modelling all scenarios and their likelihood not just the ones of doom.
That nobody had asked those questions before now is truly shocking.
I'm amazed Boris didn't appoint Nelson to formulate Covid policy from the very outset. All the credentials were there - Brexit, Spectator, knows more about epidemiology than all the scientists put together. How did Boris let that one slip?
You don't have to be an expert in epidemiology to realise there is something very wrong about how they are approaching their modeling
Thank goodness, otherwise that would be half of PB content for the last 2 years in the bin.
Pretty lousy Hirsch number, though, H= 27. Especially as this is such a high profile area.
Over a thirds of the citations come from one multi-author study as well "Managing the health effects of climate change"
The h-index is a very laggy statistic and doesn’t speak to her pandemic work, which was the question posed, as it takes time for citations to come through. 27 seems a typical h-index for someone at her stage. Mine’s better, but I think I’ve been a professor longer.
Citation numbers typically show a very skewed distribution. That’s a pretty normal pattern.
I get that some of you don’t like her research, but these attempts at ad hominem attacks are risible.
Mr. Doethur, aye. Those businesses going to the wall needlessly because SAGE thinks modelling means only considering bad outcomes and ignoring middle ground and good outcomes are not going to endear the public to a restrictive and hypocritical government.
The Fabian Society commissioned a GB-wide poll from YouGov with a specially-commissioned sub-group of the 125 seats in England and Wales where Labour came closest to winning in 2019. The survey was conducted on 8 to 13 December before the North Shropshire byelection and 668 people living in the Labour target seats took part. We found that Labour leads the Conservatives by nine percentage points in the 125 seats (Labour 43, Conservative 34). By contrast, at the 2019 election the Conservatives led in these seats by 12 points (Labour 37, Conservative 49).
The Tories are in big big trouble
6/1 Lab Maj looks value on those figures.
If you think mid-term polling is valid for a general election. Kinnock was 20% ahead in 1990 of course.
The Fabian Society commissioned a GB-wide poll from YouGov with a specially-commissioned sub-group of the 125 seats in England and Wales where Labour came closest to winning in 2019. The survey was conducted on 8 to 13 December before the North Shropshire byelection and 668 people living in the Labour target seats took part. We found that Labour leads the Conservatives by nine percentage points in the 125 seats (Labour 43, Conservative 34). By contrast, at the 2019 election the Conservatives led in these seats by 12 points (Labour 37, Conservative 49).
The Tories are in big big trouble
6/1 Lab Maj looks value on those figures.
If you think mid-term polling is valid for a general election. Kinnock was 20% ahead in 1990 of course.
Mr. Dickson, maybe, but don't forget this is the height of an anti-government moment and halfway through the Parliamentary term. I'd expect quite some swingback.
Labour winning a majority without a Scottish renaissance is not impossible, but it is improbable.
The Tories are just making this worse by pretending that work involves bottles of wine, who is running the comms?!?
Have you never had a work meeting with wine?
That's sad.
This government absolutely should go, but the idea that work and wine are incompatible is absurd.
If I was working whilst drinking I'd be fired
You might be OK. The usual excuse is, 'I wasn't drinking while working, I was working while drinking.'
My Dad says when he worked as an engineer on secondment in Germany in late 1960s nearly everyone had beers on the go at their desks. Considered totally normal.
Well, that was normal in German industry in the nineteenth century as the quality of the water was very poor, far worse than in this country - surprising though people may find that - and the beer was germ free. So they served beer instead. This did lead to a number of accidents and is why many of the early German trade union movements had strong temperance elements.
But it continued for many years, as your Dad found.
When I first started working offshore in 1988 there was still alcohol on some of the rigs. My first Christmas offshore we were allowed two cans of beer each day after we had come off shift. That stopped within a year or two and everything offshore North Sea is dry these days. Most oil companies extended that into their offices at the same time.
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.
That does sound perhaps the way to go.
Just a question from somebody who knows not much about the catering trade -
Would an option be to just shut down, lie low or do something else for a while, then when Covid looks reliably over, and if the desire and ambition remains, fire up again using the contacts and expertise amassed?
Her lease comes to an end in March. She will not be renewing. She will be using the contacts she has amassed and the experience she has gained to move on to something else - as yet undecided. Certainly many of her customers - experienced professionals not prone to giving undeserved compliments - have said that she should have no difficulty getting something worthwhile and will succeed at whatever she does.
She did originally have plans to expand the venue - and had lots of ideas for it - and was thinking of getting someone to invest with her and she would move into being an overall manager rather than doing all the day to day stuff, having first built up the business and reputation. She has certainly done the latter but it is hard to see who would want to invest in this sector at such a time.
Though in reality it is - if you can get in at the right price - quite a good time to develop the venue. Where we live will soon be in the Lake District National Park, tourism is expanding and there is some government investment in the area. But another year of fighting to keep the place alive with all this uncertainty, no support, price increases etc - no, she's had enough of that. Time to take stock and do what is best for her.
Every pub landlord/lady in UK must be thinking that at the moment. Sad times.
Every restaurant, cafe, travel business, hotel too. And many in the arts sector too.
It is indeed very sad.
I want to have a relaxing time at Xmas for her and her siblings above all. They have had a shitty two years. I am beyond depressed at this continuing.
Come to the Algarve; take your whole family.
It’s sunny and airy and nobody cares about the insane incompetence of Boris-land. There’s an element of surreal hysteria permeating the whole U.K. right now.
Seriously. My grief and stress collapsed the moment I exited Faro airport.
The hysteria is primarily driven by the dodgy data models and ministers too stupid to ask the right questions of the modellers. The scientists really will have a lot to answer for in the post-COVID inquiries, especially now that we know they are deliberately excluding likely but favourable scenarios from their forecasts.
I part ways from you a bit on this.
I think the modellers are pushing out what they are asked to, and they have simply taken an agnostic approach to what remains an unconfirmed variable (“mildness”).
There are, I think, several questions which I haven’t seen good responses on.
1. Why is there not more sensitivity analysis around the four or five key variables? Although it would simply increase the confidence intervals wider, it would give a fuller picture to decision makers.
2. How confident are modellers on the impact of further restrictions, given the known speed and infectiousness of Omicron.
3. The relationships between peak day versus total wave deaths, and the extent to which restrictions simply defer those deaths.
4. The impact on hospital capacity, and the impact on non-Covid health services
5. The cost of restrictions, which must be weighed against any impact.
The Tories are just making this worse by pretending that work involves bottles of wine, who is running the comms?!?
Have you never had a work meeting with wine?
That's sad.
This government absolutely should go, but the idea that work and wine are incompatible is absurd.
If I was working whilst drinking I'd be fired
You might be OK. The usual excuse is, 'I wasn't drinking while working, I was working while drinking.'
My Dad says when he worked as an engineer on secondment in Germany in late 1960s nearly everyone had beers on the go at their desks. Considered totally normal.
You don't have to go that far back. This is from Denmark 2010 for delivery drivers boozing!
"Carlsberg workers in Copenhagen have gone on strike against new rules that restrict the amount of free beer they can consume during their working day.
Regulations brought in at the start of the month stipulate that workers are no longer allowed beer throughout the day, and can now only drink at lunchtime."
The Tories are just making this worse by pretending that work involves bottles of wine, who is running the comms?!?
Have you never had a work meeting with wine?
That's sad.
This government absolutely should go, but the idea that work and wine are incompatible is absurd.
If I was working whilst drinking I'd be fired
You might be OK. The usual excuse is, 'I wasn't drinking while working, I was working while drinking.'
My Dad says when he worked as an engineer on secondment in Germany in late 1960s nearly everyone had beers on the go at their desks. Considered totally normal.
Well, that was normal in German industry in the nineteenth century as the quality of the water was very poor, far worse than in this country - surprising though people may find that - and the beer was germ free. So they served beer instead. This did lead to a number of accidents and is why many of the early German trade union movements had strong temperance elements.
But it continued for many years, as your Dad found.
They still seem to have a pretty relaxed attitude to beer specifically, very common to see people necking half litre bottles of beer on the U-Bahn, particularly at rush hour. Hordes of football fans are also usually well equipped with bottles as they march to the grounds, afaics it doesn’t seem to have much public order consequences which it certainly would here.
Pretty lousy Hirsch number, though, H= 27. Especially as this is such a high profile area.
Over a thirds of the citations come from one multi-author study as well "Managing the health effects of climate change"
The h-index is a very laggy statistic and doesn’t speak to her pandemic work, which was the question posed, as it takes time for citations to come through. 27 seems a typical h-index for someone at her stage. Mine’s better, but I think I’ve been a professor longer.
Citation numbers typically show a very skewed distribution. That’s a pretty normal pattern.
I get that some of you don’t like her research, but these attempts at ad hominem attacks are risible.
Regarding 'the day job' there's also the point that at Prof level the day job is pretty high level stuff, not sitting a computer banging on hte keyboard coding models etc, but managing the people actually doing that and making the decisions on scope, analysis type, assumptions etc.
On the h-index etc, I've certainly known profs with lower h-index. Citations, of course, also vary greatly by area, in addition to by quality/impact/profile of research.
(And citations are a blunt measure. My most cited paper by far - double the citations of any other - is low impact junk, to be honest, more or less a proof of the obvious. But one of those papers where citing it saves someone writing a paragraph of text. What I consider my best paper, which actually changed medical practice, has ~1/4 of the citations)
The potential replacements for Johnson don't look much better:
In no particular order
Truss: PPE Sunak: PPE Javid: Economics Gove: English Raab: Law Patel: Economics Wallace: Sandhurst Barclay: History Kwarteng: Classics/History Sharma: Applied Physics & Electronics Dorries: Nursing Treveleyan: Accountancy Coffey: Chemistry Zahawi: Chemical Engineering Shapps: HND in Business Lewis: Economics/Law
There is more than her in that link, but what i can see very few papers as lead author and hardly any citations on them.
That's normal when you are a professor. Gotta give the younglings the first authorship.
No, i mean that link into Christine Pagel, there are at least two other Pagels listed. i mean she is already talking about things outside her area of expertise, but she isn't writing these papers such as.....
"Considering the potential influence of social media on in-water encounters with marine wildlife"
In that list its picking up people like Chantel Pagel. Its also picking up 2 page comment pieces, which are basically just her media stuff, not proper peer reviewed research.
Google Scholar is imperfect: sure, they’re probably a few there that are another Pagel. I checked the first page: they’re all her.
There is a place in science for 2-page comment pieces, particularly during a fast-moving situation. They will have undergone some review — it will depend on the journal. They require considerably more rigour than “media stuff”.
Pretty lousy Hirsch number, though, H= 27. Especially as this is such a high profile area.
Over a thirds of the citations come from one multi-author study as well "Managing the health effects of climate change"
The h-index is a very laggy statistic and doesn’t speak to her pandemic work, which was the question posed, as it takes time for citations to come through. 27 seems a typical h-index for someone at her stage. Mine’s better, but I think I’ve been a professor longer.
Citation numbers typically show a very skewed distribution. That’s a pretty normal pattern.
I get that some of you don’t like her research, but these attempts at ad hominem attacks are risible.
Not ad hominem.
Her pandemic papers have hundreds of citations. E.g., "Estimating excess 1-year mortality associated with the COVID-19 pandemic according to underlying conditions and age: a population-based cohort study" in 2020 has 330 citations.
Citation statistics do vary a lot from discipline to discipline. In e.g., pure mathematics, Pagel's record would be really exceptional. In chemistry, it would be mediocre.
Obviously, the H index is a function of how many people are researching in the area (amongst other things).
I am not a medic. But, medicine is very well-funded, with some dedicated grant-giving bodies only funding medical projects (like the Wellcome).
So, I stand by my assertion that this is a pretty average profile for a 46 year old Professor in this area.
I was in Asda briefly this morning and despite Drakeford's mask mandate many were just not wearing them and some seem to think they are worn below the nose
I really do not understand people who have a disregard for their fellow citizens
Because bluntly G, a number of us don’t give a fuck any more. You, me and everyone else will be catching omicron. At great expense you’ve been protected with lockdowns to buy time to give you three vaccines. It’s time to move on. If you’re that worried then wear an FFP3 or stay at home.
We are not worried, but our family are as covid/omicron would be quite serious for us so as a family all 10 of us are effectively in our own lockdown with my daughter saying that right across her Facebook their friends are cancelling all social interactions
My trip to Asda was very brief and we are now in a position that we do not need to step outside till after Christmas as we have our pre Christmas Asda delivery slot booked for Thursday
I do not believe a lockdown is necessary as people are safeguarding themselves and the one we had in Wales under Drakeford was a failure
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.
Hmm sorry Philip but I have to strongly disagree with you here.
As Malmesbury correctly says, Rand made some interesting observations about 20th century society and was also, in my opinion, right on many aspects of the relationship between people and the Government and how it has gone radically wrong over the last 150 years. I very strongly like many of her Libertarian positions.
But to say she was one of the greatest authors of the 20th century is simply wrong. She was a terrible writer who might have had a good story to tell and might have had an important message but who smothered that in some of the worst prose written since WW2. To be a great author you first and foremost have to be a good writer, a good wordsmith. This won't on its own make you a great author but you can't be one without it.
Ayn Rand was a bloody awful writer and would have been wiser to have picked another medium to promote her message and philosophy.
She suffered extreme trauma from her family's loss of everything they had, and in fact their entire orientation, during the Russian Revolution. I prefer the example of Stephen Poliakoff's father, from a similar Russian-Jewish milieu, who fled to Britain, became an inventor, and despite everything did not have the same disastrously alienated relationship with society.
I would love it if it turned out that Boris had leaked all the photos and news about parties himself so that he could say to anyone pushing him for lockdown “can’t do it old pal, people wouldn’t accept the hypocrisy”……..
Looks like Mark Harper is preparing a Tory counter operation against lockdown already. Time to remove the PM.
The problem is they do not have the numbers yet and to have a successful challenge not only do the 54 letters need to go in, but they have to win the vote otherwise that keep Boris there for another year
Looks like Mark Harper is preparing a Tory counter operation against lockdown already. Time to remove the PM.
The problem is they do not have the numbers yet and to have a successful challenge not only do the 54 letters need to go in, but they have to win the vote otherwise that keep Boris there for another year
I for one do not want that to happen
We need him out now. Before 2pm, if possible. If he stays today, he locks us down for - what - another month? Another three months? Another 6 months?
Calm down Mr Cookie and others!
There's no way they'll be ousting the not so Magnificent not so Muscly one whilst the pandemic is raging. If it's going to happen it'll be in the summer.
And there's no way there'll be a legal lockdown for omicron lasting more than 4 weeks max. There might not be one at all.
If I'm wrong on either I'll start watching GB News for an hour every evening as penance.
Honestly they're making this 10 times worse than it needs to be
What’s the end game? Every day, we seem to hear news of another “gathering”. Every few days, there’s a damming picture. The inquiry has already had to change who’s running it and is only looking at a minority of the events now being discussed in the media.
So, how does the Government draw a line under it, if they can? Or do they think they can just hang on until the news cycle has moved on?
Pretty lousy Hirsch number, though, H= 27. Especially as this is such a high profile area.
Over a thirds of the citations come from one multi-author study as well "Managing the health effects of climate change"
The h-index is a very laggy statistic and doesn’t speak to her pandemic work, which was the question posed, as it takes time for citations to come through. 27 seems a typical h-index for someone at her stage. Mine’s better, but I think I’ve been a professor longer.
Citation numbers typically show a very skewed distribution. That’s a pretty normal pattern.
I get that some of you don’t like her research, but these attempts at ad hominem attacks are risible.
Not ad hominem.
Her pandemic papers have hundreds of citations. E.g., "Estimating excess 1-year mortality associated with the COVID-19 pandemic according to underlying conditions and age: a population-based cohort study" in 2020 has 330 citations.
Citation statistics do vary a lot from discipline to discipline. In e.g., pure mathematics, Pagel's record would be really exceptional. In chemistry, it would be mediocre.
Obviously, the H index is a function of how many people are researching in the area (amongst other things).
I am not a medic. But, medicine is very well-funded, with some dedicated grant-giving bodies only funding medical projects (like the Wellcome).
So, I stand by my assertion that this is a pretty average profile for a 46 year old Professor in this area.
You can’t stand by your assertion that this is a “pretty average” profile because you didn’t make that assertion. What you asserted was that this was a “pretty lousy” profile. So, what you’re doing is not standing by an assertion, but backtracking.
Pretty lousy Hirsch number, though, H= 27. Especially as this is such a high profile area.
Over a thirds of the citations come from one multi-author study as well "Managing the health effects of climate change"
The h-index is a very laggy statistic and doesn’t speak to her pandemic work, which was the question posed, as it takes time for citations to come through. 27 seems a typical h-index for someone at her stage. Mine’s better, but I think I’ve been a professor longer.
Citation numbers typically show a very skewed distribution. That’s a pretty normal pattern.
I get that some of you don’t like her research, but these attempts at ad hominem attacks are risible.
Not ad hominem.
Her pandemic papers have hundreds of citations. E.g., "Estimating excess 1-year mortality associated with the COVID-19 pandemic according to underlying conditions and age: a population-based cohort study" in 2020 has 330 citations.
Citation statistics do vary a lot from discipline to discipline. In e.g., pure mathematics, Pagel's record would be really exceptional. In chemistry, it would be mediocre.
Obviously, the H index is a function of how many people are researching in the area (amongst other things).
I am not a medic. But, medicine is very well-funded, with some dedicated grant-giving bodies only funding medical projects (like the Wellcome).
So, I stand by my assertion that this is a pretty average profile for a 46 year old Professor in this area.
You can’t stand by your assertion that this is a “pretty average” profile because you didn’t make that assertion. What you asserted was that this was a “pretty lousy” profile. So, what you’re doing is not standing by an assertion, but backtracking.
The potential replacements for Johnson don't look much better:
In no particular order
Truss: PPE Sunak: PPE Javid: Economics Gove: English Raab: Law Patel: Economics Wallace: Sandhurst Barclay: History Kwarteng: Classics/History Sharma: Applied Physics & Electronics Dorries: Nursing Treveleyan: Accountancy Coffey: Chemistry Zahawi: Chemical Engineering Shapps: HND in Business Lewis: Economics/Law
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.
The UK is 90+% vaxxed without any such measures.
Why aren't athletes?
WhatsApp conspiracy nonsense.
Why are athletes more vulnerable to such conspiracy nonsense than the general population?
Or is it just an age thing?
Anecdotally my students tell me its an extension of 'clean eating' into not putting ANYTHING into your body that isn't organic (yes, i know!). Some of them will not even take a paracetamol. This is including my pharmacy students.
I am sure they would take a painkilling injection if the management/team demanded it.
I cannot understand that attitude from pharmacy students. They've made a life choice to be working with chemical entities, which, one way and another are going to be put into, or onto, bodies. Writing as a retired pharmacist who wasn't by any means always concerned with 'supply'.
Yes, it’s a weird one. But a lot of pharmacy students drift into it via a Saturday job in a community pharmacy, and the GPHC has massively reduced science content in favour of more clinical training in the last fifteen years. I find it a sad attitude, as someone whose life was saved by putting chemicals into my body. It’s not all of them, but I’d expect a strong correlation between clean eating and ant-vax.
Honestly they're making this 10 times worse than it needs to be
What’s the end game? Every day, we seem to hear news of another “gathering”. Every few days, there’s a damming picture. The inquiry has already had to change who’s running it and is only looking at a minority of the events now being discussed in the media.
So, how does the Government draw a line under it, if they can? Or do they think they can just hang on until the news cycle has moved on?
If Cummings or whoever it is has another video as promised, I doubt they'll be able to draw a line under it for a while.
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.
That does sound perhaps the way to go.
Just a question from somebody who knows not much about the catering trade -
Would an option be to just shut down, lie low or do something else for a while, then when Covid looks reliably over, and if the desire and ambition remains, fire up again using the contacts and expertise amassed?
Her lease comes to an end in March. She will not be renewing. She will be using the contacts she has amassed and the experience she has gained to move on to something else - as yet undecided. Certainly many of her customers - experienced professionals not prone to giving undeserved compliments - have said that she should have no difficulty getting something worthwhile and will succeed at whatever she does.
She did originally have plans to expand the venue - and had lots of ideas for it - and was thinking of getting someone to invest with her and she would move into being an overall manager rather than doing all the day to day stuff, having first built up the business and reputation. She has certainly done the latter but it is hard to see who would want to invest in this sector at such a time.
Though in reality it is - if you can get in at the right price - quite a good time to develop the venue. Where we live will soon be in the Lake District National Park, tourism is expanding and there is some government investment in the area. But another year of fighting to keep the place alive with all this uncertainty, no support, price increases etc - no, she's had enough of that. Time to take stock and do what is best for her.
Every pub landlord/lady in UK must be thinking that at the moment. Sad times.
Every restaurant, cafe, travel business, hotel too. And many in the arts sector too.
It is indeed very sad.
I want to have a relaxing time at Xmas for her and her siblings above all. They have had a shitty two years. I am beyond depressed at this continuing.
Or anyone who went up as an undergraduate to a University in 2019.
COVID has eaten up almost all their University years. And there has been no fee remission, not even in part.
Last years intake have had a very raw deal. But so have we all. The fees are for the teaching they receive, and we have moved heaven and earth to maintain it. I even ran extra sessions over the summer in the labs to help catch up. This year at Bath has so far been pretty normal. Long may it continue.
Hi Nick, very interesting, thanks. Do you mind if I use it for teaching A-level politics? There's a unit on how policy making works this would be very helpful for.
Japan with twice the UK population has circa 500 cases and total deaths on all covid of about 1 weeks worth of current UK count. Something far wrong that UK has highest rates and death rates on an ongoing basis despite all the bluster about vaccine %. It is a shitshow.
Hi Nick, very interesting, thanks. Do you mind if I use it for teaching A-level politics? There's a unit on how policy making works this would be very helpful for.
Comments
This is what people were doing whilst BoJo had his "work meeting"
There’s a reasonably common meme in C20th British films and novels of an old twit embedded in his urinous Parker Knoll poring over a Daily Mail pull-out map of world conflict, moving little pins with flags around theatres of war. It comes to mind more and more after a visit here.
‘Bloody Frogs, totally unreliable.’
‘Bloody Jerries, with their efficiency.’
‘Bloody Jocks/Taffs/Paddies, doing their own thing just to be different.’
‘Bloody boffins, too clever by half.’
‘Bloody etc, etc.’
‘Mother, we’ve retaken Tobruk!!’
Big decisions, with consequences for everyone, should be taken properly:
Right pointing backhand index data & information in advance, chance to consider it calmly, good questions asked & answered.
Attempts by the PM to bounce Cabinet aren’t acceptable.
https://twitter.com/Mark_J_Harper/status/1472897605596323844?s=20
Yet if we know anything about Omicron we know it’s as infectious as all hell. I would have wanted to drill into that a bit.
It is indeed very sad.
I want to have a relaxing time at Xmas for her and her siblings above all. They have had a shitty two years. I am beyond depressed at this continuing.
Nothing new about alcohol and politics mixing.
Indeed there's often some mixing involved.
That been said, the photo plays into exactly what i said was the cast with #10 during pandemic, that boris fostered a culture of we are all working hard, chaps and chapettes, nothing wrong with a drink especially as the pubs are shut and this has then become a regular thing and morphed into piss ups in the office / parties.
It’s sunny and airy and nobody cares about the insane incompetence of Boris-land. There’s an element of surreal hysteria permeating the whole U.K. right now.
Seriously. My grief and stress collapsed the moment I exited Faro airport.
Very interesting.
The Fabian Society commissioned a GB-wide poll from YouGov with a specially-commissioned sub-group of the 125 seats in England and Wales where Labour came closest to winning in 2019. The survey was conducted on 8 to 13 December before the North Shropshire byelection and 668 people living in the Labour target seats took part.
We found that Labour leads the Conservatives by nine percentage points in the 125 seats (Labour 43, Conservative 34). By contrast, at the 2019 election the Conservatives led in these seats by 12 points (Labour 37, Conservative 49).
The Tories are in big big trouble
But it continued for many years, as your Dad found.
I don't think her publication record is impressive for a 46 year old researching in a very high profile area with lots of funding (== lots of postdocs who cite you. My guess is citations probably go like N^2 where N is the number of people on your grants).
In her defence, she has changed fields -- but then, her papers on the solar wind are actually pretty well-cited!
Like that scene in Chernobile series, local party bosses made decision to keep everyone in town and not evacuate?
A Blue Nun, so to speak.
COVID has eaten up almost all their University years. And there has been no fee remission, not even in part.
Citation numbers typically show a very skewed distribution. That’s a pretty normal pattern.
I get that some of you don’t like her research, but these attempts at ad hominem attacks are risible.
Labour winning a majority without a Scottish renaissance is not impossible, but it is improbable.
I think the modellers are pushing out what they are asked to, and they have simply taken an agnostic approach to what remains an unconfirmed variable (“mildness”).
There are, I think, several questions which I haven’t seen good responses on.
1. Why is there not more sensitivity analysis around the four or five key variables? Although it would simply increase the confidence intervals wider, it would give a fuller picture to decision makers.
2. How confident are modellers on the impact of further restrictions, given the known speed and infectiousness of Omicron.
3. The relationships between peak day versus total wave deaths, and the extent to which restrictions simply defer those deaths.
4. The impact on hospital capacity, and the impact on non-Covid health services
5. The cost of restrictions, which must be weighed against any impact.
"Carlsberg workers in Copenhagen have gone on strike against new rules that restrict the amount of free beer they can consume during their working day.
Regulations brought in at the start of the month stipulate that workers are no longer allowed beer throughout the day, and can now only drink at lunchtime."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8612531.stm
On the h-index etc, I've certainly known profs with lower h-index. Citations, of course, also vary greatly by area, in addition to by quality/impact/profile of research.
(And citations are a blunt measure. My most cited paper by far - double the citations of any other - is low impact junk, to be honest, more or less a proof of the obvious. But one of those papers where citing it saves someone writing a paragraph of text. What I consider my best paper, which actually changed medical practice, has ~1/4 of the citations)
In no particular order
Truss: PPE
Sunak: PPE
Javid: Economics
Gove: English
Raab: Law
Patel: Economics
Wallace: Sandhurst
Barclay: History
Kwarteng: Classics/History
Sharma: Applied Physics & Electronics
Dorries: Nursing
Treveleyan: Accountancy
Coffey: Chemistry
Zahawi: Chemical Engineering
Shapps: HND in Business
Lewis: Economics/Law
There is a place in science for 2-page comment pieces, particularly during a fast-moving situation. They will have undergone some review — it will depend on the journal. They require considerably more rigour than “media stuff”.
Her pandemic papers have hundreds of citations. E.g., "Estimating excess 1-year mortality associated with the COVID-19 pandemic according to underlying conditions and age: a population-based cohort study" in 2020 has 330 citations.
Citation statistics do vary a lot from discipline to discipline. In e.g., pure mathematics, Pagel's record would be really exceptional. In chemistry, it would be mediocre.
Obviously, the H index is a function of how many people are researching in the area (amongst other things).
I am not a medic. But, medicine is very well-funded, with some dedicated grant-giving bodies only funding medical projects (like the Wellcome).
So, I stand by my assertion that this is a pretty average profile for a 46 year old Professor in this area.
My trip to Asda was very brief and we are now in a position that we do not need to step outside till after Christmas as we have our pre Christmas Asda delivery slot booked for Thursday
I do not believe a lockdown is necessary as people are safeguarding themselves and the one we had in Wales under Drakeford was a failure
There's no way they'll be ousting the not so Magnificent not so Muscly one whilst the pandemic is raging. If it's going to happen it'll be in the summer.
And there's no way there'll be a legal lockdown for omicron lasting more than 4 weeks max. There might not be one at all.
If I'm wrong on either I'll start watching GB News for an hour every evening as penance.
Have you seen Emmerdale Farm
https://youtu.be/-ZxTCV6wQbA
So, how does the Government draw a line under it, if they can? Or do they think they can just hang on until the news cycle has moved on?
I find it a sad attitude, as someone whose life was saved by putting chemicals into my body.
It’s not all of them, but I’d expect a strong correlation between clean eating and ant-vax.
That puts him in the top tier of this Government
Of course, no problem.