On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
Or subjected to the same legislation as motorbikes. Riders must be 16, wearing a helmet and have passed a test. Vehicles must be registered, insured and taxed.
There also seems to be a grey area between electric bikes and electric motorbikes. I saw somebody on one the other week and he was bloody shifting.
They’re supposed to be limited to 30kph, about 18mph, but the Chinese manufacturers are not shy about providing instructions on how to overcome the limits.
Some of them are good for 35mph, which makes one hell of a mess when you bin it.
Boris knew exactly what he wanted to do as PM, get Brexit done, which he achieved in early 2020. Unlike Brown he also won a landslide majority in the process.
There is of course zero chance of a general election before the government's 5 year term is up unless the Tories have a big poll lead which they clearly do not at present. So forget a 2022 general election or likely a general election before 2024
That suggests he should have stood down at Easter 2020, and let someone else more capable of actually running the country take charge.
FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.
From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.
The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.
The cost of leasing is set by sophisticated players taking bets on the price of used cars in the future. It may be they are wrong, but leasing rates are not carelessly set.
So if bangernomics goes, leasing won't work either?
The cost of manufacturing a car has to be recovered across its useful life. If that useful life becomes substantially shorter (and looking at new cars today, it's difficult to conclude that this isn't occurring) then the cost of ownership rises.
How this rise is distributed is an interesting question, but if leasing/pcp deals start to resemble 50% of useful life rather than 25% they are going to become spectacularly expensive as the residual at the end is rubbish.
Where the system may well collapse is if the shortening lifespans aren't priced in by the leasing suits who assume previous levels of residuals are achievable, but who then discover they've taken a one way bet on a lot of very expensive tat.
I'm a bit bemused by the type of person who runs new cars - my current banger cost me £2k five years ago, I've so far got 112k miles out of it. It is getting a bit tired now, but had I leased a Micra (a vastly inferior car) for £150 a month I would have had spent £9k to achieve the same result (and I bet the £150 a month doesn't give you 20-25k annual miles either).
I spent £20k on a nearly new car 17 years ago and it is still running fine
I had an old car whose piston went through the canshaft 20 years ago and it's been sitting in a garage ever since with the proprietor unable to get parts. Slowly it's condition deteriorated and I thought I'd see if anyone wanted to buy it as a project. I'd have been happy to accept £5-8,000. I looked online to see if anyone could sell a car that needed a load of work in the condition it was in. I found a place near Heathrow called Historics and they said they'd put it in their August auction.
I got it taken to the site by truck and that was that. They advised me not to put a reserve on it as people were keen on cars that looked like they'd been found in a barn. The big day came and it went under the hammer for £35,000! I was gobsmacked. The moral is don't throw anything away!
Presumably an E-Type Jag, rather than an Austin Montego?
I was offered the ex- Terry-Thomas, later Lawrence Harvey Bentley Continental Convertible for 7 grand in 2006. I declined, although I could afford it. It was sold the following year for £8.5k at a classic car dealer in the New Forest (the owner probably got circa £7k after commissions). Similar Bentley Continentals without the provenance are going for £300k. What a Muppet I was!
Gosh the public are poor pundits. They're worse than Dan Hodges. They have every single thing wrongly evaluated. Next year will not see Johnson replaced nor Starmer replaced nor a GE. There will be no national lockdown, no new vaccine-immune variant, and there WILL be an end to Covid restrictions. Get a grip public.
The whole end of restrictions thing is predicated rather heavily on our leaders not treating every variant of concern as, essentially, the start of a new pandemic, rather than a minor development in the existing one.
The response to Omicron has followed the pattern (1) we're not sure what's happening, (2) look at all these terrifying predictions, (3) restrictions (just in case,) (4) emergency booster jab campaign, (5) omigod it's reached the hospitals, (6) if you don't support LOCKDOWN NOW you want everyone over 50 to die horribly within the next six weeks. And for Our Beloved NHS to burn.
Lockdown (or, at the very least, Step 2 of the roadmap, which isn't far short of it) is only being prevented in England by Boris Johnson's weak political position, and only being prevented in the rest of the UK by the lack of willingness of Rishi Sunak to provide financial support for mass scale business closures. We really shouldn't be having to rely on internal Tory Party politics to save the country from an endless diet of restrictions, but that looks very much like where we are right now.
I'm deeply uneasy about JRM etc being seen as the primary advocates for keeping stuff open. I don't want that association at all.
I'm much more comfortable in the Sunak camp of "other harms". I hope that prevails in the media narrative over the next few weeks.
It's bullshit imo that the Tory backbench rebellion against Plan B has avoided an unnecessary lockdown. We've never done an unnecessary lockdown and I don't see why it's assumed we were about to do one this time. The only thing we might have avoided is a necessary lockdown - which would be unfortunate since it's now probably too late to do it, the omicron script being largely written. But I don't think so myself. I think on this occasion the government's tendency to dither will have led to a good outcome. The data as it firms up will support the decision not to have more restrictions. Caveat: NHS staff sickness and/or isolating, what will this do to capacity?
"I'd rather break bread with Dawkins than Desmond Tutu to be honest."
Well apart from that whole fighting apartheid thing, Desmond liked a bit of a laugh while Dawkins appears to be a miserable old hectoring cnut, so I would disagree with Minchin.
Boris knew exactly what he wanted to do as PM, get Brexit done, which he achieved in early 2020. Unlike Brown he also won a landslide majority in the process.
There is of course zero chance of a general election before the government's 5 year term is up unless the Tories have a big poll lead which they clearly do not at present. So forget a 2022 general election or likely a general election before 2024
He hasn't "got Brexit done"properly. It's still a work in progress dog's breakfast.
Boris knew exactly what he wanted to do as PM, get Brexit done, which he achieved in early 2020. Unlike Brown he also won a landslide majority in the process.
There is of course zero chance of a general election before the government's 5 year term is up unless the Tories have a big poll lead which they clearly do not at present. So forget a 2022 general election or likely a general election before 2024
That suggests he should have stood down at Easter 2020, and let someone else more capable of actually running the country take charge.
It also suggests he actually got Brexit done in manner superior to that of the dodgy builder who papered over the cracks and went off with the cheque and won't come back to address the real structural problems. I'm anticipating 1 January with interest, not to mention the small matter of the Irish Sea frontier and the consequences. The time after 1 January is traditionally known here as 'auld claes an porage', Anglice: dump the party gear and nibbles and get back to work. Might be particularly apposite for 2022.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
And just further to this, it's quite stark now how different the attitude in Scotland is to RUK, despite Leitch etc basically going with the "learn to live with it line".
Zero-covid mentality is much more prevalent up here, based on a simple BBC Scotland to BBC 5 Live comparison
You and I both live up here - don't you feel like we also learned to live with it? I can't think of anything that the mask mandate has impeded me doing. It isn't that Scotland hasn't learned to live with it and England has.
I started washing the dishes from yesterday, and unfortunately I couldn't avoid thinking about why this annoyed me so much. It's because my wife hasn't learned to live with the virus, and I blame people like you and Sturgeon for that.
She's been double-dosed since early August, and boostered in mid-December. Since her second dose her sum total of in person social mixing has been:
1. Me. 2. Living for 11 weeks with her parents in Ireland. 3. Meeting one friend on a beach in Ireland in August. 4. Meeting her brothers while living with her parents. 5. Meeting our daughter in Bath for the weekend - but only in the flat we rented, or for a walk in the park and American garden.
She's hardly been out of the house at all. We went to one restaurant while in Ireland for dinner outside, and one big house for afternoon tea.
No museums, no galleries, no cafes, no friends, no music, nothing else. And this is because Sturgeon, and people like RP (and lots in our anti-Tory social circle), are still harping on about how dangerous Covid is, and how we ought to be stopping the spread. I think it's more than a little hypocritical to be tirelessly spreading a message of doom and gloom that encourages people to hide away at home while you are going out and enjoying yourself with only the figleaf of a mask to salve your conscience.
We need leadership to reassure people who are still hiding at home that it is safe to come out, instead we have Sturgeon playing politics to blame Johnson and England for Covid, and hypocrites off living their life while scaring others into not doing so.
Gosh the public are poor pundits. They're worse than Dan Hodges. They have every single thing wrongly evaluated. Next year will not see Johnson replaced nor Starmer replaced nor a GE. There will be no national lockdown, no new vaccine-immune variant, and there WILL be an end to Covid restrictions. Get a grip public.
The whole end of restrictions thing is predicated rather heavily on our leaders not treating every variant of concern as, essentially, the start of a new pandemic, rather than a minor development in the existing one.
The response to Omicron has followed the pattern (1) we're not sure what's happening, (2) look at all these terrifying predictions, (3) restrictions (just in case,) (4) emergency booster jab campaign, (5) omigod it's reached the hospitals, (6) if you don't support LOCKDOWN NOW you want everyone over 50 to die horribly within the next six weeks. And for Our Beloved NHS to burn.
Lockdown (or, at the very least, Step 2 of the roadmap, which isn't far short of it) is only being prevented in England by Boris Johnson's weak political position, and only being prevented in the rest of the UK by the lack of willingness of Rishi Sunak to provide financial support for mass scale business closures. We really shouldn't be having to rely on internal Tory Party politics to save the country from an endless diet of restrictions, but that looks very much like where we are right now.
I'm deeply uneasy about JRM etc being seen as the primary advocates for keeping stuff open. I don't want that association at all.
I'm much more comfortable in the Sunak camp of "other harms". I hope that prevails in the media narrative over the next few weeks.
It's bullshit imo that the Tory backbench rebellion against Plan B has avoided an unnecessary lockdown. We've never done an unnecessary lockdown and I don't see why it's assumed we were about to do one this time. The only thing we might have avoided is a necessary lockdown - which would be unfortunate since it's now probably too late to do it, the omicron script being largely written. But I don't think so myself. I think on this occasion the government's tendency to dither will have led to a good outcome. The data as it firms up will support the decision not to have more restrictions. Caveat: NHS staff sickness and/or isolating, what will this do to capacity?
I don't believe anyone wants a lockdown, and I don't believe additional restrictions way short of a lockdown have been proposed and enacted elsewhere for any other reason than to try and prevent the NHS from falling over during the peak winter period.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. If we'd known in the summer that the next variant would be less virulent, then you would have been able to reduce medical harm by delaying Delta cases into the winter so that they were Omicron cases. But no way of knowing whether the next variant would be more or less virulent, so taking Delta cases in the summer/autumn was still the best choice available at the time.
This is fair. But let's be honest about the fact that this hasn't worked out, despite being a reasonable decision.
Yes, on a medical-only basis it's been a net loss, rather than the gain intended. But then there's also been the advantage of not having extraordinary restrictions on social gathering or normal business.
Even if you'd known in advance about Omicron you can make a strong case for opening up and taking those Delta cases for that reason.
I thought we should have kept masks on public transport/shops and other low cost options.
I agree that stopping people from getting together is more of an imposition and should only be when situation is really bad.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. If we'd known in the summer that the next variant would be less virulent, then you would have been able to reduce medical harm by delaying Delta cases into the winter so that they were Omicron cases. But no way of knowing whether the next variant would be more or less virulent, so taking Delta cases in the summer/autumn was still the best choice available at the time.
This is fair. But let's be honest about the fact that this hasn't worked out, despite being a reasonable decision.
This assumes that getting rid of as many of the rules as possible wasn't beneficial in and of itself. Which, given that the ultimate aim is (or really ought) to be to dismantle as quickly as possible the Coronavirus Act, and the entire associated architecture of public health impositions, seems questionable.
We won't know that until Shrove Tuesday or so, so there's no point scrimmaging about it.
Suspect that the "UK has one of the highest death tolls in the world" that has been running on a loop on French TV for the last few weeks may be a bit more obsolete by then than it is now.
Aside: does anyone know which vaccine they have used in Cuba?
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
And just further to this, it's quite stark now how different the attitude in Scotland is to RUK, despite Leitch etc basically going with the "learn to live with it line".
Zero-covid mentality is much more prevalent up here, based on a simple BBC Scotland to BBC 5 Live comparison
You and I both live up here - don't you feel like we also learned to live with it? I can't think of anything that the mask mandate has impeded me doing. It isn't that Scotland hasn't learned to live with it and England has.
I started washing the dishes from yesterday, and unfortunately I couldn't avoid thinking about why this annoyed me so much. It's because my wife hasn't learned to live with the virus, and I blame people like you and Sturgeon for that.
She's been double-dosed since early August, and boostered in mid-December. Since her second dose her sum total of in person social mixing has been:
1. Me. 2. Living for 11 weeks with her parents in Ireland. 3. Meeting one friend on a beach in Ireland in August. 4. Meeting her brothers while living with her parents. 5. Meeting our daughter in Bath for the weekend - but only in the flat we rented, or for a walk in the park and American garden.
She's hardly been out of the house at all. We went to one restaurant while in Ireland for dinner outside, and one big house for afternoon tea.
No museums, no galleries, no cafes, no friends, nothing else. And this is because Sturgeon, and people like RP (and lots in our anti-Tory social circle), are still harping on about how dangerous Covid is, and how we ought to be stopping the spread. I think it's more than a little hypocritical to be tirelessly spreading a message of doom and gloom that encourages people to hide away at home while you are going out and enjoying yourself with only the figleaf of a mask to salve your conscience.
We need leadership to reassure people who are still hiding at home that it is safe to come out, instead we have Sturgeon playing politics to blame Johnson and England for Covid, and hypocrites off living their life while scaring others into not doing so.
I hesitate to comment on someone about whom I know nothing apart from what you’ve related, but in general don’t you think people should make their own minds up about risk? Do you think Sturgeon and people like RP and your anti Tory circle are lying about how dangerous they think Covid is?
Let me add one more reason to admire Archbishop Desmond Tutu. When Barack Obama became president, he contemplated changes in Bush's PEPFAR program. Tutu publicly opposed the changes, and Obama dropped the matter, leaving the program unchanged. (As far as I can tell, Obama objected to the program because it was Bush's program, not for any faults in it.)
As of September, PEPFAR has saved an estimated 20 million lives, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Tutu was right.
(Were I running the BBC, I would do a series of programs on PEPFAR, explaining its successes.)
On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
Or subjected to the same legislation as motorbikes. Riders must be 16, wearing a helmet and have passed a test. Vehicles must be registered, insured and taxed.
The best legislative framework we have is probably that applied to mobility scooters, which is 4mph on a pavement or (I think) pedestrian zone, even for a Type III mobility scooter which has a higher top speed.
The question as ever is practical and effective enforcement.
When we get a coherent and largely separate cycling infrastructure, scooters will fit in better on that, along with e-bikes. Unravelling the modes of travel will be the key.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. If we'd known in the summer that the next variant would be less virulent, then you would have been able to reduce medical harm by delaying Delta cases into the winter so that they were Omicron cases. But no way of knowing whether the next variant would be more or less virulent, so taking Delta cases in the summer/autumn was still the best choice available at the time.
This is fair. But let's be honest about the fact that this hasn't worked out, despite being a reasonable decision.
So why are hospitalisations now so much higher in France etc than the UK ?
The point of accepting more hospitalisations during the summer and autumn was so that they would be reduced in the winter ie the load would be spread and so manageable at all times.
And that has succeeded.
So you're left with claiming it would have been better for some anti-vaxxers to get Omicron in winter rather than Delta in the autumn.
Perhaps it might have been for those anti-vaxxers but personally I couldn't give a toss if they suffered some more.
We focus initially on simulations were the severity of Omicron is half that of Delta. In the absence of additional controls, with England remaining under Plan B, we project a large wave of infection, leading to hospital admissions peaking at 13,600 per day (9,300-21,3000) [three times Delta peak into a hospital system with less spare capacity than Winter 2021] and deaths peaking at 2890 per day (1800-4770) [twice Delta peak].
The timing of interventions is critical because of an assumed rebound in cases when restrictions are removed. If you go too early you push the cases to a larger second peak; if you go too late, everything comes in the first peak and the intervention is wasted. The aim with any innervation is to flatten the wave to two large peaks stretching across three months instead of one massive peak lasting a month. The actual restrictions last two weeks. See figure 8.
Let’s see. I think if that were right London would be buckling already. 10% have Covid in London right now according to ons. Even with lag, the admissions would be huge already. It’s not.
All that distancing themselves from Boris stuff as much use as a fart in a hurricane it would appear. Do you give any credence to the idea that Andrew Bowie is being lined up as SCon leader? He seems the most vacuous candidate for the job compared to the last few appointees by some distance, though that’s no bar obviously.
All that distancing themselves from Boris stuff as much use as a fart in a hurricane it would appear. Do you give any credence to the idea that Andrew Bowie is being lined up as SCon leader? He seems the most vacuous candidate for the job compared to the last few appointees by some distance, though that’s no bar obviously.
All that distancing themselves from Boris stuff as much use as a fart in a hurricane it would appear. Do you give any credence to the idea that Andrew Bowie is being lined up as SCon leader? He seems the most vacuous candidate for the job compared to the last few appointees by some distance, though that’s no bar obviously.
Why have a SCon leader in Westminster rather than Holyrood? The SCs seemed to think the current one had to move to Holyrood, hence Mr Ross's double-jobbing as MP and MSP.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
Ah! So Scotland's policies were bang on, it was just England's fault that they yielded no measurable benefit? Your SNP membership card is in the post.
Saddo, Little Englander whiner
Even the English can be right sometimes
For sure but not the whining little Englanders who only want to see Scotland as always being wrong. This one is well named and appears to have the brain of one as well.
Oh God, the thing's woken up.
I was on early posting , not like bird brains. Healthy living and up with the larks.
Morning Malky. Just back from the morning walk and having coffee. We seem to have missed the snow here - pleasant if grey morning, ie not raining heavily, or indeed at all.
Morning Carnyx, similar here, roads are wet but little rain and reasonably pleasant.
We focus initially on simulations were the severity of Omicron is half that of Delta. In the absence of additional controls, with England remaining under Plan B, we project a large wave of infection, leading to hospital admissions peaking at 13,600 per day (9,300-21,3000) [three times Delta peak into a hospital system with less spare capacity than Winter 2021] and deaths peaking at 2890 per day (1800-4770) [twice Delta peak].
The timing of interventions is critical because of an assumed rebound in cases when restrictions are removed. If you go too early you push the cases to a larger second peak; if you go too late, everything comes in the first peak and the intervention is wasted. The aim with any innervation is to flatten the wave to two large peaks stretching across three months instead of one massive peak lasting a month. The actual restrictions last two weeks. See figure 8.
Let’s see. I think if that were right London would be buckling already. 10% have Covid in London right now according to ons. Even with lag, the admissions would be huge already. It’s not.
Three times as many hospitalisations would suggest a peak of nearly 3k in London.
Currently under 400 - rising still but then again new cases have levelled off as well.
And there doesn't seem to be any reports of London hospitals being overrun with new patients.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?
Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:
The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
It may work out well for Johnson. Let's hope so. Nonetheless, the inertia over Covid restrictions is due to him having been taken hostage by the CRG, and not his anti-lockdown genius.
And Fraser Nelson "asking the right questions of scientists"? If you say so.
I think he stirred a hornets nest. I don’t believe it wa# necessarily the modellers. I think the issue is the civil service who have been trying to steer us to more restrictions to protect the nhs. The civil service has traditionally ‘always known best’ and I think they have selected the ‘right’ data to brief cabinet with. They’ve been rumbled to some extent, and this has probably made it less likely that there will be more restrictions in England, unless hospitalisation really shoot up.
Mate, come off it. It's the politicians who make the decisions!
Maybe, and maybe I’m influenced too much by memories of Jim Hacker, but I have civil sevants operate in this way before. They do not respect politicians as they do not have the expertise to ‘understand’ and thus can be steered. Hence three scenarios, one outrageously awful (to be discounted), one likely too optimistic, and one in the middle they want chosen.
Yes, I was talking to a senior civil servant the other day who agreed that the 3-option trick was common, though dangerous when overplayed, since some politicians would pick the option they stuck in which they'd thought was too crazy to contemplate. She felt that as she'd specialised in the area for years it was reasonable to have a view on what was best, but you should be careful to make sure that all the options were reasonable possibilities to consider.
Since 2010 the government decided, in many policy areas, that they know best and civil servants are actually there to drive through or project manage their policies. This was a key area of Civil Service reform in the Cameron era. Consequently, for many policies, politicians are almost completely exposed to the problems that follow from their policies, the Civil Service cannot be blamed, they were just doing their job and delivering the policies.
Having no special knowledge, I would guess that the current situation is a result of politicians suddenly panicking about COVID and urgently wanting advice on the risks; and Civil Servants being unduly pessimistic in response. Everyone is trying to avoid being blamed for avoidable deaths.
I'm sure you're right - it's only the scale of the disaster that is protecting Ministers everywhere. If slow response to warnings resulted in 20 people dying in an accident, resignations would be inevitable. If it's 20,000...
The received wisdom in Parliament (up to 2010, perhaps it's changed) is that if a Minister arrived with a clear concept of what they wanted, the Civil Service would take pride in implementing it. In that sense, Yes Minister is misleading. But if the Minister turned up and said "What shall we do?" then the Civil Service would run the show. It was quite rare for a newly-appointed Minister to have clear ideas about a department they'd only just been appointed to, so the latter was more common, at least for the first year or two.
I think that 2010 will be looked back on as a major change. A new generation of senior civil servants have come through, who have adapted to the 'project management' approach towards delivering policy whilst leaving politicians exposed to significant risks. This approach is not necessarily wrong, and is arguably better than the system depicted in Yes Minister; but the change was rooted in a lack of confidence on the part of Ministers in the civil service.
The dilemma reveals itself where Ministers are set on a policy. How do Civil servants explain risks without being dismissed as negative and risk averse? Whereas the old guard would have just said no, the culture moved to 'yes, but what about...'. And then it changed to 'yes, and what about ...', until you just get to the final stage where the civil service follow orders, whilst taking care to indemnify themselves against any adverse consequences. This is where I think we might have got to, sadly.
Boris knew exactly what he wanted to do as PM, get Brexit done, which he achieved in early 2020. Unlike Brown he also won a landslide majority in the process.
There is of course zero chance of a general election before the government's 5 year term is up unless the Tories have a big poll lead which they clearly do not at present. So forget a 2022 general election or likely a general election before 2024
They will still wait for the boundary review process to finish.
Unless the polls have thrown the pros and cons up in the air again
Good morning all. We need to talk about champagne.
At our family Christmas lunch yesterday one of the designated drivers drank NoSecco. Is there such a thing as alcohol-free champagne?
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
And just further to this, it's quite stark now how different the attitude in Scotland is to RUK, despite Leitch etc basically going with the "learn to live with it line".
Zero-covid mentality is much more prevalent up here, based on a simple BBC Scotland to BBC 5 Live comparison
You and I both live up here - don't you feel like we also learned to live with it? I can't think of anything that the mask mandate has impeded me doing. It isn't that Scotland hasn't learned to live with it and England has.
I started washing the dishes from yesterday, and unfortunately I couldn't avoid thinking about why this annoyed me so much. It's because my wife hasn't learned to live with the virus, and I blame people like you and Sturgeon for that.
She's been double-dosed since early August, and boostered in mid-December. Since her second dose her sum total of in person social mixing has been:
1. Me. 2. Living for 11 weeks with her parents in Ireland. 3. Meeting one friend on a beach in Ireland in August. 4. Meeting her brothers while living with her parents. 5. Meeting our daughter in Bath for the weekend - but only in the flat we rented, or for a walk in the park and American garden.
She's hardly been out of the house at all. We went to one restaurant while in Ireland for dinner outside, and one big house for afternoon tea.
No museums, no galleries, no cafes, no friends, no music, nothing else. And this is because Sturgeon, and people like RP (and lots in our anti-Tory social circle), are still harping on about how dangerous Covid is, and how we ought to be stopping the spread. I think it's more than a little hypocritical to be tirelessly spreading a message of doom and gloom that encourages people to hide away at home while you are going out and enjoying yourself with only the figleaf of a mask to salve your conscience.
We need leadership to reassure people who are still hiding at home that it is safe to come out, instead we have Sturgeon playing politics to blame Johnson and England for Covid, and hypocrites off living their life while scaring others into not doing so.
What a load of bollox, theying to blame your wife's terror on Surgeon, man up jessie boy and tell her to get a grip and go out and get a life or get on with it. The amount of whinging whiners on here is unbelievable. Stop trying to blame other people.
On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
Or subjected to the same legislation as motorbikes. Riders must be 16, wearing a helmet and have passed a test. Vehicles must be registered, insured and taxed.
The best legislative framework we have is probably that applied to mobility scooters, which is 4mph on a pavement or (I think) pedestrian zone, even for a Type III mobility scooter which has a higher top speed.
The question as ever is practical and effective enforcement.
When we get a coherent and largely separate cycling infrastructure, scooters will fit in better on that, along with e-bikes. Unravelling the modes of travel will be the key.
I've got a 125 cc motorbike, it is brilliant for getting around as parking is no longer an issue for me. I have taken a CBT test (driving with an L plate on), wear a helmet and have third party insurance. I would happily switch to an e-scooter or some other method of light electric transport, they should be regulated in the same way. It should not be too hard to work this out.
Boris knew exactly what he wanted to do as PM, get Brexit done, which he achieved in early 2020. Unlike Brown he also won a landslide majority in the process.
There is of course zero chance of a general election before the government's 5 year term is up unless the Tories have a big poll lead which they clearly do not at present. So forget a 2022 general election or likely a general election before 2024
They will still wait for the boundary review process to finish.
Unless the polls have thrown the pros and cons up in the air again
Good morning all. We need to talk about champagne.
At our family Christmas lunch yesterday one of the designated drivers drank NoSecco. Is there such a thing as alcohol-free champagne?
On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
Or subjected to the same legislation as motorbikes. Riders must be 16, wearing a helmet and have passed a test. Vehicles must be registered, insured and taxed.
The best legislative framework we have is probably that applied to mobility scooters, which is 4mph on a pavement or (I think) pedestrian zone, even for a Type III mobility scooter which has a higher top speed.
The question as ever is practical and effective enforcement.
When we get a coherent and largely separate cycling infrastructure, scooters will fit in better on that, along with e-bikes. Unravelling the modes of travel will be the key.
I've got a 125 cc motorbike, it is brilliant for getting around as parking is no longer an issue for me. I have taken a CBT test (driving with an L plate on), wear a helmet and have third party insurance. I would happily switch to an e-scooter or some other method of light electric transport, they should be regulated in the same way. It should not be too hard to work this out.
First up, I did an LFT and it came out negative, so I can go for a walk later - unlike Wor Lass. She's just about to head out for her PCR test. Her last taste of freedom for a week.
Secondly, she has fixed the CD player, following my 'insert two discs at the same time' episode. A bent piece of paper poked into the slot did the trick, and out they popped, one after the other.
A bit embarrassing, since I'm meant to be the practical engineer and she is the science wonk.
On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
Or subjected to the same legislation as motorbikes. Riders must be 16, wearing a helmet and have passed a test. Vehicles must be registered, insured and taxed.
The best legislative framework we have is probably that applied to mobility scooters, which is 4mph on a pavement or (I think) pedestrian zone, even for a Type III mobility scooter which has a higher top speed.
The question as ever is practical and effective enforcement.
When we get a coherent and largely separate cycling infrastructure, scooters will fit in better on that, along with e-bikes. Unravelling the modes of travel will be the key.
I've got a 125 cc motorbike, it is brilliant for getting around as parking is no longer an issue for me. I have taken a CBT test (driving with an L plate on), wear a helmet and have third party insurance. I would happily switch to an e-scooter or some other method of light electric transport, they should be regulated in the same way. It should not be too hard to work this out.
Doesn't your CBT last only 2 years?
You just renew it for £50.
Taking the full test (and doing all the associated training) takes a week and costs about £1000. Can't see the point.
On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
Or subjected to the same legislation as motorbikes. Riders must be 16, wearing a helmet and have passed a test. Vehicles must be registered, insured and taxed.
The best legislative framework we have is probably that applied to mobility scooters, which is 4mph on a pavement or (I think) pedestrian zone, even for a Type III mobility scooter which has a higher top speed.
The question as ever is practical and effective enforcement.
When we get a coherent and largely separate cycling infrastructure, scooters will fit in better on that, along with e-bikes. Unravelling the modes of travel will be the key.
I've got a 125 cc motorbike, it is brilliant for getting around as parking is no longer an issue for me. I have taken a CBT test (driving with an L plate on), wear a helmet and have third party insurance. I would happily switch to an e-scooter or some other method of light electric transport, they should be regulated in the same way. It should not be too hard to work this out.
I have both a full motorcycle license, riding motorbikes up from 125 cc to 2.3litres,and an electric scooter. The two are not even remotely comparable. An electric scooter is closer is weight and speed to a bicycle why argue they should be treated the same as a motorbike rather than a bicycle therefore.
Now if you were to argue bicycles should require a test, insurance and be road taxed then I would have some sympathy with your view for how electric scooters should be regulated. Frankly I have felt more in danger from idiot cyclists than I ever have from scooter riders.
It seems to me that of all Boris's problems, Princess Nut Nut is number one. She appears to have alienated almost the entire cabinet and most of the No 10 staff, and has been the driver to a raft of slightly half-baked environmental nonsense. Boris looks exhausted and unhappy on nearly every picture that you see, and he must be in a perpetual state of anxiety about his personal finances, which have long been a preoccupation.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
And just further to this, it's quite stark now how different the attitude in Scotland is to RUK, despite Leitch etc basically going with the "learn to live with it line".
Zero-covid mentality is much more prevalent up here, based on a simple BBC Scotland to BBC 5 Live comparison
You and I both live up here - don't you feel like we also learned to live with it? I can't think of anything that the mask mandate has impeded me doing. It isn't that Scotland hasn't learned to live with it and England has.
I started washing the dishes from yesterday, and unfortunately I couldn't avoid thinking about why this annoyed me so much. It's because my wife hasn't learned to live with the virus, and I blame people like you and Sturgeon for that.
She's been double-dosed since early August, and boostered in mid-December. Since her second dose her sum total of in person social mixing has been:
1. Me. 2. Living for 11 weeks with her parents in Ireland. 3. Meeting one friend on a beach in Ireland in August. 4. Meeting her brothers while living with her parents. 5. Meeting our daughter in Bath for the weekend - but only in the flat we rented, or for a walk in the park and American garden.
She's hardly been out of the house at all. We went to one restaurant while in Ireland for dinner outside, and one big house for afternoon tea.
No museums, no galleries, no cafes, no friends, no music, nothing else. And this is because Sturgeon, and people like RP (and lots in our anti-Tory social circle), are still harping on about how dangerous Covid is, and how we ought to be stopping the spread. I think it's more than a little hypocritical to be tirelessly spreading a message of doom and gloom that encourages people to hide away at home while you are going out and enjoying yourself with only the figleaf of a mask to salve your conscience.
We need leadership to reassure people who are still hiding at home that it is safe to come out, instead we have Sturgeon playing politics to blame Johnson and England for Covid, and hypocrites off living their life while scaring others into not doing so.
What a load of bollox, theying to blame your wife's terror on Surgeon, man up jessie boy and tell her to get a grip and go out and get a life or get on with it. The amount of whinging whiners on here is unbelievable. Stop trying to blame other people.
Agreed Malcolm. The almost universal consensus on here is that politicians are moronic, corrupt, self serving, mendacious, stupid, incapable of analysing the most basic material and entirely self interested. Why or why will they not tell us what to do?
On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
Or subjected to the same legislation as motorbikes. Riders must be 16, wearing a helmet and have passed a test. Vehicles must be registered, insured and taxed.
The best legislative framework we have is probably that applied to mobility scooters, which is 4mph on a pavement or (I think) pedestrian zone, even for a Type III mobility scooter which has a higher top speed.
The question as ever is practical and effective enforcement.
When we get a coherent and largely separate cycling infrastructure, scooters will fit in better on that, along with e-bikes. Unravelling the modes of travel will be the key.
I've got a 125 cc motorbike, it is brilliant for getting around as parking is no longer an issue for me. I have taken a CBT test (driving with an L plate on), wear a helmet and have third party insurance. I would happily switch to an e-scooter or some other method of light electric transport, they should be regulated in the same way. It should not be too hard to work this out.
I think those are 2 hugely different categories. A 125cc motorbike will run at nearly motorway speeds. An e-scooter can be ridden seamlessly on the pavement, is limited to between 10-15mph, and is a bit of a death trap on major roads due to the small wheel size. When you fall off you may get killed by the close-following tonne of steel with the dosy dope at the wheel ranting at the radio or playing eye-spy with the 4 year old.
Even though the UK has always had pretty much the safest roads in Europe for the last half-century and more, the surfaces of our roads are towards the bottom in quality. It's bad enough for cycles with 700mm wheels or folders with 350mm wheels, but e-scooters normally have 215m wheels.
E-scooters typically replace the upper end of walked journeys (0-5 miles), and the lower of cycle journeys. Cycling is normally half a mile up to say about 12-15 miles.
I think that full blown license, helmet and insurance for a vehicle which does 10mph is a massive overkill. Unless you are banning it by paperwork.
You could argue for 3rd part insurance, maybe, which you get free with membership of something like CyclingUK for people who use bikes. Perhaps you cold also put a case forward for training along the lines of the excellent bikeability, which is free in most places. IMO that's about it.
If I wanted something that did not need parking in the below motorbike category, I would be going for a Brompton or e-Brompton. You can hire one at many places for £5 for 24 hours. I took one to Istanbul on a hairyplane on holiday once. https://bromptonhire.com/
We focus initially on simulations were the severity of Omicron is half that of Delta. In the absence of additional controls, with England remaining under Plan B, we project a large wave of infection, leading to hospital admissions peaking at 13,600 per day (9,300-21,3000) [three times Delta peak into a hospital system with less spare capacity than Winter 2021] and deaths peaking at 2890 per day (1800-4770) [twice Delta peak].
The timing of interventions is critical because of an assumed rebound in cases when restrictions are removed. If you go too early you push the cases to a larger second peak; if you go too late, everything comes in the first peak and the intervention is wasted. The aim with any innervation is to flatten the wave to two large peaks stretching across three months instead of one massive peak lasting a month. The actual restrictions last two weeks. See figure 8.
Let’s see. I think if that were right London would be buckling already. 10% have Covid in London right now according to ons. Even with lag, the admissions would be huge already. It’s not.
The Warwick modellers hedge their predictions with the degree to which people will restrict themselves without being required to. I guess a degree of caution having being caught out last summer by modelling the July 19 Freedom Day, then it turned out people chose not to be immediately free.
My takeaways FWIW:
1. The Warwick model may simply be wrong, but I suspect it isn't in terms of the shape of the Omicron wave. There will be a short but sharp peak. Question is, just how high? 2. We're very dependent on people choosing to moderate their behaviour.
On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
Or subjected to the same legislation as motorbikes. Riders must be 16, wearing a helmet and have passed a test. Vehicles must be registered, insured and taxed.
The best legislative framework we have is probably that applied to mobility scooters, which is 4mph on a pavement or (I think) pedestrian zone, even for a Type III mobility scooter which has a higher top speed.
The question as ever is practical and effective enforcement.
When we get a coherent and largely separate cycling infrastructure, scooters will fit in better on that, along with e-bikes. Unravelling the modes of travel will be the key.
I've got a 125 cc motorbike, it is brilliant for getting around as parking is no longer an issue for me. I have taken a CBT test (driving with an L plate on), wear a helmet and have third party insurance. I would happily switch to an e-scooter or some other method of light electric transport, they should be regulated in the same way. It should not be too hard to work this out.
Doesn't your CBT last only 2 years?
You just renew it for £50.
Taking the full test (and doing all the associated training) takes a week and costs about £1000. Can't see the point.
I thought the CBT needs to be done again on expiration.
We're not in COVID trouble right now but we will be going forward as immunity begins to wane. It is time to announce a fourth round of boosters, otherwise we will be in big trouble in one-three months
On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
Or subjected to the same legislation as motorbikes. Riders must be 16, wearing a helmet and have passed a test. Vehicles must be registered, insured and taxed.
The best legislative framework we have is probably that applied to mobility scooters, which is 4mph on a pavement or (I think) pedestrian zone, even for a Type III mobility scooter which has a higher top speed.
The question as ever is practical and effective enforcement.
When we get a coherent and largely separate cycling infrastructure, scooters will fit in better on that, along with e-bikes. Unravelling the modes of travel will be the key.
I've got a 125 cc motorbike, it is brilliant for getting around as parking is no longer an issue for me. I have taken a CBT test (driving with an L plate on), wear a helmet and have third party insurance. I would happily switch to an e-scooter or some other method of light electric transport, they should be regulated in the same way. It should not be too hard to work this out.
Doesn't your CBT last only 2 years?
You just renew it for £50.
Taking the full test (and doing all the associated training) takes a week and costs about £1000. Can't see the point.
I thought the CBT needs to be done again on expiration.
I'm not sure that CBT only is enough to be safe on the roads.
Isabel H: Johnson can’t have failed to notice that the mood on his cabinet calls is now very different to just a couple of months ago. Now the mood has soured. His own authority is in question, too.
Not only is the prime minister weak after months of political mistakes and the biggest Commons revolt of his leadership on vaccine passports, but cabinet ministers are also aware that their colleagues on the backbenches want them to be more challenging so that there aren’t further mistakes in the new year. There are now few consequences for going against the agreed line, not least because there isn’t always a line to break.
Mind you, recently it has been a miracle that any minister agrees to go out and do media at all. It wasn’t just the indefensible behaviour at the heart of the stories, but also that Johnson has squandered a great deal of loyalty among his ministers. Other ministers who aren’t going anywhere are nonetheless frustrated that they’ve had to go out and clarify things that their prime minister, who is supposed to be a natural communicator, has made a mess of.
The risk at the moment is that Johnson is so weak and distracted that he and his team don’t realise how many colleagues aren’t really on his side any more – and then don’t have the wherewithal to do anything about it.
On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
Or subjected to the same legislation as motorbikes. Riders must be 16, wearing a helmet and have passed a test. Vehicles must be registered, insured and taxed.
The best legislative framework we have is probably that applied to mobility scooters, which is 4mph on a pavement or (I think) pedestrian zone, even for a Type III mobility scooter which has a higher top speed.
The question as ever is practical and effective enforcement.
When we get a coherent and largely separate cycling infrastructure, scooters will fit in better on that, along with e-bikes. Unravelling the modes of travel will be the key.
I've got a 125 cc motorbike, it is brilliant for getting around as parking is no longer an issue for me. I have taken a CBT test (driving with an L plate on), wear a helmet and have third party insurance. I would happily switch to an e-scooter or some other method of light electric transport, they should be regulated in the same way. It should not be too hard to work this out.
Doesn't your CBT last only 2 years?
You just renew it for £50.
Taking the full test (and doing all the associated training) takes a week and costs about £1000. Can't see the point.
I thought the CBT needs to be done again on expiration.
I'm not sure that CBT only is enough to be safe on the roads.
that as well. My CBT was quickly overruled by a full passed test.
Gosh the public are poor pundits. They're worse than Dan Hodges. They have every single thing wrongly evaluated. Next year will not see Johnson replaced nor Starmer replaced nor a GE. There will be no national lockdown, no new vaccine-immune variant, and there WILL be an end to Covid restrictions. Get a grip public.
The whole end of restrictions thing is predicated rather heavily on our leaders not treating every variant of concern as, essentially, the start of a new pandemic, rather than a minor development in the existing one.
The response to Omicron has followed the pattern (1) we're not sure what's happening, (2) look at all these terrifying predictions, (3) restrictions (just in case,) (4) emergency booster jab campaign, (5) omigod it's reached the hospitals, (6) if you don't support LOCKDOWN NOW you want everyone over 50 to die horribly within the next six weeks. And for Our Beloved NHS to burn.
Lockdown (or, at the very least, Step 2 of the roadmap, which isn't far short of it) is only being prevented in England by Boris Johnson's weak political position, and only being prevented in the rest of the UK by the lack of willingness of Rishi Sunak to provide financial support for mass scale business closures. We really shouldn't be having to rely on internal Tory Party politics to save the country from an endless diet of restrictions, but that looks very much like where we are right now.
I'm deeply uneasy about JRM etc being seen as the primary advocates for keeping stuff open. I don't want that association at all.
I'm much more comfortable in the Sunak camp of "other harms". I hope that prevails in the media narrative over the next few weeks.
It's bullshit imo that the Tory backbench rebellion against Plan B has avoided an unnecessary lockdown. We've never done an unnecessary lockdown and I don't see why it's assumed we were about to do one this time. The only thing we might have avoided is a necessary lockdown - which would be unfortunate since it's now probably too late to do it, the omicron script being largely written. But I don't think so myself. I think on this occasion the government's tendency to dither will have led to a good outcome. The data as it firms up will support the decision not to have more restrictions. Caveat: NHS staff sickness and/or isolating, what will this do to capacity?
What’s the difference between dithering and actively deciding that the case for action has not yet been made?
Gosh the public are poor pundits. They're worse than Dan Hodges. They have every single thing wrongly evaluated. Next year will not see Johnson replaced nor Starmer replaced nor a GE. There will be no national lockdown, no new vaccine-immune variant, and there WILL be an end to Covid restrictions. Get a grip public.
The whole end of restrictions thing is predicated rather heavily on our leaders not treating every variant of concern as, essentially, the start of a new pandemic, rather than a minor development in the existing one.
The response to Omicron has followed the pattern (1) we're not sure what's happening, (2) look at all these terrifying predictions, (3) restrictions (just in case,) (4) emergency booster jab campaign, (5) omigod it's reached the hospitals, (6) if you don't support LOCKDOWN NOW you want everyone over 50 to die horribly within the next six weeks. And for Our Beloved NHS to burn.
Lockdown (or, at the very least, Step 2 of the roadmap, which isn't far short of it) is only being prevented in England by Boris Johnson's weak political position, and only being prevented in the rest of the UK by the lack of willingness of Rishi Sunak to provide financial support for mass scale business closures. We really shouldn't be having to rely on internal Tory Party politics to save the country from an endless diet of restrictions, but that looks very much like where we are right now.
I'm deeply uneasy about JRM etc being seen as the primary advocates for keeping stuff open. I don't want that association at all.
I'm much more comfortable in the Sunak camp of "other harms". I hope that prevails in the media narrative over the next few weeks.
It's bullshit imo that the Tory backbench rebellion against Plan B has avoided an unnecessary lockdown. We've never done an unnecessary lockdown and I don't see why it's assumed we were about to do one this time. The only thing we might have avoided is a necessary lockdown - which would be unfortunate since it's now probably too late to do it, the omicron script being largely written. But I don't think so myself. I think on this occasion the government's tendency to dither will have led to a good outcome. The data as it firms up will support the decision not to have more restrictions. Caveat: NHS staff sickness and/or isolating, what will this do to capacity?
What’s the difference between dithering and actively deciding that the case for action has not yet been made?
On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
Or subjected to the same legislation as motorbikes. Riders must be 16, wearing a helmet and have passed a test. Vehicles must be registered, insured and taxed.
The best legislative framework we have is probably that applied to mobility scooters, which is 4mph on a pavement or (I think) pedestrian zone, even for a Type III mobility scooter which has a higher top speed.
The question as ever is practical and effective enforcement.
When we get a coherent and largely separate cycling infrastructure, scooters will fit in better on that, along with e-bikes. Unravelling the modes of travel will be the key.
I've got a 125 cc motorbike, it is brilliant for getting around as parking is no longer an issue for me. I have taken a CBT test (driving with an L plate on), wear a helmet and have third party insurance. I would happily switch to an e-scooter or some other method of light electric transport, they should be regulated in the same way. It should not be too hard to work this out.
Doesn't your CBT last only 2 years?
You just renew it for £50.
Taking the full test (and doing all the associated training) takes a week and costs about £1000. Can't see the point.
I thought the CBT needs to be done again on expiration.
I'm not sure that CBT only is enough to be safe on the roads.
that as well. My CBT was quickly overruled by a full passed test.
That’s good; having to stay away from going near any schools would be such a pain.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
And just further to this, it's quite stark now how different the attitude in Scotland is to RUK, despite Leitch etc basically going with the "learn to live with it line".
Zero-covid mentality is much more prevalent up here, based on a simple BBC Scotland to BBC 5 Live comparison
You and I both live up here - don't you feel like we also learned to live with it? I can't think of anything that the mask mandate has impeded me doing. It isn't that Scotland hasn't learned to live with it and England has.
I started washing the dishes from yesterday, and unfortunately I couldn't avoid thinking about why this annoyed me so much. It's because my wife hasn't learned to live with the virus, and I blame people like you and Sturgeon for that.
She's been double-dosed since early August, and boostered in mid-December. Since her second dose her sum total of in person social mixing has been:
1. Me. 2. Living for 11 weeks with her parents in Ireland. 3. Meeting one friend on a beach in Ireland in August. 4. Meeting her brothers while living with her parents. 5. Meeting our daughter in Bath for the weekend - but only in the flat we rented, or for a walk in the park and American garden.
She's hardly been out of the house at all. We went to one restaurant while in Ireland for dinner outside, and one big house for afternoon tea.
No museums, no galleries, no cafes, no friends, nothing else. And this is because Sturgeon, and people like RP (and lots in our anti-Tory social circle), are still harping on about how dangerous Covid is, and how we ought to be stopping the spread. I think it's more than a little hypocritical to be tirelessly spreading a message of doom and gloom that encourages people to hide away at home while you are going out and enjoying yourself with only the figleaf of a mask to salve your conscience.
We need leadership to reassure people who are still hiding at home that it is safe to come out, instead we have Sturgeon playing politics to blame Johnson and England for Covid, and hypocrites off living their life while scaring others into not doing so.
I hesitate to comment on someone about whom I know nothing apart from what you’ve related, but in general don’t you think people should make their own minds up about risk? Do you think Sturgeon and people like RP and your anti Tory circle are lying about how dangerous they think Covid is?
People are social animals and don'tmake up their minds in isolation.
I don't think people are consciously lying about their perception of Covid risk, but I do think that make are playing a crucial role for some people in masking a cognitive dissonance between how dangerous they think Covid is and how much they choose to socialise despite that.
This is a similar role to recycling in the climate change situation. People know today climate change is a problem and use recycling as a way to feel that they've done something useful, so that they can live their lives normally.
Other people, like my wife, have a different reaction to the masks. They see them as a sign of danger, particularly when mask-wearing technique and mask quality is so poor.
Interesting - makes more sense of the national projection yesterday, though some of the constituency samples still look dodgy. If the non-SNP vote continues to coalesce around Labour the seat changes will start to be significant.
We're not in COVID trouble right now but we will be going forward as immunity begins to wane. It is time to announce a fourth round of boosters, otherwise we will be in big trouble in one-three months
How do you know?
I'm inclined to think that what we perhaps need is a strategy for managing it as an endemic condition, with a plan for vaccinating up to 100% of the population up to twice a year mainly through Drs' surgeries - such that the normal NHS can proceed at 100% of normal activity. Compared with the 85-90% it has been running between the summer and the current accelerated booster programme.
We're not in COVID trouble right now but we will be going forward as immunity begins to wane. It is time to announce a fourth round of boosters, otherwise we will be in big trouble in one-three months
I think that depends on a number of known unknowns and some unknown unknowns.
If the next Covid variant is even more infectious but even milder than Omicron then our response will need to be materially different.
If the virus continues to mutate its way past vaccines and previous infections then vaccinating the mass of people now is going to be a waste of time. We will need to await its emergence and then produce a vaccine more specifically targeted.
If the fourth vaccine gives us even less protection than the third, which has been enormously disappointing, is it really worth vaccinating the whole country again as opposed to simply the most vulnerable groups?
On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
Or subjected to the same legislation as motorbikes. Riders must be 16, wearing a helmet and have passed a test. Vehicles must be registered, insured and taxed.
The best legislative framework we have is probably that applied to mobility scooters, which is 4mph on a pavement or (I think) pedestrian zone, even for a Type III mobility scooter which has a higher top speed.
The question as ever is practical and effective enforcement.
When we get a coherent and largely separate cycling infrastructure, scooters will fit in better on that, along with e-bikes. Unravelling the modes of travel will be the key.
I've got a 125 cc motorbike, it is brilliant for getting around as parking is no longer an issue for me. I have taken a CBT test (driving with an L plate on), wear a helmet and have third party insurance. I would happily switch to an e-scooter or some other method of light electric transport, they should be regulated in the same way. It should not be too hard to work this out.
Now if you were to argue bicycles should require a test, insurance and be road taxed then I would have some sympathy with your view for how electric scooters should be regulated. Frankly I have felt more in danger from idiot cyclists than I ever have from scooter riders.
Is that about where you have encountered them?
IME e-scooters mix with pedestrians eg in town centres, whilst people on bikes mix more with more general traffic.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
And just further to this, it's quite stark now how different the attitude in Scotland is to RUK, despite Leitch etc basically going with the "learn to live with it line".
Zero-covid mentality is much more prevalent up here, based on a simple BBC Scotland to BBC 5 Live comparison
You and I both live up here - don't you feel like we also learned to live with it? I can't think of anything that the mask mandate has impeded me doing. It isn't that Scotland hasn't learned to live with it and England has.
I started washing the dishes from yesterday, and unfortunately I couldn't avoid thinking about why this annoyed me so much. It's because my wife hasn't learned to live with the virus, and I blame people like you and Sturgeon for that.
She's been double-dosed since early August, and boostered in mid-December. Since her second dose her sum total of in person social mixing has been:
1. Me. 2. Living for 11 weeks with her parents in Ireland. 3. Meeting one friend on a beach in Ireland in August. 4. Meeting her brothers while living with her parents. 5. Meeting our daughter in Bath for the weekend - but only in the flat we rented, or for a walk in the park and American garden.
She's hardly been out of the house at all. We went to one restaurant while in Ireland for dinner outside, and one big house for afternoon tea.
No museums, no galleries, no cafes, no friends, no music, nothing else. And this is because Sturgeon, and people like RP (and lots in our anti-Tory social circle), are still harping on about how dangerous Covid is, and how we ought to be stopping the spread. I think it's more than a little hypocritical to be tirelessly spreading a message of doom and gloom that encourages people to hide away at home while you are going out and enjoying yourself with only the figleaf of a mask to salve your conscience.
We need leadership to reassure people who are still hiding at home that it is safe to come out, instead we have Sturgeon playing politics to blame Johnson and England for Covid, and hypocrites off living their life while scaring others into not doing so.
What a load of bollox, theying to blame your wife's terror on Surgeon, man up jessie boy and tell her to get a grip and go out and get a life or get on with it. The amount of whinging whiners on here is unbelievable. Stop trying to blame other people.
Morning Malcolm.
You're right that it's down to me to persuade my wife it's safe. I do think that messaging matters though, and hypocrisy is difficult to bear.
We're not in COVID trouble right now but we will be going forward as immunity begins to wane. It is time to announce a fourth round of boosters, otherwise we will be in big trouble in one-three months
How do you know?
I'm inclined to think that what we perhaps need is a strategy for managing it as an endemic condition, with a plan for vaccinating up to 100% of the population up to twice a year mainly through Drs' surgeries - such that the normal NHS can proceed at 100% of normal activity. Compared with the 85-90% it has been running between the summer and the current accelerated booster programme.
Don't use surgeries - completely offload it to pharmacies and similar groups - giving someone an injection doesn't require that much training.
Interesting - makes more sense of the national projection yesterday, though some of the constituency samples still look dodgy. If the non-SNP vote continues to coalesce around Labour the seat changes will start to be significant.
Yes, that would greatly improve Labour's chances of forming the next Government, possibly even without assitstance from the LDs and/or others.
Seasons Greetings btw Nick. All well? Good to see you still posting on here. I tend to lurk these days but still count myself as a Site supporter.
On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
Or subjected to the same legislation as motorbikes. Riders must be 16, wearing a helmet and have passed a test. Vehicles must be registered, insured and taxed.
The best legislative framework we have is probably that applied to mobility scooters, which is 4mph on a pavement or (I think) pedestrian zone, even for a Type III mobility scooter which has a higher top speed.
The question as ever is practical and effective enforcement.
When we get a coherent and largely separate cycling infrastructure, scooters will fit in better on that, along with e-bikes. Unravelling the modes of travel will be the key.
I've got a 125 cc motorbike, it is brilliant for getting around as parking is no longer an issue for me. I have taken a CBT test (driving with an L plate on), wear a helmet and have third party insurance. I would happily switch to an e-scooter or some other method of light electric transport, they should be regulated in the same way. It should not be too hard to work this out.
I have both a full motorcycle license, riding motorbikes up from 125 cc to 2.3litres,and an electric scooter. The two are not even remotely comparable. An electric scooter is closer is weight and speed to a bicycle why argue they should be treated the same as a motorbike rather than a bicycle therefore.
Now if you were to argue bicycles should require a test, insurance and be road taxed then I would have some sympathy with your view for how electric scooters should be regulated. Frankly I have felt more in danger from idiot cyclists than I ever have from scooter riders.
In my view the issue comes down to speed. Some of the electric scooters in circulation can go at about 20-30mph. If the speed limit is reduced to 15mph, then I would agree that they should be treated in the same way as bikes (or e-bikes) and there is no need for any tests. But to be an alternative to the car, then they need to be able to reach 30mph for trips around town.
On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
Or subjected to the same legislation as motorbikes. Riders must be 16, wearing a helmet and have passed a test. Vehicles must be registered, insured and taxed.
The best legislative framework we have is probably that applied to mobility scooters, which is 4mph on a pavement or (I think) pedestrian zone, even for a Type III mobility scooter which has a higher top speed.
The question as ever is practical and effective enforcement.
When we get a coherent and largely separate cycling infrastructure, scooters will fit in better on that, along with e-bikes. Unravelling the modes of travel will be the key.
I've got a 125 cc motorbike, it is brilliant for getting around as parking is no longer an issue for me. I have taken a CBT test (driving with an L plate on), wear a helmet and have third party insurance. I would happily switch to an e-scooter or some other method of light electric transport, they should be regulated in the same way. It should not be too hard to work this out.
I think those are 2 hugely different categories. A 125cc motorbike will run at nearly motorway speeds. An e-scooter can be ridden seamlessly on the pavement, is limited to between 10-15mph, and is a bit of a death trap on major roads due to the small wheel size. When you fall off you may get killed by the close-following tonne of steel with the dosy dope at the wheel ranting at the radio or playing eye-spy with the 4 year old.
Even though the UK has always had pretty much the safest roads in Europe for the last half-century and more, the surfaces of our roads are towards the bottom in quality. It's bad enough for cycles with 700mm wheels or folders with 350mm wheels, but e-scooters normally have 215m wheels.
E-scooters typically replace the upper end of walked journeys (0-5 miles), and the lower of cycle journeys. Cycling is normally half a mile up to say about 12-15 miles.
I think that full blown license, helmet and insurance for a vehicle which does 10mph is a massive overkill. Unless you are banning it by paperwork.
You could argue for 3rd part insurance, maybe, which you get free with membership of something like CyclingUK for people who use bikes. Perhaps you cold also put a case forward for training along the lines of the excellent bikeability, which is free in most places. IMO that's about it.
If I wanted something that did not need parking in the below motorbike category, I would be going for a Brompton or e-Brompton. You can hire one at many places for £5 for 24 hours. I took one to Istanbul on a hairyplane on holiday once. https://bromptonhire.com/
I've gone through various bikes and ebikes. The servicing and parts are the killer. I've got an 8 year old Brompton and I've spent about £300 on it this year.
My trips are sub 10 mile journeys on busy roads. As much as the motorbike is fun I think the answer is a cheap hybrid road bike; will also do good from an exercise point of view.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
And just further to this, it's quite stark now how different the attitude in Scotland is to RUK, despite Leitch etc basically going with the "learn to live with it line".
Zero-covid mentality is much more prevalent up here, based on a simple BBC Scotland to BBC 5 Live comparison
You and I both live up here - don't you feel like we also learned to live with it? I can't think of anything that the mask mandate has impeded me doing. It isn't that Scotland hasn't learned to live with it and England has.
I started washing the dishes from yesterday, and unfortunately I couldn't avoid thinking about why this annoyed me so much. It's because my wife hasn't learned to live with the virus, and I blame people like you and Sturgeon for that.
She's been double-dosed since early August, and boostered in mid-December. Since her second dose her sum total of in person social mixing has been:
1. Me. 2. Living for 11 weeks with her parents in Ireland. 3. Meeting one friend on a beach in Ireland in August. 4. Meeting her brothers while living with her parents. 5. Meeting our daughter in Bath for the weekend - but only in the flat we rented, or for a walk in the park and American garden.
She's hardly been out of the house at all. We went to one restaurant while in Ireland for dinner outside, and one big house for afternoon tea.
No museums, no galleries, no cafes, no friends, no music, nothing else. And this is because Sturgeon, and people like RP (and lots in our anti-Tory social circle), are still harping on about how dangerous Covid is, and how we ought to be stopping the spread. I think it's more than a little hypocritical to be tirelessly spreading a message of doom and gloom that encourages people to hide away at home while you are going out and enjoying yourself with only the figleaf of a mask to salve your conscience.
We need leadership to reassure people who are still hiding at home that it is safe to come out, instead we have Sturgeon playing politics to blame Johnson and England for Covid, and hypocrites off living their life while scaring others into not doing so.
What a load of bollox, theying to blame your wife's terror on Surgeon, man up jessie boy and tell her to get a grip and go out and get a life or get on with it. The amount of whinging whiners on here is unbelievable. Stop trying to blame other people.
Agreed Malcolm. The almost universal consensus on here is that politicians are moronic, corrupt, self serving, mendacious, stupid, incapable of analysing the most basic material and entirely self interested. Why or why will they not tell us what to do?
It's weird.
Why then does it matter so much who the party leaders are?
It's because the world is a complicated and potentially dangerous place, and people want someone they can trust to lead them through it.
On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
Or subjected to the same legislation as motorbikes. Riders must be 16, wearing a helmet and have passed a test. Vehicles must be registered, insured and taxed.
The best legislative framework we have is probably that applied to mobility scooters, which is 4mph on a pavement or (I think) pedestrian zone, even for a Type III mobility scooter which has a higher top speed.
The question as ever is practical and effective enforcement.
When we get a coherent and largely separate cycling infrastructure, scooters will fit in better on that, along with e-bikes. Unravelling the modes of travel will be the key.
I've got a 125 cc motorbike, it is brilliant for getting around as parking is no longer an issue for me. I have taken a CBT test (driving with an L plate on), wear a helmet and have third party insurance. I would happily switch to an e-scooter or some other method of light electric transport, they should be regulated in the same way. It should not be too hard to work this out.
Now if you were to argue bicycles should require a test, insurance and be road taxed then I would have some sympathy with your view for how electric scooters should be regulated. Frankly I have felt more in danger from idiot cyclists than I ever have from scooter riders.
Is that about where you have encountered them?
IME e-scooters mix with pedestrians eg in town centres, whilst people on bikes mix more with more general traffic.
Bikes and scooters both go through the town centre pedestrian area so same area. Rare to see a bike anywhere but on a pavement round here and number of times been almost taken out by a bicyclist coming up behind me at a lot more speed than an escooter can manage
Interesting - makes more sense of the national projection yesterday, though some of the constituency samples still look dodgy. If the non-SNP vote continues to coalesce around Labour the seat changes will start to be significant.
We're not in COVID trouble right now but we will be going forward as immunity begins to wane. It is time to announce a fourth round of boosters, otherwise we will be in big trouble in one-three months
How do you know?
I'm inclined to think that what we perhaps need is a strategy for managing it as an endemic condition, with a plan for vaccinating up to 100% of the population up to twice a year mainly through Drs' surgeries - such that the normal NHS can proceed at 100% of normal activity. Compared with the 85-90% it has been running between the summer and the current accelerated booster programme.
Don't use surgeries - completely offload it to pharmacies and similar groups - giving someone an injection doesn't require that much training.
IIRC this time last year pharmacies were not able to gear up for jabs requiring very low temperature storage or (mainly) for sufficient throughput.
Though I'd certainly agree with the potential for involving both.
My local surgery has been doing 300-400 on a Saturday morning. Perhaps smaller pharmacies have a gap-filler role?
On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
Or subjected to the same legislation as motorbikes. Riders must be 16, wearing a helmet and have passed a test. Vehicles must be registered, insured and taxed.
The best legislative framework we have is probably that applied to mobility scooters, which is 4mph on a pavement or (I think) pedestrian zone, even for a Type III mobility scooter which has a higher top speed.
The question as ever is practical and effective enforcement.
When we get a coherent and largely separate cycling infrastructure, scooters will fit in better on that, along with e-bikes. Unravelling the modes of travel will be the key.
I've got a 125 cc motorbike, it is brilliant for getting around as parking is no longer an issue for me. I have taken a CBT test (driving with an L plate on), wear a helmet and have third party insurance. I would happily switch to an e-scooter or some other method of light electric transport, they should be regulated in the same way. It should not be too hard to work this out.
I have both a full motorcycle license, riding motorbikes up from 125 cc to 2.3litres,and an electric scooter. The two are not even remotely comparable. An electric scooter is closer is weight and speed to a bicycle why argue they should be treated the same as a motorbike rather than a bicycle therefore.
Now if you were to argue bicycles should require a test, insurance and be road taxed then I would have some sympathy with your view for how electric scooters should be regulated. Frankly I have felt more in danger from idiot cyclists than I ever have from scooter riders.
In my view the issue comes down to speed. Some of the electric scooters in circulation can go at about 20-30mph. If the speed limit is reduced to 15mph, then I would agree that they should be treated in the same way as bikes (or e-bikes) and there is no need for any tests. But to be an alternative to the car, then they need to be able to reach 30mph for trips around town.
On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
Or subjected to the same legislation as motorbikes. Riders must be 16, wearing a helmet and have passed a test. Vehicles must be registered, insured and taxed.
The best legislative framework we have is probably that applied to mobility scooters, which is 4mph on a pavement or (I think) pedestrian zone, even for a Type III mobility scooter which has a higher top speed.
The question as ever is practical and effective enforcement.
When we get a coherent and largely separate cycling infrastructure, scooters will fit in better on that, along with e-bikes. Unravelling the modes of travel will be the key.
I've got a 125 cc motorbike, it is brilliant for getting around as parking is no longer an issue for me. I have taken a CBT test (driving with an L plate on), wear a helmet and have third party insurance. I would happily switch to an e-scooter or some other method of light electric transport, they should be regulated in the same way. It should not be too hard to work this out.
I think those are 2 hugely different categories. A 125cc motorbike will run at nearly motorway speeds. An e-scooter can be ridden seamlessly on the pavement, is limited to between 10-15mph, and is a bit of a death trap on major roads due to the small wheel size. When you fall off you may get killed by the close-following tonne of steel with the dosy dope at the wheel ranting at the radio or playing eye-spy with the 4 year old.
Even though the UK has always had pretty much the safest roads in Europe for the last half-century and more, the surfaces of our roads are towards the bottom in quality. It's bad enough for cycles with 700mm wheels or folders with 350mm wheels, but e-scooters normally have 215m wheels.
E-scooters typically replace the upper end of walked journeys (0-5 miles), and the lower of cycle journeys. Cycling is normally half a mile up to say about 12-15 miles.
I think that full blown license, helmet and insurance for a vehicle which does 10mph is a massive overkill. Unless you are banning it by paperwork.
You could argue for 3rd part insurance, maybe, which you get free with membership of something like CyclingUK for people who use bikes. Perhaps you cold also put a case forward for training along the lines of the excellent bikeability, which is free in most places. IMO that's about it.
If I wanted something that did not need parking in the below motorbike category, I would be going for a Brompton or e-Brompton. You can hire one at many places for £5 for 24 hours. I took one to Istanbul on a hairyplane on holiday once. https://bromptonhire.com/
I've gone through various bikes and ebikes. The servicing and parts are the killer. I've got an 8 year old Brompton and I've spent about £300 on it this year.
My trips are sub 10 mile journeys on busy roads. As much as the motorbike is fun I think the answer is a cheap hybrid road bike; will also do good from an exercise point of view.
electric scooters and bicycles are meant to be limitied to 15mph by law. Mine certainly has that as top speed. The fact that some small number modify them to go faster is not a reason to inflict licensing and insurance on the rest of us
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
And just further to this, it's quite stark now how different the attitude in Scotland is to RUK, despite Leitch etc basically going with the "learn to live with it line".
Zero-covid mentality is much more prevalent up here, based on a simple BBC Scotland to BBC 5 Live comparison
You and I both live up here - don't you feel like we also learned to live with it? I can't think of anything that the mask mandate has impeded me doing. It isn't that Scotland hasn't learned to live with it and England has.
I started washing the dishes from yesterday, and unfortunately I couldn't avoid thinking about why this annoyed me so much. It's because my wife hasn't learned to live with the virus, and I blame people like you and Sturgeon for that.
She's been double-dosed since early August, and boostered in mid-December. Since her second dose her sum total of in person social mixing has been:
1. Me. 2. Living for 11 weeks with her parents in Ireland. 3. Meeting one friend on a beach in Ireland in August. 4. Meeting her brothers while living with her parents. 5. Meeting our daughter in Bath for the weekend - but only in the flat we rented, or for a walk in the park and American garden.
She's hardly been out of the house at all. We went to one restaurant while in Ireland for dinner outside, and one big house for afternoon tea.
No museums, no galleries, no cafes, no friends, no music, nothing else. And this is because Sturgeon, and people like RP (and lots in our anti-Tory social circle), are still harping on about how dangerous Covid is, and how we ought to be stopping the spread. I think it's more than a little hypocritical to be tirelessly spreading a message of doom and gloom that encourages people to hide away at home while you are going out and enjoying yourself with only the figleaf of a mask to salve your conscience.
We need leadership to reassure people who are still hiding at home that it is safe to come out, instead we have Sturgeon playing politics to blame Johnson and England for Covid, and hypocrites off living their life while scaring others into not doing so.
What a load of bollox, theying to blame your wife's terror on Surgeon, man up jessie boy and tell her to get a grip and go out and get a life or get on with it. The amount of whinging whiners on here is unbelievable. Stop trying to blame other people.
Agreed Malcolm. The almost universal consensus on here is that politicians are moronic, corrupt, self serving, mendacious, stupid, incapable of analysing the most basic material and entirely self interested. Why or why will they not tell us what to do?
It's weird.
Why then does it matter so much who the party leaders are?
It's because the world is a complicated and potentially dangerous place, and people want someone they can trust to lead them through it.
"And Always Keep A-hold of Nurse, for Fear of Finding Something Worse"
its a solid lesson for a child but adults really should accept more responsibility.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
And just further to this, it's quite stark now how different the attitude in Scotland is to RUK, despite Leitch etc basically going with the "learn to live with it line".
Zero-covid mentality is much more prevalent up here, based on a simple BBC Scotland to BBC 5 Live comparison
You and I both live up here - don't you feel like we also learned to live with it? I can't think of anything that the mask mandate has impeded me doing. It isn't that Scotland hasn't learned to live with it and England has.
I started washing the dishes from yesterday, and unfortunately I couldn't avoid thinking about why this annoyed me so much. It's because my wife hasn't learned to live with the virus, and I blame people like you and Sturgeon for that.
She's been double-dosed since early August, and boostered in mid-December. Since her second dose her sum total of in person social mixing has been:
1. Me. 2. Living for 11 weeks with her parents in Ireland. 3. Meeting one friend on a beach in Ireland in August. 4. Meeting her brothers while living with her parents. 5. Meeting our daughter in Bath for the weekend - but only in the flat we rented, or for a walk in the park and American garden.
She's hardly been out of the house at all. We went to one restaurant while in Ireland for dinner outside, and one big house for afternoon tea.
No museums, no galleries, no cafes, no friends, no music, nothing else. And this is because Sturgeon, and people like RP (and lots in our anti-Tory social circle), are still harping on about how dangerous Covid is, and how we ought to be stopping the spread. I think it's more than a little hypocritical to be tirelessly spreading a message of doom and gloom that encourages people to hide away at home while you are going out and enjoying yourself with only the figleaf of a mask to salve your conscience.
We need leadership to reassure people who are still hiding at home that it is safe to come out, instead we have Sturgeon playing politics to blame Johnson and England for Covid, and hypocrites off living their life while scaring others into not doing so.
What a load of bollox, theying to blame your wife's terror on Surgeon, man up jessie boy and tell her to get a grip and go out and get a life or get on with it. The amount of whinging whiners on here is unbelievable. Stop trying to blame other people.
Agreed Malcolm. The almost universal consensus on here is that politicians are moronic, corrupt, self serving, mendacious, stupid, incapable of analysing the most basic material and entirely self interested. Why or why will they not tell us what to do?
It's weird.
Why then does it matter so much who the party leaders are?
It's because the world is a complicated and potentially dangerous place, and people want someone they can trust to lead them through it.
"And Always Keep A-hold of Nurse, for Fear of Finding Something Worse"
its a solid lesson for a child but adults really should accept more responsibility.
Useful in Scotland to have clear examples of the something worse, both in theory and in practice.
On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
Or subjected to the same legislation as motorbikes. Riders must be 16, wearing a helmet and have passed a test. Vehicles must be registered, insured and taxed.
The best legislative framework we have is probably that applied to mobility scooters, which is 4mph on a pavement or (I think) pedestrian zone, even for a Type III mobility scooter which has a higher top speed.
The question as ever is practical and effective enforcement.
When we get a coherent and largely separate cycling infrastructure, scooters will fit in better on that, along with e-bikes. Unravelling the modes of travel will be the key.
I've got a 125 cc motorbike, it is brilliant for getting around as parking is no longer an issue for me. I have taken a CBT test (driving with an L plate on), wear a helmet and have third party insurance. I would happily switch to an e-scooter or some other method of light electric transport, they should be regulated in the same way. It should not be too hard to work this out.
I have both a full motorcycle license, riding motorbikes up from 125 cc to 2.3litres,and an electric scooter. The two are not even remotely comparable. An electric scooter is closer is weight and speed to a bicycle why argue they should be treated the same as a motorbike rather than a bicycle therefore.
Now if you were to argue bicycles should require a test, insurance and be road taxed then I would have some sympathy with your view for how electric scooters should be regulated. Frankly I have felt more in danger from idiot cyclists than I ever have from scooter riders.
In my view the issue comes down to speed. Some of the electric scooters in circulation can go at about 20-30mph. If the speed limit is reduced to 15mph, then I would agree that they should be treated in the same way as bikes (or e-bikes) and there is no need for any tests. But to be an alternative to the car, then they need to be able to reach 30mph for trips around town.
On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
Or subjected to the same legislation as motorbikes. Riders must be 16, wearing a helmet and have passed a test. Vehicles must be registered, insured and taxed.
The best legislative framework we have is probably that applied to mobility scooters, which is 4mph on a pavement or (I think) pedestrian zone, even for a Type III mobility scooter which has a higher top speed.
The question as ever is practical and effective enforcement.
When we get a coherent and largely separate cycling infrastructure, scooters will fit in better on that, along with e-bikes. Unravelling the modes of travel will be the key.
I've got a 125 cc motorbike, it is brilliant for getting around as parking is no longer an issue for me. I have taken a CBT test (driving with an L plate on), wear a helmet and have third party insurance. I would happily switch to an e-scooter or some other method of light electric transport, they should be regulated in the same way. It should not be too hard to work this out.
I think those are 2 hugely different categories. A 125cc motorbike will run at nearly motorway speeds. An e-scooter can be ridden seamlessly on the pavement, is limited to between 10-15mph, and is a bit of a death trap on major roads due to the small wheel size. When you fall off you may get killed by the close-following tonne of steel with the dosy dope at the wheel ranting at the radio or playing eye-spy with the 4 year old.
Even though the UK has always had pretty much the safest roads in Europe for the last half-century and more, the surfaces of our roads are towards the bottom in quality. It's bad enough for cycles with 700mm wheels or folders with 350mm wheels, but e-scooters normally have 215m wheels.
E-scooters typically replace the upper end of walked journeys (0-5 miles), and the lower of cycle journeys. Cycling is normally half a mile up to say about 12-15 miles.
I think that full blown license, helmet and insurance for a vehicle which does 10mph is a massive overkill. Unless you are banning it by paperwork.
You could argue for 3rd part insurance, maybe, which you get free with membership of something like CyclingUK for people who use bikes. Perhaps you cold also put a case forward for training along the lines of the excellent bikeability, which is free in most places. IMO that's about it.
If I wanted something that did not need parking in the below motorbike category, I would be going for a Brompton or e-Brompton. You can hire one at many places for £5 for 24 hours. I took one to Istanbul on a hairyplane on holiday once. https://bromptonhire.com/
I've gone through various bikes and ebikes. The servicing and parts are the killer. I've got an 8 year old Brompton and I've spent about £300 on it this year.
My trips are sub 10 mile journeys on busy roads. As much as the motorbike is fun I think the answer is a cheap hybrid road bike; will also do good from an exercise point of view.
TBH I don't think £300 in year 8 is that bad, unless it is every year. I pay about £30-40 for decent tyres, for example.
I wouldn't necessarily go for a cheapie, depending on your meaning of cheapie. For about 6 or 7 years I have had a £750 Boardman hybrid bought with various offers for £550, and have a Gruber Assist fitted (Gruber Assist is the e-bike conversion with the long thin motor in the seatpost). That gives me an invisible e-bike with about 25 miles worth of assist for a total weight of 13kg. But kits have really moved on since.
I've done everything from holidays with luggage to normal commuting on it. Holiday example would be Chesterfield to Portsmouth on the train with cycling through London, then a ferry and to Ventnor on the bike. Or the train to Bristol then the bike into Somerset.
The worst thing about self-lockdown is that there's no end to it. No review date, no sunset clause, no press conference announcing an end to restrictions.
Apologies for being such a misery guts. I see that I'm going to have to phone the doctor and talk about changing my medication again.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
And just further to this, it's quite stark now how different the attitude in Scotland is to RUK, despite Leitch etc basically going with the "learn to live with it line".
Zero-covid mentality is much more prevalent up here, based on a simple BBC Scotland to BBC 5 Live comparison
You and I both live up here - don't you feel like we also learned to live with it? I can't think of anything that the mask mandate has impeded me doing. It isn't that Scotland hasn't learned to live with it and England has.
I started washing the dishes from yesterday, and unfortunately I couldn't avoid thinking about why this annoyed me so much. It's because my wife hasn't learned to live with the virus, and I blame people like you and Sturgeon for that.
She's been double-dosed since early August, and boostered in mid-December. Since her second dose her sum total of in person social mixing has been:
1. Me. 2. Living for 11 weeks with her parents in Ireland. 3. Meeting one friend on a beach in Ireland in August. 4. Meeting her brothers while living with her parents. 5. Meeting our daughter in Bath for the weekend - but only in the flat we rented, or for a walk in the park and American garden.
She's hardly been out of the house at all. We went to one restaurant while in Ireland for dinner outside, and one big house for afternoon tea.
No museums, no galleries, no cafes, no friends, no music, nothing else. And this is because Sturgeon, and people like RP (and lots in our anti-Tory social circle), are still harping on about how dangerous Covid is, and how we ought to be stopping the spread. I think it's more than a little hypocritical to be tirelessly spreading a message of doom and gloom that encourages people to hide away at home while you are going out and enjoying yourself with only the figleaf of a mask to salve your conscience.
We need leadership to reassure people who are still hiding at home that it is safe to come out, instead we have Sturgeon playing politics to blame Johnson and England for Covid, and hypocrites off living their life while scaring others into not doing so.
What a load of bollox, theying to blame your wife's terror on Surgeon, man up jessie boy and tell her to get a grip and go out and get a life or get on with it. The amount of whinging whiners on here is unbelievable. Stop trying to blame other people.
Agreed Malcolm. The almost universal consensus on here is that politicians are moronic, corrupt, self serving, mendacious, stupid, incapable of analysing the most basic material and entirely self interested. Why or why will they not tell us what to do?
It's weird.
I would not trust any one of them as far as I could throw them David, I have a mind of my own and can assess what i should and shouldn't do. I could do a better job than any of the donkeys. Their tame lickspittle SAGE and assorted other hangers on are the same.
Interesting - makes more sense of the national projection yesterday, though some of the constituency samples still look dodgy. If the non-SNP vote continues to coalesce around Labour the seat changes will start to be significant.
Bit of work to do on the seat changes thing.
LOL, until supposed Scottish Labour get rid of Tories like Sarwar and start supporting independence they are dead ducks.
Interesting - makes more sense of the national projection yesterday, though some of the constituency samples still look dodgy. If the non-SNP vote continues to coalesce around Labour the seat changes will start to be significant.
Bit of work to do on the seat changes thing.
Of course it would be better for the SNP to only win 35 seats like 2017 but have the balance of power in a hung parliament with the Tories still having most seats and Starmer needing their confidence and supply. That way they can demand indyref2.
If the SNP win 56 MPs but Labour win a UK wide majority however that is in reality worse for the nationalists. Starmer could ignore them and their demands for indyref2 and just appoint Gordon Brown to a new commission on a Federal UK with a bit of tinkering around devolution.
Basically the SNP need something of a Tory recovery, just not too big a Tory recovery
The worst thing about self-lockdown is that there's no end to it. No review date, no sunset clause, no press conference announcing an end to restrictions.
Apologies for being such a misery guts. I see that I'm going to have to phone the doctor and talk about changing my medication again.
I wonder how much self imposed restrictions are among those who haven't ** been infected by covid and seem to think they must reduce risk at almost any cost.
Its rather liberating to have had covid and be able to feel free to get on with things with no change other than a vaccination every few months.
** Or those who don't realise they have previously been infected - there must be many millions who have been infected without realising it.
On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
Or subjected to the same legislation as motorbikes. Riders must be 16, wearing a helmet and have passed a test. Vehicles must be registered, insured and taxed.
The best legislative framework we have is probably that applied to mobility scooters, which is 4mph on a pavement or (I think) pedestrian zone, even for a Type III mobility scooter which has a higher top speed.
The question as ever is practical and effective enforcement.
When we get a coherent and largely separate cycling infrastructure, scooters will fit in better on that, along with e-bikes. Unravelling the modes of travel will be the key.
I've got a 125 cc motorbike, it is brilliant for getting around as parking is no longer an issue for me. I have taken a CBT test (driving with an L plate on), wear a helmet and have third party insurance. I would happily switch to an e-scooter or some other method of light electric transport, they should be regulated in the same way. It should not be too hard to work this out.
Now if you were to argue bicycles should require a test, insurance and be road taxed then I would have some sympathy with your view for how electric scooters should be regulated. Frankly I have felt more in danger from idiot cyclists than I ever have from scooter riders.
Is that about where you have encountered them?
IME e-scooters mix with pedestrians eg in town centres, whilst people on bikes mix more with more general traffic.
Bikes and scooters both go through the town centre pedestrian area so same area. Rare to see a bike anywhere but on a pavement round here and number of times been almost taken out by a bicyclist coming up behind me at a lot more speed than an escooter can manage
Where are you?
It sounds like they need some segregated cycle paths which are more attractive to ride on than the pavements, or some roads that are less intimidating / dangerous. And perhaps a culture change to encourage considerate use of shared space.
In my next town (Mansfield) the Council are nuts. They entirely banned cycling from the town centre after a single incident of a couple of 13 years olds cycling inconsiderately, which means that kids wanting to go the Rebecca Adlington swimming pool have to get taken by car from half the town, have a 20 minute cycle-push or go round the dangerous ring-road.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
And just further to this, it's quite stark now how different the attitude in Scotland is to RUK, despite Leitch etc basically going with the "learn to live with it line".
Zero-covid mentality is much more prevalent up here, based on a simple BBC Scotland to BBC 5 Live comparison
You and I both live up here - don't you feel like we also learned to live with it? I can't think of anything that the mask mandate has impeded me doing. It isn't that Scotland hasn't learned to live with it and England has.
I started washing the dishes from yesterday, and unfortunately I couldn't avoid thinking about why this annoyed me so much. It's because my wife hasn't learned to live with the virus, and I blame people like you and Sturgeon for that.
She's been double-dosed since early August, and boostered in mid-December. Since her second dose her sum total of in person social mixing has been:
1. Me. 2. Living for 11 weeks with her parents in Ireland. 3. Meeting one friend on a beach in Ireland in August. 4. Meeting her brothers while living with her parents. 5. Meeting our daughter in Bath for the weekend - but only in the flat we rented, or for a walk in the park and American garden.
She's hardly been out of the house at all. We went to one restaurant while in Ireland for dinner outside, and one big house for afternoon tea.
No museums, no galleries, no cafes, no friends, no music, nothing else. And this is because Sturgeon, and people like RP (and lots in our anti-Tory social circle), are still harping on about how dangerous Covid is, and how we ought to be stopping the spread. I think it's more than a little hypocritical to be tirelessly spreading a message of doom and gloom that encourages people to hide away at home while you are going out and enjoying yourself with only the figleaf of a mask to salve your conscience.
We need leadership to reassure people who are still hiding at home that it is safe to come out, instead we have Sturgeon playing politics to blame Johnson and England for Covid, and hypocrites off living their life while scaring others into not doing so.
What a load of bollox, theying to blame your wife's terror on Surgeon, man up jessie boy and tell her to get a grip and go out and get a life or get on with it. The amount of whinging whiners on here is unbelievable. Stop trying to blame other people.
Agreed Malcolm. The almost universal consensus on here is that politicians are moronic, corrupt, self serving, mendacious, stupid, incapable of analysing the most basic material and entirely self interested. Why or why will they not tell us what to do?
It's weird.
Why then does it matter so much who the party leaders are?
It's because the world is a complicated and potentially dangerous place, and people want someone they can trust to lead them through it.
You think Sturgeon or Johnson could lead you through anything , both serial liars , self interested nutjobs and power crazy. Both are only in it for themselves and we are just collateral damage for their greed and aspirations.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
And just further to this, it's quite stark now how different the attitude in Scotland is to RUK, despite Leitch etc basically going with the "learn to live with it line".
Zero-covid mentality is much more prevalent up here, based on a simple BBC Scotland to BBC 5 Live comparison
You and I both live up here - don't you feel like we also learned to live with it? I can't think of anything that the mask mandate has impeded me doing. It isn't that Scotland hasn't learned to live with it and England has.
I started washing the dishes from yesterday, and unfortunately I couldn't avoid thinking about why this annoyed me so much. It's because my wife hasn't learned to live with the virus, and I blame people like you and Sturgeon for that.
She's been double-dosed since early August, and boostered in mid-December. Since her second dose her sum total of in person social mixing has been:
1. Me. 2. Living for 11 weeks with her parents in Ireland. 3. Meeting one friend on a beach in Ireland in August. 4. Meeting her brothers while living with her parents. 5. Meeting our daughter in Bath for the weekend - but only in the flat we rented, or for a walk in the park and American garden.
She's hardly been out of the house at all. We went to one restaurant while in Ireland for dinner outside, and one big house for afternoon tea.
No museums, no galleries, no cafes, no friends, no music, nothing else. And this is because Sturgeon, and people like RP (and lots in our anti-Tory social circle), are still harping on about how dangerous Covid is, and how we ought to be stopping the spread. I think it's more than a little hypocritical to be tirelessly spreading a message of doom and gloom that encourages people to hide away at home while you are going out and enjoying yourself with only the figleaf of a mask to salve your conscience.
We need leadership to reassure people who are still hiding at home that it is safe to come out, instead we have Sturgeon playing politics to blame Johnson and England for Covid, and hypocrites off living their life while scaring others into not doing so.
What a load of bollox, theying to blame your wife's terror on Surgeon, man up jessie boy and tell her to get a grip and go out and get a life or get on with it. The amount of whinging whiners on here is unbelievable. Stop trying to blame other people.
Agreed Malcolm. The almost universal consensus on here is that politicians are moronic, corrupt, self serving, mendacious, stupid, incapable of analysing the most basic material and entirely self interested. Why or why will they not tell us what to do?
It's weird.
Why then does it matter so much who the party leaders are?
It's because the world is a complicated and potentially dangerous place, and people want someone they can trust to lead them through it.
"And Always Keep A-hold of Nurse, for Fear of Finding Something Worse"
its a solid lesson for a child but adults really should accept more responsibility.
Useful in Scotland to have clear examples of the something worse, both in theory and in practice.
Scotland do not need to look very far to see the "something worse" that is the alternative TUD.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
And just further to this, it's quite stark now how different the attitude in Scotland is to RUK, despite Leitch etc basically going with the "learn to live with it line".
Zero-covid mentality is much more prevalent up here, based on a simple BBC Scotland to BBC 5 Live comparison
You and I both live up here - don't you feel like we also learned to live with it? I can't think of anything that the mask mandate has impeded me doing. It isn't that Scotland hasn't learned to live with it and England has.
I started washing the dishes from yesterday, and unfortunately I couldn't avoid thinking about why this annoyed me so much. It's because my wife hasn't learned to live with the virus, and I blame people like you and Sturgeon for that.
She's been double-dosed since early August, and boostered in mid-December. Since her second dose her sum total of in person social mixing has been:
1. Me. 2. Living for 11 weeks with her parents in Ireland. 3. Meeting one friend on a beach in Ireland in August. 4. Meeting her brothers while living with her parents. 5. Meeting our daughter in Bath for the weekend - but only in the flat we rented, or for a walk in the park and American garden.
She's hardly been out of the house at all. We went to one restaurant while in Ireland for dinner outside, and one big house for afternoon tea.
No museums, no galleries, no cafes, no friends, no music, nothing else. And this is because Sturgeon, and people like RP (and lots in our anti-Tory social circle), are still harping on about how dangerous Covid is, and how we ought to be stopping the spread. I think it's more than a little hypocritical to be tirelessly spreading a message of doom and gloom that encourages people to hide away at home while you are going out and enjoying yourself with only the figleaf of a mask to salve your conscience.
We need leadership to reassure people who are still hiding at home that it is safe to come out, instead we have Sturgeon playing politics to blame Johnson and England for Covid, and hypocrites off living their life while scaring others into not doing so.
What a load of bollox, theying to blame your wife's terror on Surgeon, man up jessie boy and tell her to get a grip and go out and get a life or get on with it. The amount of whinging whiners on here is unbelievable. Stop trying to blame other people.
Morning Malcolm.
You're right that it's down to me to persuade my wife it's safe. I do think that messaging matters though, and hypocrisy is difficult to bear.
Have to say I have a bit of the same issue after my wife's illness and long long road to recovery , but politicians and pretend scientists will not help us one bit. They do not give a hoot about us and would be happy for us all to be terrified and eager to follow their disastrous guidance.
The worst thing about self-lockdown is that there's no end to it. No review date, no sunset clause, no press conference announcing an end to restrictions.
Apologies for being such a misery guts. I see that I'm going to have to phone the doctor and talk about changing my medication again.
I wonder how much self imposed restrictions are among those who haven't ** been infected by covid and seem to think they must reduce risk at almost any cost.
Its rather liberating to have had covid and be able to feel free to get on with things with no change other than a vaccination every few months.
** Or those who don't realise they have previously been infected - there must be many millions who have been infected without realising it.
We're not in COVID trouble right now but we will be going forward as immunity begins to wane. It is time to announce a fourth round of boosters, otherwise we will be in big trouble in one-three months
How do you know?
I'm inclined to think that what we perhaps need is a strategy for managing it as an endemic condition, with a plan for vaccinating up to 100% of the population up to twice a year mainly through Drs' surgeries - such that the normal NHS can proceed at 100% of normal activity. Compared with the 85-90% it has been running between the summer and the current accelerated booster programme.
It is not possible for the health service to run at full capacity until the specific infection control measures for Covid in hospitals are scrapped. Given that each new variant of concern prompts immediate panic and demands for loads of restrictions, it's hard to see us getting rid of those in anything other than the very long term.
The worst thing about self-lockdown is that there's no end to it. No review date, no sunset clause, no press conference announcing an end to restrictions.
Yes, I think that if you are voluntarily behaving more cautiously than national guidance or rules it's important to set yourself points when you review and reassess the situation. My next one is "after winter" (when I expect the omicron wave to have blown through, for better or worse).
My other problem is that I find that the set of activities I intellectually feel I should be happy doing isn't always the same as the set of things I emotionally feel OK with. (Some of this is maybe masks, which I do think are a good idea currently but which also act as a continous "situation not normal" signal when you've got one on...)
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
And just further to this, it's quite stark now how different the attitude in Scotland is to RUK, despite Leitch etc basically going with the "learn to live with it line".
Zero-covid mentality is much more prevalent up here, based on a simple BBC Scotland to BBC 5 Live comparison
You and I both live up here - don't you feel like we also learned to live with it? I can't think of anything that the mask mandate has impeded me doing. It isn't that Scotland hasn't learned to live with it and England has.
I started washing the dishes from yesterday, and unfortunately I couldn't avoid thinking about why this annoyed me so much. It's because my wife hasn't learned to live with the virus, and I blame people like you and Sturgeon for that.
She's been double-dosed since early August, and boostered in mid-December. Since her second dose her sum total of in person social mixing has been:
1. Me. 2. Living for 11 weeks with her parents in Ireland. 3. Meeting one friend on a beach in Ireland in August. 4. Meeting her brothers while living with her parents. 5. Meeting our daughter in Bath for the weekend - but only in the flat we rented, or for a walk in the park and American garden.
She's hardly been out of the house at all. We went to one restaurant while in Ireland for dinner outside, and one big house for afternoon tea.
No museums, no galleries, no cafes, no friends, no music, nothing else. And this is because Sturgeon, and people like RP (and lots in our anti-Tory social circle), are still harping on about how dangerous Covid is, and how we ought to be stopping the spread. I think it's more than a little hypocritical to be tirelessly spreading a message of doom and gloom that encourages people to hide away at home while you are going out and enjoying yourself with only the figleaf of a mask to salve your conscience.
We need leadership to reassure people who are still hiding at home that it is safe to come out, instead we have Sturgeon playing politics to blame Johnson and England for Covid, and hypocrites off living their life while scaring others into not doing so.
What a load of bollox, theying to blame your wife's terror on Surgeon, man up jessie boy and tell her to get a grip and go out and get a life or get on with it. The amount of whinging whiners on here is unbelievable. Stop trying to blame other people.
Agreed Malcolm. The almost universal consensus on here is that politicians are moronic, corrupt, self serving, mendacious, stupid, incapable of analysing the most basic material and entirely self interested. Why or why will they not tell us what to do?
It's weird.
Why then does it matter so much who the party leaders are?
It's because the world is a complicated and potentially dangerous place, and people want someone they can trust to lead them through it.
"And Always Keep A-hold of Nurse, for Fear of Finding Something Worse"
its a solid lesson for a child but adults really should accept more responsibility.
Useful in Scotland to have clear examples of the something worse, both in theory and in practice.
Scotland do not need to look very far to see the "something worse" that is the alternative TUD.
The worst thing about self-lockdown is that there's no end to it. No review date, no sunset clause, no press conference announcing an end to restrictions.
Apologies for being such a misery guts. I see that I'm going to have to phone the doctor and talk about changing my medication again.
I wonder how much self imposed restrictions are among those who haven't ** been infected by covid and seem to think they must reduce risk at almost any cost.
Its rather liberating to have had covid and be able to feel free to get on with things with no change other than a vaccination every few months.
** Or those who don't realise they have previously been infected - there must be many millions who have been infected without realising it.
Lots of people seem to getting it more than once.
Everyone will get it more than once.
But its likely to be with milder effects each time.
In the end most people will be getting it without noticing it or thinking they got 'a bit of a cold'.
We're not in COVID trouble right now but we will be going forward as immunity begins to wane. It is time to announce a fourth round of boosters, otherwise we will be in big trouble in one-three months
How do you know?
I'm inclined to think that what we perhaps need is a strategy for managing it as an endemic condition, with a plan for vaccinating up to 100% of the population up to twice a year mainly through Drs' surgeries - such that the normal NHS can proceed at 100% of normal activity. Compared with the 85-90% it has been running between the summer and the current accelerated booster programme.
It is not possible for the health service to run at full capacity until the specific infection control measures for Covid in hospitals are scrapped. Given that each new variant of concern prompts immediate panic and demands for loads of restrictions, it's hard to see us getting rid of those in anything other than the very long term.
Agree.
However a relatively stready state as we have seen is imo a better practice than ups and downs, as far as that can be managed.
Which speaks to the need to treat COVID vaccination as a segregated (afap) workstream.
We're not in COVID trouble right now but we will be going forward as immunity begins to wane. It is time to announce a fourth round of boosters, otherwise we will be in big trouble in one-three months
How do you know?
I'm inclined to think that what we perhaps need is a strategy for managing it as an endemic condition, with a plan for vaccinating up to 100% of the population up to twice a year mainly through Drs' surgeries - such that the normal NHS can proceed at 100% of normal activity. Compared with the 85-90% it has been running between the summer and the current accelerated booster programme.
It is not possible for the health service to run at full capacity until the specific infection control measures for Covid in hospitals are scrapped. Given that each new variant of concern prompts immediate panic and demands for loads of restrictions, it's hard to see us getting rid of those in anything other than the very long term.
Agree.
However a relatively stready state as we have seen is imo a better practice than ups and downs, as far as that can be managed.
Which speaks to the need to treat COVID vaccination as a segregated (afap) workstream.
Agreed. Establishing a permanent vaccination service would be a good idea.
In my next town (Mansfield) the Council are nuts. They entirely banned cycling from the town centre after a single incident of a couple of 13 years olds cycling inconsiderately, which means that kids wanting to go the Rebecca Adlington swimming pool have to get taken by car from half the town, have a 20 minute cycle-push or go round the dangerous ring-road.
That is nuts. I bet it doesn't even stop the inconsiderate idiots it's theoretically trying to target. My take is that regardless of mode of transport there will always be a handful of arseholes (whose behaviour will range from annoying to dangerous depending) and that overall we should prefer it if they were using lighter slower vehicles (bikes, scooters) rather than heavier, faster and more polluting ones (motorbikes, cars) -- so we should resist the urge to put up too much in the way of regulatory barriers and design road facilities that nudge people into better behaviour.
The worst thing about self-lockdown is that there's no end to it. No review date, no sunset clause, no press conference announcing an end to restrictions.
Apologies for being such a misery guts. I see that I'm going to have to phone the doctor and talk about changing my medication again.
I wonder how much self imposed restrictions are among those who haven't ** been infected by covid and seem to think they must reduce risk at almost any cost.
Its rather liberating to have had covid and be able to feel free to get on with things with no change other than a vaccination every few months.
** Or those who don't realise they have previously been infected - there must be many millions who have been infected without realising it.
Lots of people seem to getting it more than once.
Everyone will get it more than once.
But its likely to be with milder effects each time.
In the end most people will be getting it without noticing it or thinking they got 'a bit of a cold'.
Quite. And the desperate attempts to stop it going through the population unchecked are also wholly counterproductive.
Suppression was a good idea so long as vaccines and treatments weren't available. Now it's just delaying the inevitable at enormous cost.
If we can manage to stamp on Omicron with a destructive lockdown this Winter then something even more transmissible will come along in short order. The evolutionary pressure being placed upon the virus to do this is huge.
About the best that can be hoped for is that such a future variant would be less virulent and kill fewer people, but if we go down the heavy restriction route yet again then we're gambling on that possibility in the future by inflicting a lot of collateral damage now.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
And just further to this, it's quite stark now how different the attitude in Scotland is to RUK, despite Leitch etc basically going with the "learn to live with it line".
Zero-covid mentality is much more prevalent up here, based on a simple BBC Scotland to BBC 5 Live comparison
You and I both live up here - don't you feel like we also learned to live with it? I can't think of anything that the mask mandate has impeded me doing. It isn't that Scotland hasn't learned to live with it and England has.
I started washing the dishes from yesterday, and unfortunately I couldn't avoid thinking about why this annoyed me so much. It's because my wife hasn't learned to live with the virus, and I blame people like you and Sturgeon for that.
She's been double-dosed since early August, and boostered in mid-December. Since her second dose her sum total of in person social mixing has been:
1. Me. 2. Living for 11 weeks with her parents in Ireland. 3. Meeting one friend on a beach in Ireland in August. 4. Meeting her brothers while living with her parents. 5. Meeting our daughter in Bath for the weekend - but only in the flat we rented, or for a walk in the park and American garden.
She's hardly been out of the house at all. We went to one restaurant while in Ireland for dinner outside, and one big house for afternoon tea.
No museums, no galleries, no cafes, no friends, no music, nothing else. And this is because Sturgeon, and people like RP (and lots in our anti-Tory social circle), are still harping on about how dangerous Covid is, and how we ought to be stopping the spread. I think it's more than a little hypocritical to be tirelessly spreading a message of doom and gloom that encourages people to hide away at home while you are going out and enjoying yourself with only the figleaf of a mask to salve your conscience.
We need leadership to reassure people who are still hiding at home that it is safe to come out, instead we have Sturgeon playing politics to blame Johnson and England for Covid, and hypocrites off living their life while scaring others into not doing so.
What a load of bollox, theying to blame your wife's terror on Surgeon, man up jessie boy and tell her to get a grip and go out and get a life or get on with it. The amount of whinging whiners on here is unbelievable. Stop trying to blame other people.
Agreed Malcolm. The almost universal consensus on here is that politicians are moronic, corrupt, self serving, mendacious, stupid, incapable of analysing the most basic material and entirely self interested. Why or why will they not tell us what to do?
It's weird.
Why then does it matter so much who the party leaders are?
It's because the world is a complicated and potentially dangerous place, and people want someone they can trust to lead them through it.
"And Always Keep A-hold of Nurse, for Fear of Finding Something Worse"
its a solid lesson for a child but adults really should accept more responsibility.
Useful in Scotland to have clear examples of the something worse, both in theory and in practice.
Scotland do not need to look very far to see the "something worse" that is the alternative TUD.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
And just further to this, it's quite stark now how different the attitude in Scotland is to RUK, despite Leitch etc basically going with the "learn to live with it line".
Zero-covid mentality is much more prevalent up here, based on a simple BBC Scotland to BBC 5 Live comparison
You and I both live up here - don't you feel like we also learned to live with it? I can't think of anything that the mask mandate has impeded me doing. It isn't that Scotland hasn't learned to live with it and England has.
I started washing the dishes from yesterday, and unfortunately I couldn't avoid thinking about why this annoyed me so much. It's because my wife hasn't learned to live with the virus, and I blame people like you and Sturgeon for that.
She's been double-dosed since early August, and boostered in mid-December. Since her second dose her sum total of in person social mixing has been:
1. Me. 2. Living for 11 weeks with her parents in Ireland. 3. Meeting one friend on a beach in Ireland in August. 4. Meeting her brothers while living with her parents. 5. Meeting our daughter in Bath for the weekend - but only in the flat we rented, or for a walk in the park and American garden.
She's hardly been out of the house at all. We went to one restaurant while in Ireland for dinner outside, and one big house for afternoon tea.
No museums, no galleries, no cafes, no friends, no music, nothing else. And this is because Sturgeon, and people like RP (and lots in our anti-Tory social circle), are still harping on about how dangerous Covid is, and how we ought to be stopping the spread. I think it's more than a little hypocritical to be tirelessly spreading a message of doom and gloom that encourages people to hide away at home while you are going out and enjoying yourself with only the figleaf of a mask to salve your conscience.
We need leadership to reassure people who are still hiding at home that it is safe to come out, instead we have Sturgeon playing politics to blame Johnson and England for Covid, and hypocrites off living their life while scaring others into not doing so.
What a load of bollox, theying to blame your wife's terror on Surgeon, man up jessie boy and tell her to get a grip and go out and get a life or get on with it. The amount of whinging whiners on here is unbelievable. Stop trying to blame other people.
Agreed Malcolm. The almost universal consensus on here is that politicians are moronic, corrupt, self serving, mendacious, stupid, incapable of analysing the most basic material and entirely self interested. Why or why will they not tell us what to do?
It's weird.
Why then does it matter so much who the party leaders are?
It's because the world is a complicated and potentially dangerous place, and people want someone they can trust to lead them through it.
"And Always Keep A-hold of Nurse, for Fear of Finding Something Worse"
its a solid lesson for a child but adults really should accept more responsibility.
Useful in Scotland to have clear examples of the something worse, both in theory and in practice.
Scotland do not need to look very far to see the "something worse" that is the alternative TUD.
Exactly!
Golly, he looks 15 years younger, 2 years ago
He's not well, it's honestly upsetting to see anyone in clear pain however much I think he's a cock
In my next town (Mansfield) the Council are nuts. They entirely banned cycling from the town centre after a single incident of a couple of 13 years olds cycling inconsiderately, which means that kids wanting to go the Rebecca Adlington swimming pool have to get taken by car from half the town, have a 20 minute cycle-push or go round the dangerous ring-road.
That is nuts. I bet it doesn't even stop the inconsiderate idiots it's theoretically trying to target. My take is that regardless of mode of transport there will always be a handful of arseholes (whose behaviour will range from annoying to dangerous depending) and that overall we should prefer it if they were using lighter slower vehicles (bikes, scooters) rather than heavier, faster and more polluting ones (motorbikes, cars) -- so we should resist the urge to put up too much in the way of regulatory barriers and design road facilities that nudge people into better behaviour.
Indeed its a small minority whatever mode of transport is selected and because of them we get calls to ban and regulate more and it really fails to stop them behaving like it as they just ignore it. The town centre pedestrian area is theoretically pedestrian only but bikes and scooters go through all the time passing by police officers on foot patrol without comment.
Most riders of whichever are careful and respectful. However certainly seen cyclists riding no handed and pulling wheelies through there. Even seen the odd moped driven through
The worst thing about self-lockdown is that there's no end to it. No review date, no sunset clause, no press conference announcing an end to restrictions.
Apologies for being such a misery guts. I see that I'm going to have to phone the doctor and talk about changing my medication again.
I wonder how much self imposed restrictions are among those who haven't ** been infected by covid and seem to think they must reduce risk at almost any cost.
Its rather liberating to have had covid and be able to feel free to get on with things with no change other than a vaccination every few months.
** Or those who don't realise they have previously been infected - there must be many millions who have been infected without realising it.
Lots of people seem to getting it more than once.
Everyone will get it more than once.
But its likely to be with milder effects each time.
In the end most people will be getting it without noticing it or thinking they got 'a bit of a cold'.
Quite. And the desperate attempts to stop it going through the population unchecked are also wholly counterproductive.
Suppression was a good idea so long as vaccines and treatments weren't available. Now it's just delaying the inevitable at enormous cost.
If we can manage to stamp on Omicron with a destructive lockdown this Winter then something even more transmissible will come along in short order. The evolutionary pressure being placed upon the virus to do this is huge.
About the best that can be hoped for is that such a future variant would be less virulent and kill fewer people, but if we go down the heavy restriction route yet again then we're gambling on that possibility in the future by inflicting a lot of collateral damage now.
We need boosters otherwise we will be in big trouble
The worst thing about self-lockdown is that there's no end to it. No review date, no sunset clause, no press conference announcing an end to restrictions.
Apologies for being such a misery guts. I see that I'm going to have to phone the doctor and talk about changing my medication again.
I wonder how much self imposed restrictions are among those who haven't ** been infected by covid and seem to think they must reduce risk at almost any cost.
Its rather liberating to have had covid and be able to feel free to get on with things with no change other than a vaccination every few months.
** Or those who don't realise they have previously been infected - there must be many millions who have been infected without realising it.
Lots of people seem to getting it more than once.
Everyone will get it more than once.
But its likely to be with milder effects each time.
In the end most people will be getting it without noticing it or thinking they got 'a bit of a cold'.
Quite. And the desperate attempts to stop it going through the population unchecked are also wholly counterproductive.
Suppression was a good idea so long as vaccines and treatments weren't available. Now it's just delaying the inevitable at enormous cost.
If we can manage to stamp on Omicron with a destructive lockdown this Winter then something even more transmissible will come along in short order. The evolutionary pressure being placed upon the virus to do this is huge.
About the best that can be hoped for is that such a future variant would be less virulent and kill fewer people, but if we go down the heavy restriction route yet again then we're gambling on that possibility in the future by inflicting a lot of collateral damage now.
We need boosters otherwise we will be in big trouble
Omicron is a free booster.
If it continues then everyone will be getting their anti-bodies topped up at the supermarkets and pubs.
The vulnerable will be those who don't and let their protection slowly fade.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
And just further to this, it's quite stark now how different the attitude in Scotland is to RUK, despite Leitch etc basically going with the "learn to live with it line".
Zero-covid mentality is much more prevalent up here, based on a simple BBC Scotland to BBC 5 Live comparison
You and I both live up here - don't you feel like we also learned to live with it? I can't think of anything that the mask mandate has impeded me doing. It isn't that Scotland hasn't learned to live with it and England has.
I started washing the dishes from yesterday, and unfortunately I couldn't avoid thinking about why this annoyed me so much. It's because my wife hasn't learned to live with the virus, and I blame people like you and Sturgeon for that.
She's been double-dosed since early August, and boostered in mid-December. Since her second dose her sum total of in person social mixing has been:
1. Me. 2. Living for 11 weeks with her parents in Ireland. 3. Meeting one friend on a beach in Ireland in August. 4. Meeting her brothers while living with her parents. 5. Meeting our daughter in Bath for the weekend - but only in the flat we rented, or for a walk in the park and American garden.
She's hardly been out of the house at all. We went to one restaurant while in Ireland for dinner outside, and one big house for afternoon tea.
No museums, no galleries, no cafes, no friends, no music, nothing else. And this is because Sturgeon, and people like RP (and lots in our anti-Tory social circle), are still harping on about how dangerous Covid is, and how we ought to be stopping the spread. I think it's more than a little hypocritical to be tirelessly spreading a message of doom and gloom that encourages people to hide away at home while you are going out and enjoying yourself with only the figleaf of a mask to salve your conscience.
We need leadership to reassure people who are still hiding at home that it is safe to come out, instead we have Sturgeon playing politics to blame Johnson and England for Covid, and hypocrites off living their life while scaring others into not doing so.
What a load of bollox, theying to blame your wife's terror on Surgeon, man up jessie boy and tell her to get a grip and go out and get a life or get on with it. The amount of whinging whiners on here is unbelievable. Stop trying to blame other people.
Agreed Malcolm. The almost universal consensus on here is that politicians are moronic, corrupt, self serving, mendacious, stupid, incapable of analysing the most basic material and entirely self interested. Why or why will they not tell us what to do?
It's weird.
Why then does it matter so much who the party leaders are?
It's because the world is a complicated and potentially dangerous place, and people want someone they can trust to lead them through it.
"And Always Keep A-hold of Nurse, for Fear of Finding Something Worse"
its a solid lesson for a child but adults really should accept more responsibility.
Useful in Scotland to have clear examples of the something worse, both in theory and in practice.
Scotland do not need to look very far to see the "something worse" that is the alternative TUD.
The worst thing about self-lockdown is that there's no end to it. No review date, no sunset clause, no press conference announcing an end to restrictions.
Apologies for being such a misery guts. I see that I'm going to have to phone the doctor and talk about changing my medication again.
I wonder how much self imposed restrictions are among those who haven't ** been infected by covid and seem to think they must reduce risk at almost any cost.
Its rather liberating to have had covid and be able to feel free to get on with things with no change other than a vaccination every few months.
** Or those who don't realise they have previously been infected - there must be many millions who have been infected without realising it.
Lots of people seem to getting it more than once.
Everyone will get it more than once.
But its likely to be with milder effects each time.
In the end most people will be getting it without noticing it or thinking they got 'a bit of a cold'.
Quite. And the desperate attempts to stop it going through the population unchecked are also wholly counterproductive.
Suppression was a good idea so long as vaccines and treatments weren't available. Now it's just delaying the inevitable at enormous cost.
If we can manage to stamp on Omicron with a destructive lockdown this Winter then something even more transmissible will come along in short order. The evolutionary pressure being placed upon the virus to do this is huge.
About the best that can be hoped for is that such a future variant would be less virulent and kill fewer people, but if we go down the heavy restriction route yet again then we're gambling on that possibility in the future by inflicting a lot of collateral damage now.
We need boosters otherwise we will be in big trouble
Omicron is a free booster.
If it continues then everyone will be getting their anti-bodies topped up at the supermarkets and pubs.
The vulnerable will be those who don't and let their protection slowly fade.
That's possibly a bit like saying that Typhoid Mary was a cure for constipation. There will be deaths and Long Covid victims. How many, we're not clear yet (partly because of the health service issues).
The worst thing about self-lockdown is that there's no end to it. No review date, no sunset clause, no press conference announcing an end to restrictions.
Apologies for being such a misery guts. I see that I'm going to have to phone the doctor and talk about changing my medication again.
I wonder how much self imposed restrictions are among those who haven't ** been infected by covid and seem to think they must reduce risk at almost any cost.
Its rather liberating to have had covid and be able to feel free to get on with things with no change other than a vaccination every few months.
** Or those who don't realise they have previously been infected - there must be many millions who have been infected without realising it.
Lots of people seem to getting it more than once.
Everyone will get it more than once.
But its likely to be with milder effects each time.
In the end most people will be getting it without noticing it or thinking they got 'a bit of a cold'.
Quite. And the desperate attempts to stop it going through the population unchecked are also wholly counterproductive.
Suppression was a good idea so long as vaccines and treatments weren't available. Now it's just delaying the inevitable at enormous cost.
If we can manage to stamp on Omicron with a destructive lockdown this Winter then something even more transmissible will come along in short order. The evolutionary pressure being placed upon the virus to do this is huge.
About the best that can be hoped for is that such a future variant would be less virulent and kill fewer people, but if we go down the heavy restriction route yet again then we're gambling on that possibility in the future by inflicting a lot of collateral damage now.
We need boosters otherwise we will be in big trouble
Omicron is a free booster.
If it continues then everyone will be getting their anti-bodies topped up at the supermarkets and pubs.
The vulnerable will be those who don't and let their protection slowly fade.
Gosh the public are poor pundits. They're worse than Dan Hodges. They have every single thing wrongly evaluated. Next year will not see Johnson replaced nor Starmer replaced nor a GE. There will be no national lockdown, no new vaccine-immune variant, and there WILL be an end to Covid restrictions. Get a grip public.
The whole end of restrictions thing is predicated rather heavily on our leaders not treating every variant of concern as, essentially, the start of a new pandemic, rather than a minor development in the existing one.
The response to Omicron has followed the pattern (1) we're not sure what's happening, (2) look at all these terrifying predictions, (3) restrictions (just in case,) (4) emergency booster jab campaign, (5) omigod it's reached the hospitals, (6) if you don't support LOCKDOWN NOW you want everyone over 50 to die horribly within the next six weeks. And for Our Beloved NHS to burn.
Lockdown (or, at the very least, Step 2 of the roadmap, which isn't far short of it) is only being prevented in England by Boris Johnson's weak political position, and only being prevented in the rest of the UK by the lack of willingness of Rishi Sunak to provide financial support for mass scale business closures. We really shouldn't be having to rely on internal Tory Party politics to save the country from an endless diet of restrictions, but that looks very much like where we are right now.
I'm deeply uneasy about JRM etc being seen as the primary advocates for keeping stuff open. I don't want that association at all.
I'm much more comfortable in the Sunak camp of "other harms". I hope that prevails in the media narrative over the next few weeks.
It's bullshit imo that the Tory backbench rebellion against Plan B has avoided an unnecessary lockdown. We've never done an unnecessary lockdown and I don't see why it's assumed we were about to do one this time. The only thing we might have avoided is a necessary lockdown - which would be unfortunate since it's now probably too late to do it, the omicron script being largely written. But I don't think so myself. I think on this occasion the government's tendency to dither will have led to a good outcome. The data as it firms up will support the decision not to have more restrictions. Caveat: NHS staff sickness and/or isolating, what will this do to capacity?
What’s the difference between dithering and actively deciding that the case for action has not yet been made?
if you think it's not dithering it is
That’s an opinion. I don’t know what discussion was had round the cabinet table.
My guess it was people opposed to restrictions accepted Boris’s face saving compromise of wait & see.
That’s a conscious choice not to act, not a case of not making a decision
The only way I can see a 2022 GE is if Boris Johnson resigns and there is a seamless transition to a Sunak or Truss administration. The new leader gets a polling bounce/honeymoon and decides to cash in later in the year.
Remembering what happened to Theresa May, I imagine that's an unlikely scenario,
The worst thing about self-lockdown is that there's no end to it. No review date, no sunset clause, no press conference announcing an end to restrictions.
Apologies for being such a misery guts. I see that I'm going to have to phone the doctor and talk about changing my medication again.
I wonder how much self imposed restrictions are among those who haven't ** been infected by covid and seem to think they must reduce risk at almost any cost.
Its rather liberating to have had covid and be able to feel free to get on with things with no change other than a vaccination every few months.
** Or those who don't realise they have previously been infected - there must be many millions who have been infected without realising it.
Lots of people seem to getting it more than once.
Everyone will get it more than once.
But its likely to be with milder effects each time.
In the end most people will be getting it without noticing it or thinking they got 'a bit of a cold'.
Quite. And the desperate attempts to stop it going through the population unchecked are also wholly counterproductive.
Suppression was a good idea so long as vaccines and treatments weren't available. Now it's just delaying the inevitable at enormous cost.
If we can manage to stamp on Omicron with a destructive lockdown this Winter then something even more transmissible will come along in short order. The evolutionary pressure being placed upon the virus to do this is huge.
About the best that can be hoped for is that such a future variant would be less virulent and kill fewer people, but if we go down the heavy restriction route yet again then we're gambling on that possibility in the future by inflicting a lot of collateral damage now.
We need boosters otherwise we will be in big trouble
Omicron is a free booster.
If it continues then everyone will be getting their anti-bodies topped up at the supermarkets and pubs.
The vulnerable will be those who don't and let their protection slowly fade.
That's not what the studies say
Its reality.
Deal with it.
If Omicron is super infectious then we're all going to get our anti-bodies topped up.
The only way I can see a 2022 GE is if Boris Johnson resigns and there is a seamless transition to a Sunak or Truss administration. The new leader gets a polling bounce/honeymoon and decides to cash in later in the year.
Remembering what happened to Theresa May, I imagine that's an unlikely scenario,
I expect Truss would get found out in a GE campaign, just as May did.
The worst thing about self-lockdown is that there's no end to it. No review date, no sunset clause, no press conference announcing an end to restrictions.
Apologies for being such a misery guts. I see that I'm going to have to phone the doctor and talk about changing my medication again.
I wonder how much self imposed restrictions are among those who haven't ** been infected by covid and seem to think they must reduce risk at almost any cost.
Its rather liberating to have had covid and be able to feel free to get on with things with no change other than a vaccination every few months.
** Or those who don't realise they have previously been infected - there must be many millions who have been infected without realising it.
Lots of people seem to getting it more than once.
Everyone will get it more than once.
But its likely to be with milder effects each time.
In the end most people will be getting it without noticing it or thinking they got 'a bit of a cold'.
Quite. And the desperate attempts to stop it going through the population unchecked are also wholly counterproductive.
Suppression was a good idea so long as vaccines and treatments weren't available. Now it's just delaying the inevitable at enormous cost.
If we can manage to stamp on Omicron with a destructive lockdown this Winter then something even more transmissible will come along in short order. The evolutionary pressure being placed upon the virus to do this is huge.
About the best that can be hoped for is that such a future variant would be less virulent and kill fewer people, but if we go down the heavy restriction route yet again then we're gambling on that possibility in the future by inflicting a lot of collateral damage now.
We need boosters otherwise we will be in big trouble
Omicron is a free booster.
If it continues then everyone will be getting their anti-bodies topped up at the supermarkets and pubs.
The vulnerable will be those who don't and let their protection slowly fade.
That's possibly a bit like saying that Typhoid Mary was a cure for constipation. There will be deaths and Long Covid victims. How many, we're not clear yet (partly because of the health service issues).
Typhoid wasn't endemic thought was it.
Covid will be which means that we will regularly come into contact with it just as we do with flu.
And like flu covid will hit some people hard - very likely the same people flu would have hit.
Comments
Some of them are good for 35mph, which makes one hell of a mess when you bin it.
She's been double-dosed since early August, and boostered in mid-December. Since her second dose her sum total of in person social mixing has been:
1. Me.
2. Living for 11 weeks with her parents in Ireland.
3. Meeting one friend on a beach in Ireland in August.
4. Meeting her brothers while living with her parents.
5. Meeting our daughter in Bath for the weekend - but only in the flat we rented, or for a walk in the park and American garden.
She's hardly been out of the house at all. We went to one restaurant while in Ireland for dinner outside, and one big house for afternoon tea.
No museums, no galleries, no cafes, no friends, no music, nothing else. And this is because Sturgeon, and people like RP (and lots in our anti-Tory social circle), are still harping on about how dangerous Covid is, and how we ought to be stopping the spread. I think it's more than a little hypocritical to be tirelessly spreading a message of doom and gloom that encourages people to hide away at home while you are going out and enjoying yourself with only the figleaf of a mask to salve your conscience.
We need leadership to reassure people who are still hiding at home that it is safe to come out, instead we have Sturgeon playing politics to blame Johnson and England for Covid, and hypocrites off living their life while scaring others into not doing so.
I agree that stopping people from getting together is more of an imposition and should only be when situation is really bad.
Suspect that the "UK has one of the highest death tolls in the world" that has been running on a loop on French TV for the last few weeks may be a bit more obsolete by then than it is now.
Aside: does anyone know which vaccine they have used in Cuba?
As of September, PEPFAR has saved an estimated 20 million lives, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Tutu was right.
(Were I running the BBC, I would do a series of programs on PEPFAR, explaining its successes.)
The question as ever is practical and effective enforcement.
When we get a coherent and largely separate cycling infrastructure, scooters will fit in better on that, along with e-bikes. Unravelling the modes of travel will be the key.
https://twitter.com/BallotBoxScot/status/1475068725195948035?t=kutaxbXlVwlk95U-8slCsw&s=19
The point of accepting more hospitalisations during the summer and autumn was so that they would be reduced in the winter ie the load would be spread and so manageable at all times.
And that has succeeded.
So you're left with claiming it would have been better for some anti-vaxxers to get Omicron in winter rather than Delta in the autumn.
Perhaps it might have been for those anti-vaxxers but personally I couldn't give a toss if they suffered some more.
Do you give any credence to the idea that Andrew Bowie is being lined up as SCon leader? He seems the most vacuous candidate for the job compared to the last few appointees by some distance, though that’s no bar obviously.
Currently under 400 - rising still but then again new cases have levelled off as well.
And there doesn't seem to be any reports of London hospitals being overrun with new patients.
The dilemma reveals itself where Ministers are set on a policy. How do Civil servants explain risks without being dismissed as negative and risk averse? Whereas the old guard would have just said no, the culture moved to 'yes, but what about...'. And then it changed to 'yes, and what about ...', until you just get to the final stage where the civil service follow orders, whilst taking care to indemnify themselves against any adverse consequences. This is where I think we might have got to, sadly.
Stop trying to blame other people.
Taking the full test (and doing all the associated training) takes a week and costs about £1000. Can't see the point.
9% thought humanity would go extinct this year so a nerve racking 5 days ahead of us.
Now if you were to argue bicycles should require a test, insurance and be road taxed then I would have some sympathy with your view for how electric scooters should be regulated. Frankly I have felt more in danger from idiot cyclists than I ever have from scooter riders.
She appears to have alienated almost the entire cabinet and most of the No 10 staff, and has been the driver to a raft of slightly half-baked environmental nonsense.
Boris looks exhausted and unhappy on nearly every picture that you see, and he must be in a perpetual state of anxiety about his personal finances, which have long been a preoccupation.
SNP: 48% (-3)
LAB: 22% (+5)
CON: 17% (-4)
LDM: 7% (+2)
Via
@OpiniumResearch
, 15-22 Dec.
Changes w/ 3-8 Sep.
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1475079848955682816
It's weird.
Even though the UK has always had pretty much the safest roads in Europe for the last half-century and more, the surfaces of our roads are towards the bottom in quality. It's bad enough for cycles with 700mm wheels or folders with 350mm wheels, but e-scooters normally have 215m wheels.
E-scooters typically replace the upper end of walked journeys (0-5 miles), and the lower of cycle journeys. Cycling is normally half a mile up to say about 12-15 miles.
I think that full blown license, helmet and insurance for a vehicle which does 10mph is a massive overkill. Unless you are banning it by paperwork.
You could argue for 3rd part insurance, maybe, which you get free with membership of something like CyclingUK for people who use bikes. Perhaps you cold also put a case forward for training along the lines of the excellent bikeability, which is free in most places. IMO that's about it.
If I wanted something that did not need parking in the below motorbike category, I would be going for a Brompton or e-Brompton. You can hire one at many places for £5 for 24 hours. I took one to Istanbul on a hairyplane on holiday once.
https://bromptonhire.com/
My takeaways FWIW:
1. The Warwick model may simply be wrong, but I suspect it isn't in terms of the shape of the Omicron wave. There will be a short but sharp peak. Question is, just how high?
2. We're very dependent on people choosing to moderate their behaviour.
Not only is the prime minister weak after months of political mistakes and the biggest Commons revolt of his leadership on vaccine passports, but cabinet ministers are also aware that their colleagues on the backbenches want them to be more challenging so that there aren’t further mistakes in the new year. There are now few consequences for going against the agreed line, not least because there isn’t always a line to break.
Mind you, recently it has been a miracle that any minister agrees to go out and do media at all. It wasn’t just the indefensible behaviour at the heart of the stories, but also that Johnson has squandered a great deal of loyalty among his ministers. Other ministers who aren’t going anywhere are nonetheless frustrated that they’ve had to go out and clarify things that their prime minister, who is supposed to be a natural communicator, has made a mess of.
The risk at the moment is that Johnson is so weak and distracted that he and his team don’t realise how many colleagues aren’t really on his side any more – and then don’t have the wherewithal to do anything about it.
I don't think people are consciously lying about their perception of Covid risk, but I do think that make are playing a crucial role for some people in masking a cognitive dissonance between how dangerous they think Covid is and how much they choose to socialise despite that.
This is a similar role to recycling in the climate change situation. People know today climate change is a problem and use recycling as a way to feel that they've done something useful, so that they can live their lives normally.
Other people, like my wife, have a different reaction to the masks. They see them as a sign of danger, particularly when mask-wearing technique and mask quality is so poor.
I'm inclined to think that what we perhaps need is a strategy for managing it as an endemic condition, with a plan for vaccinating up to 100% of the population up to twice a year mainly through Drs' surgeries - such that the normal NHS can proceed at 100% of normal activity. Compared with the 85-90% it has been running between the summer and the current accelerated booster programme.
If the next Covid variant is even more infectious but even milder than Omicron then our response will need to be materially different.
If the virus continues to mutate its way past vaccines and previous infections then vaccinating the mass of people now is going to be a waste of time. We will need to await its emergence and then produce a vaccine more specifically targeted.
If the fourth vaccine gives us even less protection than the third, which has been enormously disappointing, is it really worth vaccinating the whole country again as opposed to simply the most vulnerable groups?
IME e-scooters mix with pedestrians eg in town centres, whilst people on bikes mix more with more general traffic.
You're right that it's down to me to persuade my wife it's safe. I do think that messaging matters though, and hypocrisy is difficult to bear.
Seasons Greetings btw Nick. All well? Good to see you still posting on here. I tend to lurk these days but still count myself as a Site supporter.
My trips are sub 10 mile journeys on busy roads. As much as the motorbike is fun I think the answer is a cheap hybrid road bike; will also do good from an exercise point of view.
It's because the world is a complicated and potentially dangerous place, and people want someone they can trust to lead them through it.
Though I'd certainly agree with the potential for involving both.
My local surgery has been doing 300-400 on a Saturday morning. Perhaps smaller pharmacies have a gap-filler role?
its a solid lesson for a child but adults really should accept more responsibility.
I wouldn't necessarily go for a cheapie, depending on your meaning of cheapie. For about 6 or 7 years I have had a £750 Boardman hybrid bought with various offers for £550, and have a Gruber Assist fitted (Gruber Assist is the e-bike conversion with the long thin motor in the seatpost). That gives me an invisible e-bike with about 25 miles worth of assist for a total weight of 13kg. But kits have really moved on since.
I've done everything from holidays with luggage to normal commuting on it. Holiday example would be Chesterfield to Portsmouth on the train with cycling through London, then a ferry and to Ventnor on the bike. Or the train to Bristol then the bike into Somerset.
Apologies for being such a misery guts. I see that I'm going to have to phone the doctor and talk about changing my medication again.
https://twitter.com/brianmoore666/status/1475027601047572480?s=20
If the SNP win 56 MPs but Labour win a UK wide majority however that is in reality worse for the nationalists. Starmer could ignore them and their demands for indyref2 and just appoint Gordon Brown to a new commission on a Federal UK with a bit of tinkering around devolution.
Basically the SNP need something of a Tory recovery, just not too big a Tory recovery
Its rather liberating to have had covid and be able to feel free to get on with things with no change other than a vaccination every few months.
** Or those who don't realise they have previously been infected - there must be many millions who have been infected without realising it.
It sounds like they need some segregated cycle paths which are more attractive to ride on than the pavements, or some roads that are less intimidating / dangerous. And perhaps a culture change to encourage considerate use of shared space.
In my next town (Mansfield) the Council are nuts. They entirely banned cycling from the town centre after a single incident of a couple of 13 years olds cycling inconsiderately, which means that kids wanting to go the Rebecca Adlington swimming pool have to get taken by car from half the town, have a 20 minute cycle-push or go round the dangerous ring-road.
My other problem is that I find that the set of activities I intellectually feel I should be happy doing isn't always the same as the set of things I emotionally feel OK with. (Some of this is maybe masks, which I do think are a good idea currently but which also act as a continous "situation not normal" signal when you've got one on...)
But its likely to be with milder effects each time.
In the end most people will be getting it without noticing it or thinking they got 'a bit of a cold'.
However a relatively stready state as we have seen is imo a better practice than ups and downs, as far as that can be managed.
Which speaks to the need to treat COVID vaccination as a segregated (afap) workstream.
Suppression was a good idea so long as vaccines and treatments weren't available. Now it's just delaying the inevitable at enormous cost.
If we can manage to stamp on Omicron with a destructive lockdown this Winter then something even more transmissible will come along in short order. The evolutionary pressure being placed upon the virus to do this is huge.
About the best that can be hoped for is that such a future variant would be less virulent and kill fewer people, but if we go down the heavy restriction route yet again then we're gambling on that possibility in the future by inflicting a lot of collateral damage now.
Most riders of whichever are careful and respectful. However certainly seen cyclists riding no handed and pulling wheelies through there. Even seen the odd moped driven through
If it continues then everyone will be getting their anti-bodies topped up at the supermarkets and pubs.
The vulnerable will be those who don't and let their protection slowly fade.
My guess it was people opposed to restrictions accepted Boris’s face saving compromise of wait & see.
That’s a conscious choice not to act, not a case of not making a decision
The only way I can see a 2022 GE is if Boris Johnson resigns and there is a seamless transition to a Sunak or Truss administration. The new leader gets a polling bounce/honeymoon and decides to cash in later in the year.
Remembering what happened to Theresa May, I imagine that's an unlikely scenario,
Deal with it.
If Omicron is super infectious then we're all going to get our anti-bodies topped up.
If it isn't then its not going to be a threat.
Might even happen in 2021.
Covid will be which means that we will regularly come into contact with it just as we do with flu.
And like flu covid will hit some people hard - very likely the same people flu would have hit.