The smears and slurs on Dr Angelique Coetzee were colonial attitudes at their worst. As I had here repeatedly at the time.
All credit to @NerysHughes on here by the way - he has been proved absolutely right despite the usual unthinking slurry being thrown his way by the lockdown hawks on PB.
Lockdown hawks? I don't want to be locked down at all, but then I would also prefer to dodge any Covid variation until genuine experts tell me otherwise.
The man posts dangerous interpretations of preliminary evidence. It would appear in this instance, as more is known, the early signs were appropriate. I am more comfortable with those interpretations by scientists rather than a wishful thinker.
His anti- mask interpretation is yet to be proven, I'll stick to a more cautious approach thankyou.
Thanks to @ydoethur for the abrupt reminder that people who who phone in probably aren't representative.
More generally, I do get frustrated with those (even a minority) who refuse to ever go into the office or classroom again, as other public servants in the NHS put themselves at risk every day.
That's not to mention the min-wage private sector who have been exposed throughout, and were the ones keeping the country going.
Why do they frustrate you, unless they're obnoxious about it? Some of us find working from home preferable and think we're more productive that way than crouched in a row of desks. My colleagues are scattered around the country so I'd only see some of them anyway. I appreciate that most jobs are different and that some people really hate wfh, so I'm not urging you to do it, but I don't see that I'm doing you any harm by doing it myself.
The idea that they are entitled to a level of protection that others aren't. Imagine someone working at Gregg's who has to find friends to look after their kids at home because their teacher won't go back to the classroom.
I think that is a slightly different argument to optional WFH - I agree that should be up to the individual/employer.
As Omicron is so mild within our population is there any point to the huge testing regime that we are doing each day? We are making hundreds of thousand of people isolate for 7 days for what is mainly a mild cold.
Several friends have been locked indoors when there is absolutely nothing wrong with them. Mild symptoms clearing after 48 hours in many cases.
And yet the symptoms of the 10 people they may have otherwise infected may not have been so mild.
That's true with the common cold too Rochdale. So what?
I wouldn't visit anyone who's vulnerable or immunosuppressed if I had the common cold, but I would live normally otherwise. Post-vaccines we should be treating Covid exactly the same.
Telegraph saying that incidental admissions rate is now around 80% of the daily announced figures, up from 40%. That's similar to what we heard from SA which was ~75% incidental admissions during their Omicron wave.
Overall bed occupancy and ICU occupancy is steady or down. These two are the ones to watch.
Either 25 or 80% sounds high frankly - say 3 million have Covid, you'd expect 3/67ths of the population being admitted to a hospital to have "incidental Covid" ?
Indicates a large amount of transmission in hospitals ?
25 to 80% doesn't sound positive to me, the virus isn't THAT prevalent
75% of Covid patients being incidental admissions doesn’t mean 75% of patients are infected. If the rate of hospitalisation due to Covid is low enough (and I don’t know the numbers) then you could get the incidental rate quoted.
If 3/67ths of patients are admitted with incidental Covid and 1/67th are admitted due to Covid, then the maths works.
Yes I've made a Bayes error mixing patients with incidental Covid and Covid patients being incidental.
Still not convinced about the Tele's methodology though - for one thing they've used 6,245 beds occupied on Dec 21st when the figure is 6,902. No idea where they have the "45 admitted because of the virus" and "remaining 245 in hospital for other conditions but also having tested positive - so called 'incudental Covid' admissions" numbers from too.
Telegraph saying that incidental admissions rate is now around 80% of the daily announced figures, up from 40%. That's similar to what we heard from SA which was ~75% incidental admissions during their Omicron wave.
Overall bed occupancy and ICU occupancy is steady or down. These two are the ones to watch.
Either 25 or 80% sounds high frankly - say 3 million have Covid, you'd expect 3/67ths of the population being admitted to a hospital to have "incidental Covid" ?
Indicates a large amount of transmission in hospitals ?
25 to 80% doesn't sound positive to me, the virus isn't THAT prevalent
We've currently got about 160k hospital beds total in this country, and 8k are occupied by people with Covid. So if between 140k and 160k beds are full right now and 20% are there specifically for Covid reasons, then that implies about 4-4.5% of the non-Covid admissions also have Covid, which is bang in line with your 3/67 estimate.
With the age profile of the cases you'd expect it to skew lower than the general prevalence as compared to the delta wave which was much, much higher. Hospital is a very very high testing enviroment, so ONS rather than known cases is the best for this, I'll try and take a look.
Hospital is also a place where one is very likely to pick up an infection. It wouldn’t surprise me if a significant number of people going in without Covid acquired it while they were there. This is obviously not good.
I still question whether ventilators are the right thing to be tracking if Omicron does not impact the lungs in the same way.
As for admissions, referring to incidental admissions as the get out clause feels awfully similar to what was said around Delta and also those that said we’d reached herd immunity in summer 2020.
How will Omicron cause death without impacting the lungs? That’s effectively what you are tracking.
Foxy pointed out last night that other serious symptoms can occur independently of lung issues.
I believe there can be other proximate causes of death (@Foxy ‘s point) - my father ultimately died of renal failure / multiple organ failure - but the data I’ve seen suggest these are coincident with rather than independent of respiratory issues.
But surely they are expected to correlate quite well, as covid causes all those problems?
They do
The point was (IMV) ventilation is a worthwhile stat to track as most (if not all) COVID deaths involve ventilation regardless of the proximate cause of death
This works if non-lung deaths correlate with lung-deaths. The question for Omi is whether this relationship still exists given what we know about it so far (upper respiratory).
The kidneys, liver and gut are not upper respiratory either…
The point is if the virus is embedded enough to cause fatal issues in these organs it will also have got to the lungs.
If Omni kills without impacting the lungs (and there is no evidence it does) then we are in a similar position to one of the actresses on niche websites that @TheScreamingEagles watches
Good morning one and all. Unseasonably mild. Mrs C is darkly forecasting that 'we'll pay for it in mid to late January', but if our visitors have made it home we won't mind too much.
Not feeling too confident about the economic future myself, although I did my income tax completed yesterday, which cheered me somewhat.
Hey OKC, best wishes to you both and hope you had a good Christmas
Thank you Horse. Same to you. We are left with a Christmas mystery; a bag of presents went missing and still hasn't been found!
How strange, they will surely turn up in the most unexpected of places
Ebay?
Left on a car roof or in the garden when loading up a car?
I did that to my daughter's beaker about 30 years ago. We sometimes go a whole week without it being brought up!
I once did it to the oil filler cap in an Alfa. I got away with it as I was stuck in traffic and noticed what I thought was steam (actually smoke) coming from under the bonnet. Hurriedly found a petrol station and filled up with oil, bought an emergency petrol filler cap which fitted over the filler hole. Had I not been stuck in traffic I probably wouldn't have noticed the smoke, and the view in the Alfa community was if the oil warning light ever came on your 2.0 Twinspark was already toast.
The smears and slurs on Dr Angelique Coetzee were colonial attitudes at their worst. As I had here repeatedly at the time.
All credit to @NerysHughes on here by the way - he has been proved absolutely right despite the usual unthinking slurry being thrown his way by the lockdown hawks on PB.
No credit whatever to him, unless you absolutely believe that it was *in principle utterly impossible* (the bar really is that high) that the demographics/prior infection/vacc profile/climate of the SA population meant that omicron was significantly more serious of a problem here, than there. And if you do believe that, you are a serious idiot.
Analogously, consider the discipline relating to the handling of guns, which says that you never, ever point one at someone even if you are utterly certain it is unloaded. Nerys is the idiot who wants to point one at someone and pull the trigger for fun because hur hur hur it was obviously unloaded
Your posts are usually inhabited by shadowy and, crucially, unidentified strawmen, and I think we will put your colonialists and hawks in that category. All that was ever urged by anyone was prudence, as far as I remember.
Bartholomew will find it helpful as it leans towards his view, though he may want to note AM's point about why the public is slow to move in that direction. I'm gradually shifting myself towards accepting Omicron as something to live with, for the reasons AM sets out.
He had a disagreement with another poster. I can't remember who it was.
I rather miss Alastair, but he's too fastidious for this raucous site. By contrast a private blog with infinite space and nine loyal "followers" is very heaven.
As Omicron is so mild within our population is there any point to the huge testing regime that we are doing each day? We are making hundreds of thousand of people isolate for 7 days for what is mainly a mild cold.
Several friends have been locked indoors when there is absolutely nothing wrong with them. Mild symptoms clearing after 48 hours in many cases.
And yet the symptoms of the 10 people they may have otherwise infected may not have been so mild.
And yet it's neither practical nor desirable to keep testing and isolating Covid cases forever.
Now might not be the right time to stop, but the right time probably isn't that far away. Spring, perhaps?
We're going to have to accept Covid-19 as just one more risk eventually. It's just a matter of time. And there's nothing particularly wrong in at least raising the possibility that the marginal costs from self-isolation may already outweigh the benefits, although I personally wouldn't be heading down that road quite yet.
As Omicron is so mild within our population is there any point to the huge testing regime that we are doing each day? We are making hundreds of thousand of people isolate for 7 days for what is mainly a mild cold.
People equipped with a little knowledge, but are so cocksure of their interpretation of that little knowledge need to locked in a darkened room until the end of the pandemic.
What scientific evidence do you have that Omicron " is mainly a mild cold"? People making such assertions are potentially very dangerous.
There's plenty of evidence its mainly a cold, especially for the vaccinated, but I wouldn't say its a mild cold necessarily.
The fact that millions of people have it, but only a few hundreds/thousands are getting hospitalised, really shows that for most people it is just a cold.
The primary symptoms now according to scientific evidence like Zoe etc is a runny nose etc . . . up to you whether you want to call a runny nose etc a cold.
For a small minority of people it can be much more serious than a cold and of course a small proportion of a very large number can be a decent sized number.
Good to see a much more balanced, considered post from you than usual. I think the last sentence is spot on.
This it's just a mild cold business. If you're up to date on your vaccines very probably. If you are like me (6 months to the very day from second jab), it is a lot worse. I wouldn't want it to become a reason for folk not to bother with a booster or fourth jab when available. Cos they will be ill.
Anyone know where the FLSOJ is currently holed up? Curious lack of his reassuring tones in and on the media. There’s some twitter chat that he and Nut Nut are in Mustique but surely even he wouldn’t be that cretinously tin eared. Would he?
There are no Covid restrictions in England now apart from vaxports for nightclubs and large events. There is no foreign travel ban either and the UK airline and travel industry desperately needs a boost.
Even if he is it may not be as tin eared as you think. If Sturgeon or Drakeford did it however it would be given the extra restrictions they have imposed in Scotland and Wales. As Boris is pursuing a more libertarian approach in England however it would not now be hypocritical for him
Of course it would. Just because something isn't banned you still lead by example and the message is enjoy yourself but be careful and be restrained. That wouldn't be. It would be a kick in the teeth for those not risking a modest trip to the Costas.
Wrong. The travel industry needs more people to book trips to the Costas, especially once they have had their boosters.
All you are doing is pushing another nail in the coffin of our airline and travel industry and putting more workers from that industry out of work
No I'm not and I traveled quite a bit during the pandemic, but there is a difference re appearances. If Boris (unlike the rest of us) did take an exotic trip he would be slaughter in the press and if you don't realise that you are even more out of touch than you appear.
No he won't now as Boris has correctly refused to impose any new restrictions over Christmas and New Year. Had he done so like Sturgeon and Drakeford he might have been but he hasn't and the nightclubs, pubs, bars and restaurants and cinemas and theatres are all open in England and there are no travel bans either.
Boris is now also correctly taking a stand as Conservatives begin an ideological battle with statist left liberals to keep us open while they want to shut us down again.
There was general across the board political agreement with lockdown and Covid restrictions pre vaccination. Now post vaccination and boosters the divide is now clear, Boris and Conservatives and indeed RefUK to keep us open v Labour and the SNP to keep us restricted and shut down
It is of course inevitable that the politics of this will dominate and it just might do the Tories some good. I doubt it will be enough to get them a poll lead though, I would be betting no on that.
People are fed up with restrictions. They have seen that they are not a solution. If zero Covid was ever a possibility (in the UK it wasn't) it very clearly isn't now so what is the point? Easy wins for politicians in being more "caring" or "cautious" no longer exist as I suspect Nicola and Drakeford will find out. Both are smart enough to reverse ferret fairly quickly though.
My fear before Christmas was that even a small percentage of a very large number was going to cause a crisis in the Health service but I am slowly coming around to the view that the evidence does not support that; Omicron is being caught in most cases by the least vulnerable and they are shrugging it off.
This does not mean Whitty & Co were wrong, there was a clear risk that had to be addressed, but Boris does seem to have got this right on this occasion. For either him or his cabinet it was a brave call and he deserves credit for getting it right.
The smears and slurs on Dr Angelique Coetzee were colonial attitudes at their worst. As I had here repeatedly at the time.
All credit to @NerysHughes on here by the way - he has been proved absolutely right despite the usual unthinking slurry being thrown his way by the lockdown hawks on PB.
No credit whatever to him, unless you absolutely believe that it was *in principle utterly impossible* (the bar really is that high) that the demographics/prior infection/vacc profile/climate of the SA population meant that omicron was significantly more serious of a problem here, than there. And if you do believe that, you are a serious idiot.
Analogously, consider the discipline relating to the handling of guns, which says that you never, ever point one at someone even if you are utterly certain it is unloaded. Nerys is the idiot who wants to point one at someone and pull the trigger for fun because hur hur hur it was obviously unloaded
Your posts are usually inhabited by shadowy and, crucially, unidentified strawmen, and I think we will put your colonialists and hawks in that category. All that was ever urged by anyone was prudence, as far as I remember.
That reminds me of a scene in a book where a character was asked to dry fire a rifle that he had just seen being assembled from its component parts (so no chance of it being loaded). He first opened the chamber to confirm it was empty, then carefully aimed it away from everyone before pulling the trigger.
Bartholomew will find it helpful as it leans towards his view, though he may want to note AM's point about why the public is slow to move in that direction. I'm gradually shifting myself towards accepting Omicron as something to live with, for the reasons AM sets out.
He had a disagreement with another poster. I can't remember who it was.
Bartholomew will find it helpful as it leans towards his view, though he may want to note AM's point about why the public is slow to move in that direction. I'm gradually shifting myself towards accepting Omicron as something to live with, for the reasons AM sets out.
As a former PBer should be, he is good on the issue of personal appetite for risk.
I am (nearly) 57 and have a congenital heart defect that may make me higher risk. My friends are mostly a similar age, some are older (one guy who was in the pub on Christmas Ever is 80) many are overweight and some have health conditions themselves. We have all been triple-jabbed and some of us have had, and thrown off, COVID. We are all happy to expose ourselves to the risk of catching Omicron, have been out and about at pubs, parties and restaurants in the last few weeks. Recklessness? No, we just judge the increased level of risk to be manageable. Something is going to get you, one day - when COVID is reduced in risk to just one of those things, then we can start living lives normally.
And people who do want to continue to isolate themselves can choose to do so. What isn't acceptable in my view is that such people demand that everyone else put their lives on hold.
The smears and slurs on Dr Angelique Coetzee were colonial attitudes at their worst. As I had here repeatedly at the time.
All credit to @NerysHughes on here by the way - he has been proved absolutely right despite the usual unthinking slurry being thrown his way by the lockdown hawks on PB.
No credit whatever to him, unless you absolutely believe that it was *in principle utterly impossible* (the bar really is that high) that the demographics/prior infection/vacc profile/climate of the SA population meant that omicron was significantly more serious of a problem here, than there. And if you do believe that, you are a serious idiot.
Analogously, consider the discipline relating to the handling of guns, which says that you never, ever point one at someone even if you are utterly certain it is unloaded. Nerys is the idiot who wants to point one at someone and pull the trigger for fun because hur hur hur it was obviously unloaded
Your posts are usually inhabited by shadowy and, crucially, unidentified strawmen, and I think we will put your colonialists and hawks in that category. All that was ever urged by anyone was prudence, as far as I remember.
The notion that Omicron was going to be "significantly" more serious of a problem here than in a country with considerably less vaccinations and boosters than here was always scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Yes saying its "utterly impossible" is a really high bar, but "significantly more serious" is a really high bar that was never probable either.
It was paranoia rather than rationality that suggested that a country with much, much higher vaccination rates would find the problem more serious.
Curious thread. Tories still trying to conjure up some party political advantage out of Omicron. Smells a little desperate, but perhaps understandable after the last few weeks. If they were wise they would shut up, try to govern and hope people forget that they party while others lock down.
Everything about this is politics. You could argue the welsh and Scottish governments are doing exactly the same with their approach to Omicron.
Be interesting to see why England fared worse than both Scotland and Wales , if they ever bother to really look at it in future which I seriously doubt.
The smears and slurs on Dr Angelique Coetzee were colonial attitudes at their worst. As I had here repeatedly at the time.
All credit to @NerysHughes on here by the way - he has been proved absolutely right despite the usual unthinking slurry being thrown his way by the lockdown hawks on PB.
No credit whatever to him, unless you absolutely believe that it was *in principle utterly impossible* (the bar really is that high) that the demographics/prior infection/vacc profile/climate of the SA population meant that omicron was significantly more serious of a problem here, than there. And if you do believe that, you are a serious idiot.
Analogously, consider the discipline relating to the handling of guns, which says that you never, ever point one at someone even if you are utterly certain it is unloaded. Nerys is the idiot who wants to point one at someone and pull the trigger for fun because hur hur hur it was obviously unloaded
Your posts are usually inhabited by shadowy and, crucially, unidentified strawmen, and I think we will put your colonialists and hawks in that category. All that was ever urged by anyone was prudence, as far as I remember.
Absolutely correct. Is @Anabobazina being serious about Dr Hughes' analysis?
It's the logic of @NerysHughes that says don't wear a seat belt because the probability of a crash is so small, and anyway should you crash you will be thrown through the windscreen at speed to safety from the soon to be burning vehicle.
The smears and slurs on Dr Angelique Coetzee were colonial attitudes at their worst. As I had here repeatedly at the time.
All credit to @NerysHughes on here by the way - he has been proved absolutely right despite the usual unthinking slurry being thrown his way by the lockdown hawks on PB.
Lockdown hawks? I don't want to be locked down at all, but then I would also prefer to dodge any Covid variation until genuine experts tell me otherwise.
The man posts dangerous interpretations of preliminary evidence. It would appear in this instance, as more is known, the early signs were appropriate. I am more comfortable with those interpretations by scientists rather than a wishful thinker.
His anti- mask interpretation is yet to be proven, I'll stick to a more cautious approach thankyou.
Yes, she keeps posting the same nonsense. Nobody wants lockdown.
As Omicron is so mild within our population is there any point to the huge testing regime that we are doing each day? We are making hundreds of thousand of people isolate for 7 days for what is mainly a mild cold.
Several friends have been locked indoors when there is absolutely nothing wrong with them. Mild symptoms clearing after 48 hours in many cases.
And yet the symptoms of the 10 people they may have otherwise infected may not have been so mild.
And yet it's neither practical nor desirable to keep testing and isolating Covid cases forever.
Now might not be the right time to stop, but the right time probably isn't that far away. Spring, perhaps?
We're going to have to accept Covid-19 as just one more risk eventually. It's just a matter of time. And there's nothing particularly wrong in at least raising the possibility that the marginal costs from self-isolation may already outweigh the benefits, although I personally wouldn't be heading down that road quite yet.
Yes, at some point there is going to have to be a transition to endemic, as noted by Mr Meeks in his piece linked above.
Telegraph saying that incidental admissions rate is now around 80% of the daily announced figures, up from 40%. That's similar to what we heard from SA which was ~75% incidental admissions during their Omicron wave.
Overall bed occupancy and ICU occupancy is steady or down. These two are the ones to watch.
Either 25 or 80% sounds high frankly - say 3 million have Covid, you'd expect 3/67ths of the population being admitted to a hospital to have "incidental Covid" ?
Indicates a large amount of transmission in hospitals ?
Isn't that a well known fact? An acquaintance of mine died of covid acquired in hospital. The Nightingales could have kept the covid patients separate from others.
Without being an expert it seems crazy they did not move staff to the nightingale hospitals and have all covid patients in them rather than mixing it all up
Interesting Dr Foxy was saying well Germany has 4-5x ICU beds.....here a Scientific Director saying Germany should be more like the UK, because not enough nurses, each nurse has to care for 3 patients rather than 1 in the UK, and his solution is total reorganisation of the system, more nurses and LESS HOSPITALS!!!
I believe Sir Humphrey might call such a call brave.
There are lots of differences between ICU beds by country. In the UK it does tend to mean 1:1 nurse:patient ratio. And De has several overlapping systems of hospitals, IIRC.
Plus there is some confusion over the definitions of Intensive Care, and High Dependency, and in some places IC is partly defined by staff ratio.
Not saying who has got it right; pointing out problems with a simple comparison.
Though, yes - I'd agree that UK is lowish even after the various adjustments for a real comparison.
Also in the UK, there is a discrepancy between England and the devolved govts. Not sure why. Again it could be definitions, or a London cluster effect.
As Omicron is so mild within our population is there any point to the huge testing regime that we are doing each day? We are making hundreds of thousand of people isolate for 7 days for what is mainly a mild cold.
Several friends have been locked indoors when there is absolutely nothing wrong with them. Mild symptoms clearing after 48 hours in many cases.
And yet the symptoms of the 10 people they may have otherwise infected may not have been so mild.
That's true with the common cold too Rochdale. So what?
I wouldn't visit anyone who's vulnerable or immunosuppressed if I had the common cold, but I would live normally otherwise. Post-vaccines we should be treating Covid exactly the same.
That you believe Covid to be the common cold is why you are at the sociopathic Harold Shipman "people die so what" end of the spectrum on this one.
Happily the government are listening to medics and scientists with knowledge and data rather than you and the other Don't Look Up! posters on here.
Whatever has caused my headache it isn't Covid. Good.
Another anecdote: Short - term shoulder pain as a Covid symptom in a couple of people. Never heard that one before.
I had that. Thought it was a result of kipping for 15 hours straight!
Muscle pain isn't unknown, I had a bit (not confined to the shoulders) and a stiff neck which persisted for some days afterwards, although like you I couldn't really differentiate it from a normal stiff neck acquired during sleep.
Six weeks on, I still can't run properly (OK, I'm a bit slower than I would like) and still quite tired. I haven't exactly been taking it easy so I am going to spend the next few days trying to get a good night's sleep.
Telegraph saying that incidental admissions rate is now around 80% of the daily announced figures, up from 40%. That's similar to what we heard from SA which was ~75% incidental admissions during their Omicron wave.
Overall bed occupancy and ICU occupancy is steady or down. These two are the ones to watch.
Either 25 or 80% sounds high frankly - say 3 million have Covid, you'd expect 3/67ths of the population being admitted to a hospital to have "incidental Covid" ?
Indicates a large amount of transmission in hospitals ?
25 to 80% doesn't sound positive to me, the virus isn't THAT prevalent
75% of Covid patients being incidental admissions doesn’t mean 75% of patients are infected. If the rate of hospitalisation due to Covid is low enough (and I don’t know the numbers) then you could get the incidental rate quoted.
If 3/67ths of patients are admitted with incidental Covid and 1/67th are admitted due to Covid, then the maths works.
Yes I've made a Bayes error mixing patients with incidental Covid and Covid patients being incidental.
Still not convinced about the Tele's methodology though - for one thing they've used 6,245 beds occupied on Dec 21st when the figure is 6,902. No idea where they have the "45 admitted because of the virus" and "remaining 245 in hospital for other conditions but also having tested positive - so called 'incudental Covid' admissions" numbers from too.
Telegraph saying that incidental admissions rate is now around 80% of the daily announced figures, up from 40%. That's similar to what we heard from SA which was ~75% incidental admissions during their Omicron wave.
Overall bed occupancy and ICU occupancy is steady or down. These two are the ones to watch.
Either 25 or 80% sounds high frankly - say 3 million have Covid, you'd expect 3/67ths of the population being admitted to a hospital to have "incidental Covid" ?
Indicates a large amount of transmission in hospitals ?
25 to 80% doesn't sound positive to me, the virus isn't THAT prevalent
We've currently got about 160k hospital beds total in this country, and 8k are occupied by people with Covid. So if between 140k and 160k beds are full right now and 20% are there specifically for Covid reasons, then that implies about 4-4.5% of the non-Covid admissions also have Covid, which is bang in line with your 3/67 estimate.
With the age profile of the cases you'd expect it to skew lower than the general prevalence as compared to the delta wave which was much, much higher. Hospital is a very very high testing enviroment, so ONS rather than known cases is the best for this, I'll try and take a look.
Hospital is also a place where one is very likely to pick up an infection. It wouldn’t surprise me if a significant number of people going in without Covid acquired it while they were there. This is obviously not good.
The general hospital population and general covid +ve populations stratified by age are currently diametrically opposed. You'd therefore expect non covid admissions to be far less than 3/67ths positive on an age stratification basis. If hospital is a place of transmission more likely than the general community (And it likely is) then that tilts it all back the other way. And the NHS under breaking point pressure anecdotal argument is the boy who cried wolf every winter since time began. It's all like that xkcd cartoon
Telegraph saying that incidental admissions rate is now around 80% of the daily announced figures, up from 40%. That's similar to what we heard from SA which was ~75% incidental admissions during their Omicron wave.
Overall bed occupancy and ICU occupancy is steady or down. These two are the ones to watch.
So the South Africans aren’t a different breed of humans after all? Who’d of thunk it. It’s becoming clearer that the threat to healthcare in the next month is mainly staff illness/isolation, and not increased patients in icu.
As I commented earlier it does seem as if the media are finally catching on
Just a couple of weeks ago people were claiming on here that SA was better prepared for the Omicron wave than the UK was, and that we should rely on modelling rather than their real world data for the potential impact of Omicron.
No they weren't, they were saying that the SA data looked encouraging, but there might be differences which might be significant between their population and ours. So observe SA but also model, and await events here. You just didn't understand this point.
Aristotle said that the function of intelligence is to observe and understand the differences between similar things. I wonder where that leaves you.
Mmmm, I am one of the few people on here who kept pointing to the SA data and the quotes from the SA Health Minister, Doctors etc. .
To say that people on here were not dismissing this data and my posts is not particularly intelligent of you.
I'm afraid when ever I see one of your posts I can never forget that in the early, heady days of Covid you made masks from your own underpants. I can see why you became such an anti-mask evangelist, mind.
Ugh - I'll bet those masks didn't pass the sniff test!
Bartholomew will find it helpful as it leans towards his view, though he may want to note AM's point about why the public is slow to move in that direction. I'm gradually shifting myself towards accepting Omicron as something to live with, for the reasons AM sets out.
He had a disagreement with another poster. I can't remember who it was.
Anyone know where the FLSOJ is currently holed up? Curious lack of his reassuring tones in and on the media. There’s some twitter chat that he and Nut Nut are in Mustique but surely even he wouldn’t be that cretinously tin eared. Would he?
There are no Covid restrictions in England now apart from vaxports for nightclubs and large events. There is no foreign travel ban either and the UK airline and travel industry desperately needs a boost.
Even if he is it may not be as tin eared as you think. If Sturgeon or Drakeford did it however it would be given the extra restrictions they have imposed in Scotland and Wales. As Boris is pursuing a more libertarian approach in England however it would not now be hypocritical for him
So are you suggesting it would be OK for Mr and Mrs Johnson to fly to Mustique on Government trade business, of course (assuming that is where they are) because he didn't impose any further sanctions before he returns on New Year's Day (perish the thought)? Although...kinda handy doncha think? A bit like Pakistan and Bangladesh, but not India being on an earlier red list.
I am sure this can't be true...can it?
Apparently Boris is speaking later this morning, so I doubt even he is not stupid enough to be in Mustique
Surely there’s very few MPs, certainly not Ministers, out of the country, given there was a reasonable chance Parliament was going to get recalled this week?
Well Rishi Sunak might have been living it large in Laguna Beach over Crimbo had he not been busted.
North Laguna is very nice but we had to cancel our planned Christmas stay
Does anyone know what Keir Starmer's official policy is on having restrictions during the New Year period? Is he supporting Johnson, or is he with Sturgeon and Drakeford?
He’s sitting on the fence waiting to see which way it goes after the event.
Curious thread. Tories still trying to conjure up some party political advantage out of Omicron. Smells a little desperate, but perhaps understandable after the last few weeks. If they were wise they would shut up, try to govern and hope people forget that they party while others lock down.
Everything about this is politics. You could argue the welsh and Scottish governments are doing exactly the same with their approach to Omicron.
Be interesting to see why England fared worse than both Scotland and Wales , if they ever bother to really look at it in future which I seriously doubt.
I had a look at ACC stats the other day (consistent measure of people on unemployment related benefits) and it was quite remarkable how much harder England had been hit compared with Scotland.
Now, there are two ways you could interpret this, depending on your politics:
Tories: English economy much more vulnerable to restrictions, so makes sense to have looser rules down south. Wales/Scot/NI are public sector heavy so were always going to do better
Everyone else: Tighter restrictions = a more resilient economy, fewer people off etc
Anyone know where the FLSOJ is currently holed up? Curious lack of his reassuring tones in and on the media. There’s some twitter chat that he and Nut Nut are in Mustique but surely even he wouldn’t be that cretinously tin eared. Would he?
There are no Covid restrictions in England now apart from vaxports for nightclubs and large events. There is no foreign travel ban either and the UK airline and travel industry desperately needs a boost.
Even if he is it may not be as tin eared as you think. If Sturgeon or Drakeford did it however it would be given the extra restrictions they have imposed in Scotland and Wales. As Boris is pursuing a more libertarian approach in England however it would not now be hypocritical for him
Of course it would. Just because something isn't banned you still lead by example and the message is enjoy yourself but be careful and be restrained. That wouldn't be. It would be a kick in the teeth for those not risking a modest trip to the Costas.
Wrong. The travel industry needs more people to book trips to the Costas, especially once they have had their boosters.
All you are doing is pushing another nail in the coffin of our airline and travel industry and putting more workers from that industry out of work
No I'm not and I traveled quite a bit during the pandemic, but there is a difference re appearances. If Boris (unlike the rest of us) did take an exotic trip he would be slaughter in the press and if you don't realise that you are even more out of touch than you appear.
No he won't now as Boris has correctly refused to impose any new restrictions over Christmas and New Year. Had he done so like Sturgeon and Drakeford he might have been but he hasn't and the nightclubs, pubs, bars and restaurants and cinemas and theatres are all open in England and there are no travel bans either.
Boris is now also correctly taking a stand as Conservatives begin an ideological battle with statist left liberals to keep us open while they want to shut us down again.
There was general across the board political agreement with lockdown and Covid restrictions pre vaccination. Now post vaccination and boosters the divide is now clear, Boris and Conservatives and indeed RefUK to keep us open v Labour and the SNP to keep us restricted and shut down
Deluded.
Regardless of the right or wrongs he would be slaughtered in the press if he did so. Have you been asleep for the last few weeks? He has been hammered in the press and some of the stuff wasn't even against the rules and look at the impact on the polls.
Anyway it is academic as I can't believe Boris would be stupid enough to do it, Although you seem to think it would have no impact. It is a strange world you live in.
Bartholomew will find it helpful as it leans towards his view, though he may want to note AM's point about why the public is slow to move in that direction. I'm gradually shifting myself towards accepting Omicron as something to live with, for the reasons AM sets out.
It's a very nice piece although for me this issue was settled long ago. It's been clear for ages that LIVE WITH IT is the endgame on Covid and is where we are heading. We aren't there quite yet but I expect we will be soon. I'll be surprised if it remains a big story in the UK beyond February.
Friends of brother in law had a big intergenerational Christmas get together. One member of the family brought Covid to the party. Now they've all got it.
I note the short incubation period.
Meanwhile, I have woken up with a headache. Let's see what this morning's LFT shows...
I hope it is negative! We also did the big (well 11, big for us) family gathering and I spent the last two days feeling RAF. But keep testing negative so not Covid.
My family left for the ferry this morning, and I am feeling knackered. But I am not putting it down to the virus.
Telegraph saying that incidental admissions rate is now around 80% of the daily announced figures, up from 40%. That's similar to what we heard from SA which was ~75% incidental admissions during their Omicron wave.
Overall bed occupancy and ICU occupancy is steady or down. These two are the ones to watch.
Either 25 or 80% sounds high frankly - say 3 million have Covid, you'd expect 3/67ths of the population being admitted to a hospital to have "incidental Covid" ?
Indicates a large amount of transmission in hospitals ?
Isn't that a well known fact? An acquaintance of mine died of covid acquired in hospital. The Nightingales could have kept the covid patients separate from others.
Without being an expert it seems crazy they did not move staff to the nightingale hospitals and have all covid patients in them rather than mixing it all up
I read on here that they were only specced for ventilated patients, and as our treatment of COVID patients improved, they were no longer required.
Maybe would have made sense to have fever hospitals, if staff accommodation was provided then they could even have been staffed by positive-but-asymptomatic staff. But the NHS no longer knows how to deal with infectious diseases.
The smears and slurs on Dr Angelique Coetzee were colonial attitudes at their worst. As I had here repeatedly at the time.
All credit to @NerysHughes on here by the way - he has been proved absolutely right despite the usual unthinking slurry being thrown his way by the lockdown hawks on PB.
No credit whatever to him, unless you absolutely believe that it was *in principle utterly impossible* (the bar really is that high) that the demographics/prior infection/vacc profile/climate of the SA population meant that omicron was significantly more serious of a problem here, than there. And if you do believe that, you are a serious idiot.
Analogously, consider the discipline relating to the handling of guns, which says that you never, ever point one at someone even if you are utterly certain it is unloaded. Nerys is the idiot who wants to point one at someone and pull the trigger for fun because hur hur hur it was obviously unloaded
Your posts are usually inhabited by shadowy and, crucially, unidentified strawmen, and I think we will put your colonialists and hawks in that category. All that was ever urged by anyone was prudence, as far as I remember.
That reminds me of a scene in a book where a character was asked to dry fire a rifle that he had just seen being assembled from its component parts (so no chance of it being loaded). He first opened the chamber to confirm it was empty, then carefully aimed it away from everyone before pulling the trigger.
That’s how you do gun safety.
Which everyone who’s ever set foot in a gun club should know, before the door to the armoury was opened. The only place a gun ever gets pointed is down the range, even if you think you know it’s not loaded.
I see the "waverers" are back on the Boris bandwagon again, it's honestly hilarious to read their "I really am quitting this week" posts.
@HYUFD was right, I'd be a millionaire by now if I had a Pound for every time they said they were leaving.
Normal people instead of partisan hacks do go back and forth depending upon how politics changes.
For partisan hacks like yourself and HYUFD its a lot easier to keep a 100% record.
For me, I'm still unhappy with Boris but since he rejected restrictions I'm a lot happier than I was a week or so ago when it looked like he was going to impose them. Funnily enough, when Boris does what I want then I'm happier, when he doesn't then I'm not. That's how principled people operate as opposed to partisans who change their principles to match whatever their party is doing today.
I see the "waverers" are back on the Boris bandwagon again, it's honestly hilarious to read their "I really am quitting this week" posts.
@HYUFD was right, I'd be a millionaire by now if I had a Pound for every time they said they were leaving.
Normal people instead of partisan hacks do go back and forth depending upon how politics changes.
For partisan hacks like yourself and HYUFD its a lot easier to keep a 100% record.
For me, I'm still unhappy with Boris but since he rejected restrictions I'm a lot happier than I was a week or so ago when it looked like he was going to impose them. Funnily enough, when Boris does what I want then I'm happier, when he doesn't then I'm not. That's how principled people operate as opposed to partisans who change their principles to match whatever their party is doing today.
At least HYUFD doesn't pretend he's not a "partisan hack"
I see the "waverers" are back on the Boris bandwagon again, it's honestly hilarious to read their "I really am quitting this week" posts.
@HYUFD was right, I'd be a millionaire by now if I had a Pound for every time they said they were leaving.
Normal people instead of partisan hacks do go back and forth depending upon how politics changes.
For partisan hacks like yourself and HYUFD its a lot easier to keep a 100% record.
For me, I'm still unhappy with Boris but since he rejected restrictions I'm a lot happier than I was a week or so ago when it looked like he was going to impose them. Funnily enough, when Boris does what I want then I'm happier, when he doesn't then I'm not. That's how principled people operate as opposed to partisans who change their principles to match whatever their party is doing today.
At least HYUFD doesn't pretend he's not a "partisan hack"
Why would he when he is one, like you?
The rest of us have our principles. When the party matches our principles, we vote accordingly. When it doesn't, then we can change our votes to whoever does match them best.
I wonder if you're ever going to understand the difference between principles and partisan?
I've seen the future and here's a summary of the fourth Ashes test.
Why did they declare?
Because Mr Dhanawade got the score he wanted, and they were worried about running out of time to get them all out again?
Of course there is now no pressure on Aus to declare to get a win vs a draw, so they might try for something like highest score in a Test match (revenge for England's innings and 579 runs victory, Oval 1938)
I see the "waverers" are back on the Boris bandwagon again, it's honestly hilarious to read their "I really am quitting this week" posts.
@HYUFD was right, I'd be a millionaire by now if I had a Pound for every time they said they were leaving.
Normal people instead of partisan hacks do go back and forth depending upon how politics changes.
For partisan hacks like yourself and HYUFD its a lot easier to keep a 100% record.
For me, I'm still unhappy with Boris but since he rejected restrictions I'm a lot happier than I was a week or so ago when it looked like he was going to impose them. Funnily enough, when Boris does what I want then I'm happier, when he doesn't then I'm not. That's how principled people operate as opposed to partisans who change their principles to match whatever their party is doing today.
At least HYUFD doesn't pretend he's not a "partisan hack"
Why would he when he is one, like you?
The rest of us have our principles. When the party matches our principles, we vote accordingly. When it doesn't, then we can change our votes to whoever does match them best.
I wonder if you're ever going to understand the difference between principles and partisan?
I literally voted Lib Dem over Iraq and voted Tory in 2010 because Labour was out of ideas...
I see the "waverers" are back on the Boris bandwagon again, it's honestly hilarious to read their "I really am quitting this week" posts.
@HYUFD was right, I'd be a millionaire by now if I had a Pound for every time they said they were leaving.
To be fair on them, "waverers" are likely to, well, waver.
The hope is they waver in the right direction come the election. That's more likely now, as once you start wavering it's hard to stop.
They'll waver and then go back to voting Tory, it's not really wavering.
In 2005, I could not vote Labour because of Iraq, so I voted Lib Dem. In 2010 I voted Tory because it was time for a change of Government and Labour needed time to get itself together.
I am happy to reserve the right to do either again if and when Labour is elected. That's actually having principles.
I've seen the future and here's a summary of the fourth Ashes test.
Why did they declare?
‘Cos the dude got to 1,000.
Unless you can score 10 off one ball, they must have had at least one extra delivery.
Based on that scorecard, I have no difficulty believing someone managed to run ten before the opposition fielders managed to get the ball back to the middle.
Off-topic, its already increasingly clear how difficult it is going to be to get "groupage" loads across the GB / EU border from Saturday. The GB new customs computer isn't ready so have to rely on the old system which they said from the start was utterly incapable of such a thing. We haven't built the Border Control Posts, or staffed them, and the few we have built in Kent are utterly inadequate.
We have to start to impose these rules because there are a stack of countries ready to take us to the WTO for giving illegal preferential terms to the EU. But we aren't ready, and hauliers sensibly are saying "fuck that" at the prospect of having their vehicle stuck in Ashford over a weekend because one line on one page of one item of the thousands on their groupage load is wrong.
I've already been told that the pallet load chilled imports we have been doing happily so far (as the GB authorities aren't checking) are now likely impossible. We need to be doing full loads which we can't as the business hasn't grown sufficiently and now won't do if we can't import.
I expect we will get through this by simply dropping the 1st Jan / 1st April / 1st July implementation. Which isn't a long-term fix. Our border model doesn't work as drawn up...
That I think is already in place. I have pasted some of the weasel-words.
The irony is that this unfit-for-purpose set of processes will continue until the UK govt introduces enough of it to gum up the EU side of the border. Idiots.
Revised timetable will give businesses more time to adjust to new processes Global pandemic has affected supply chains in the UK and across Europe Controls will be phased in across 2022 The government has today set out a pragmatic new timetable for introducing full import controls for goods being imported from the EU to the UK.
Businesses have faced a range of challenges over recent months as they recover from the global pandemic which has impacted supply chains across Europe. This is being felt particularly by the agri-food sector, where new requirements on importing products of animal origin were due to be introduced from next month. Rather than introduce these controls at this time, the government has listened to those who have called for a new approach to give businesses more time to adjust.
I see the "waverers" are back on the Boris bandwagon again, it's honestly hilarious to read their "I really am quitting this week" posts.
@HYUFD was right, I'd be a millionaire by now if I had a Pound for every time they said they were leaving.
To be fair on them, "waverers" are likely to, well, waver.
The hope is they waver in the right direction come the election. That's more likely now, as once you start wavering it's hard to stop.
They'll waver and then go back to voting Tory, it's not really wavering.
In 2005, I could not vote Labour because of Iraq, so I voted Lib Dem. In 2010 I voted Tory because it was time for a change of Government and Labour needed time to get itself together.
I am happy to reserve the right to do either again if and when Labour is elected. That's actually having principles.
And in 2019 I couldn't vote Conservatives because of Theresa May so I cast a protest vote myself too.
Right now the Conservatives are doing badly, but are better than all the alternatives in my eyes, for reasons I've made clear. If we get a decent Opposition then I could consider voting for them. The most likely alternative party for my vote being the Lib Dems if they could actually become liberal.
I see the "waverers" are back on the Boris bandwagon again, it's honestly hilarious to read their "I really am quitting this week" posts.
@HYUFD was right, I'd be a millionaire by now if I had a Pound for every time they said they were leaving.
I've never said I was leaving for the very good reason that I have never joined in the first place.
I remain appalled at the Owen Paterson episode in almost every aspect; the blatant corruption; the indifference; the attempt to destroy our ethics system in an attempt to save a twat from his just desserts and, perhaps most of all, the truly epic incompetence.
I am less excited about whether some civil servants had a drink together after working in the same rooms as each other all day although the lying is not great and insults our intelligence. Ditto about someone paying to indulge his wife's taste in Downing Street, again it is the lying and stupidity that irritates.
On the pandemic I would give Boris 6 or 7 out of 10. There have been a series of good calls of which both the focus on the rollout of boosters and the resisting of further restrictions are the latest. There has been some truly terrible incompetence of which T&T is perhaps the shinning example although our airport policy runs it close.
Does that make me a fanbois? I will leave that for you and others to judge.
I see the "waverers" are back on the Boris bandwagon again, it's honestly hilarious to read their "I really am quitting this week" posts.
@HYUFD was right, I'd be a millionaire by now if I had a Pound for every time they said they were leaving.
To be fair on them, "waverers" are likely to, well, waver.
The hope is they waver in the right direction come the election. That's more likely now, as once you start wavering it's hard to stop.
They'll waver and then go back to voting Tory, it's not really wavering.
In 2005, I could not vote Labour because of Iraq, so I voted Lib Dem. In 2010 I voted Tory because it was time for a change of Government and Labour needed time to get itself together.
I am happy to reserve the right to do either again if and when Labour is elected. That's actually having principles.
And in 2019 I couldn't vote Conservatives because of Theresa May so I cast a protest vote myself too.
Right now the Conservatives are doing badly, but are better than all the alternatives in my eyes, for reasons I've made clear. If we get a decent Opposition then I could consider voting for them. The most likely alternative party for my vote being the Lib Dems if they could actually become liberal.
Then you'll understand why I am not a "partisan hack" as you keep claiming.
I am happy to go over what would stop me voting Labour if you would like to hear. I would also be quite happy to vote Lib Dem depending on constituency.
I can't vote Tory at the moment because it's an endorsement of populism and the party of Johnsonism which is something I despise almost as much as I now despise Corbynism
I see the "waverers" are back on the Boris bandwagon again, it's honestly hilarious to read their "I really am quitting this week" posts.
@HYUFD was right, I'd be a millionaire by now if I had a Pound for every time they said they were leaving.
To be fair on them, "waverers" are likely to, well, waver.
The hope is they waver in the right direction come the election. That's more likely now, as once you start wavering it's hard to stop.
They'll waver and then go back to voting Tory, it's not really wavering.
In 2005, I could not vote Labour because of Iraq, so I voted Lib Dem. In 2010 I voted Tory because it was time for a change of Government and Labour needed time to get itself together.
I am happy to reserve the right to do either again if and when Labour is elected. That's actually having principles.
I'd agree with you if it were Corbyn, or even Burnham.
Starmer as the asset of being dull and inoffensive, so basically anyone could vote for him.
Telegraph saying that incidental admissions rate is now around 80% of the daily announced figures, up from 40%. That's similar to what we heard from SA which was ~75% incidental admissions during their Omicron wave.
Overall bed occupancy and ICU occupancy is steady or down. These two are the ones to watch.
Either 25 or 80% sounds high frankly - say 3 million have Covid, you'd expect 3/67ths of the population being admitted to a hospital to have "incidental Covid" ?
Indicates a large amount of transmission in hospitals ?
Isn't that a well known fact? An acquaintance of mine died of covid acquired in hospital. The Nightingales could have kept the covid patients separate from others.
Without being an expert it seems crazy they did not move staff to the nightingale hospitals and have all covid patients in them rather than mixing it all up
I read on here that they were only specced for ventilated patients, and as our treatment of COVID patients improved, they were no longer required.
Maybe would have made sense to have fever hospitals, if staff accommodation was provided then they could even have been staffed by positive-but-asymptomatic staff. But the NHS no longer knows how to deal with infectious diseases.
From what I've seen/heard major attempts where (and are made) to segregate COVID patients from the rest of the hospitals. Separate entrances, dedicated floors etc etc.
The common factor - staff - is pretty much impossible to segregate. Due to the non-existence of several hundred thousand nurses and doctors sitting around, twiddling their thumbs for lack of work.
Bartholomew will find it helpful as it leans towards his view, though he may want to note AM's point about why the public is slow to move in that direction. I'm gradually shifting myself towards accepting Omicron as something to live with, for the reasons AM sets out.
(do we know why he left?)
Debate over BREXIT got so heated, that he was involved with, got so heated that he didn't want to be here anymore.
IIRC his most vigorous debatee has now 'left', so perhaps there is hope.
Curious thread. Tories still trying to conjure up some party political advantage out of Omicron. Smells a little desperate, but perhaps understandable after the last few weeks. If they were wise they would shut up, try to govern and hope people forget that they party while others lock down.
Everything about this is politics. You could argue the welsh and Scottish governments are doing exactly the same with their approach to Omicron.
Be interesting to see why England fared worse than both Scotland and Wales , if they ever bother to really look at it in future which I seriously doubt.
The reason is obvious. But problematic in polite conversation.
I see the "waverers" are back on the Boris bandwagon again, it's honestly hilarious to read their "I really am quitting this week" posts.
@HYUFD was right, I'd be a millionaire by now if I had a Pound for every time they said they were leaving.
To be fair on them, "waverers" are likely to, well, waver.
The hope is they waver in the right direction come the election. That's more likely now, as once you start wavering it's hard to stop.
They'll waver and then go back to voting Tory, it's not really wavering.
In 2005, I could not vote Labour because of Iraq, so I voted Lib Dem. In 2010 I voted Tory because it was time for a change of Government and Labour needed time to get itself together.
I am happy to reserve the right to do either again if and when Labour is elected. That's actually having principles.
And in 2019 I couldn't vote Conservatives because of Theresa May so I cast a protest vote myself too.
Right now the Conservatives are doing badly, but are better than all the alternatives in my eyes, for reasons I've made clear. If we get a decent Opposition then I could consider voting for them. The most likely alternative party for my vote being the Lib Dems if they could actually become liberal.
Then you'll understand why I am not a "partisan hack" as you keep claiming.
I am happy to go over what would stop me voting Labour if you would like to hear. I would also be quite happy to vote Lib Dem depending on constituency.
I can't vote Tory at the moment because it's an endorsement of populism and the party of Johnsonism which is something I despise almost as much as I now despise Corbynism
At the moment I'm disappointed with Boris because he seems burnt out and is turning against the things he's said and done in the past. If we had more "Johnsonism" that would be an improvement for me and could get me back on board, its the absence of that and the pure chaos and bullshit of recent weeks instead that is the problem.
You may despise "Johnsonism" but I don't I actually like what I consider it to be. And I think "populism" is simply democracy.
That silence you can hear is Labour MPs avoiding the media because they don't want to be asked if they support the Drakeford approach or the Johnson approach.
Tough call. Luckily, Keir Starmer is providing firm, decisive leadership on this. Oh wait.
Curious thread. Tories still trying to conjure up some party political advantage out of Omicron. Smells a little desperate, but perhaps understandable after the last few weeks. If they were wise they would shut up, try to govern and hope people forget that they party while others lock down.
Everything about this is politics. You could argue the welsh and Scottish governments are doing exactly the same with their approach to Omicron.
Be interesting to see why England fared worse than both Scotland and Wales , if they ever bother to really look at it in future which I seriously doubt.
The reason is obvious. But problematic in polite conversation.
He is being disingenuous by cherry picking and not doing a simple look up to current situation.
897,216 is current capacity.
And of course UK strategy has changed to much wider use of LFT from 11 months ago. Hardly any other country tests at the level the UK does, but there will always be some sort of ceiling.
Off-topic, its already increasingly clear how difficult it is going to be to get "groupage" loads across the GB / EU border from Saturday. The GB new customs computer isn't ready so have to rely on the old system which they said from the start was utterly incapable of such a thing. We haven't built the Border Control Posts, or staffed them, and the few we have built in Kent are utterly inadequate.
We have to start to impose these rules because there are a stack of countries ready to take us to the WTO for giving illegal preferential terms to the EU. But we aren't ready, and hauliers sensibly are saying "fuck that" at the prospect of having their vehicle stuck in Ashford over a weekend because one line on one page of one item of the thousands on their groupage load is wrong.
I've already been told that the pallet load chilled imports we have been doing happily so far (as the GB authorities aren't checking) are now likely impossible. We need to be doing full loads which we can't as the business hasn't grown sufficiently and now won't do if we can't import.
I expect we will get through this by simply dropping the 1st Jan / 1st April / 1st July implementation. Which isn't a long-term fix. Our border model doesn't work as drawn up...
That I think is already in place. I have pasted some of the weasel-words.
The irony is that this unfit-for-purpose set of processes will continue until the UK govt introduces enough of it to gum up the EU side of the border. Idiots.
Revised timetable will give businesses more time to adjust to new processes Global pandemic has affected supply chains in the UK and across Europe Controls will be phased in across 2022 The government has today set out a pragmatic new timetable for introducing full import controls for goods being imported from the EU to the UK.
Businesses have faced a range of challenges over recent months as they recover from the global pandemic which has impacted supply chains across Europe. This is being felt particularly by the agri-food sector, where new requirements on importing products of animal origin were due to be introduced from next month. Rather than introduce these controls at this time, the government has listened to those who have called for a new approach to give businesses more time to adjust.
This will be a great case study, for future students of international politics and game theory.
It was sadly predictable that the EU, and the French in particular, would be obstinate arseholes around the border, in the expectation that the UK would not retailiate in any meaningful way.
Hopefully, over time and as the politicians in charge change, everyone will realise that obstinate border arseholery benefits no-one, and that life is much better when everyone just gets their computers talking to each other.
The silver lining in the cloud appears to be the Dutch, who are planning to actively encourage EU>UK freight traffic through Rotterdam in the new year.
I see the "waverers" are back on the Boris bandwagon again, it's honestly hilarious to read their "I really am quitting this week" posts.
@HYUFD was right, I'd be a millionaire by now if I had a Pound for every time they said they were leaving.
To be fair on them, "waverers" are likely to, well, waver.
The hope is they waver in the right direction come the election. That's more likely now, as once you start wavering it's hard to stop.
They'll waver and then go back to voting Tory, it's not really wavering.
In 2005, I could not vote Labour because of Iraq, so I voted Lib Dem. In 2010 I voted Tory because it was time for a change of Government and Labour needed time to get itself together.
I am happy to reserve the right to do either again if and when Labour is elected. That's actually having principles.
I'd agree with you if it were Corbyn, or even Burnham.
Starmer as the asset of being dull and inoffensive, so basically anyone could vote for him.
Actually, the current shower are so woeful that, for a few days, I did consider voting for Corbyn. In the end I decided that none of them were good enough and, for the first time ever, I did not bother voting.
Off-topic, its already increasingly clear how difficult it is going to be to get "groupage" loads across the GB / EU border from Saturday. The GB new customs computer isn't ready so have to rely on the old system which they said from the start was utterly incapable of such a thing. We haven't built the Border Control Posts, or staffed them, and the few we have built in Kent are utterly inadequate.
We have to start to impose these rules because there are a stack of countries ready to take us to the WTO for giving illegal preferential terms to the EU. But we aren't ready, and hauliers sensibly are saying "fuck that" at the prospect of having their vehicle stuck in Ashford over a weekend because one line on one page of one item of the thousands on their groupage load is wrong.
I've already been told that the pallet load chilled imports we have been doing happily so far (as the GB authorities aren't checking) are now likely impossible. We need to be doing full loads which we can't as the business hasn't grown sufficiently and now won't do if we can't import.
I expect we will get through this by simply dropping the 1st Jan / 1st April / 1st July implementation. Which isn't a long-term fix. Our border model doesn't work as drawn up...
That I think is already in place. I have pasted some of the weasel-words.
The irony is that this unfit-for-purpose set of processes will continue until the UK govt introduces enough of it to gum up the EU side of the border. Idiots.
Revised timetable will give businesses more time to adjust to new processes Global pandemic has affected supply chains in the UK and across Europe Controls will be phased in across 2022 The government has today set out a pragmatic new timetable for introducing full import controls for goods being imported from the EU to the UK.
Businesses have faced a range of challenges over recent months as they recover from the global pandemic which has impacted supply chains across Europe. This is being felt particularly by the agri-food sector, where new requirements on importing products of animal origin were due to be introduced from next month. Rather than introduce these controls at this time, the government has listened to those who have called for a new approach to give businesses more time to adjust.
Sure - they phased it. And yet we're not remotely ready for even the first phase. For lunatics obsessed with the border you'd think they'd spend the money to actually make it function.
I see the "waverers" are back on the Boris bandwagon again, it's honestly hilarious to read their "I really am quitting this week" posts.
@HYUFD was right, I'd be a millionaire by now if I had a Pound for every time they said they were leaving.
To be fair on them, "waverers" are likely to, well, waver.
The hope is they waver in the right direction come the election. That's more likely now, as once you start wavering it's hard to stop.
They'll waver and then go back to voting Tory, it's not really wavering.
In 2005, I could not vote Labour because of Iraq, so I voted Lib Dem. In 2010 I voted Tory because it was time for a change of Government and Labour needed time to get itself together.
I am happy to reserve the right to do either again if and when Labour is elected. That's actually having principles.
I'd agree with you if it were Corbyn, or even Burnham.
Starmer as the asset of being dull and inoffensive, so basically anyone could vote for him.
Actually, the current shower are so woeful that, for a few days, I did consider voting for Corbyn. In the end I decided that none of them were good enough and, for the first time ever, I did not bother voting.
To me this seems the most principled stance of the GE19 election - of which you should have a great deal of respect.
I conclude Corbyn and Johnson are just as bad as each other, I really regret voting for Corbyn twice
I see the "waverers" are back on the Boris bandwagon again, it's honestly hilarious to read their "I really am quitting this week" posts.
@HYUFD was right, I'd be a millionaire by now if I had a Pound for every time they said they were leaving.
To be fair on them, "waverers" are likely to, well, waver.
The hope is they waver in the right direction come the election. That's more likely now, as once you start wavering it's hard to stop.
They'll waver and then go back to voting Tory, it's not really wavering.
In 2005, I could not vote Labour because of Iraq, so I voted Lib Dem. In 2010 I voted Tory because it was time for a change of Government and Labour needed time to get itself together.
I am happy to reserve the right to do either again if and when Labour is elected. That's actually having principles.
And in 2019 I couldn't vote Conservatives because of Theresa May so I cast a protest vote myself too.
Right now the Conservatives are doing badly, but are better than all the alternatives in my eyes, for reasons I've made clear. If we get a decent Opposition then I could consider voting for them. The most likely alternative party for my vote being the Lib Dems if they could actually become liberal.
Then you'll understand why I am not a "partisan hack" as you keep claiming.
I am happy to go over what would stop me voting Labour if you would like to hear. I would also be quite happy to vote Lib Dem depending on constituency.
I can't vote Tory at the moment because it's an endorsement of populism and the party of Johnsonism which is something I despise almost as much as I now despise Corbynism
At the moment I'm disappointed with Boris because he seems burnt out and is turning against the things he's said and done in the past. If we had more "Johnsonism" that would be an improvement for me and could get me back on board, its the absence of that and the pure chaos and bullshit of recent weeks instead that is the problem.
You may despise "Johnsonism" but I don't I actually like what I consider it to be. And I think "populism" is simply democracy.
If you think populism is democracy, you certainly don't understand populism and possibly don't understand democracy.
If Starmer took us into a pointless war I'd quit the Labour Party.
If Starmer ran out of ideas I'd probably vote Lib Dem.
The Tories can consider my vote when they go back to being the party of Ken Clarke and Rory Stewart
If he ran out of ideas? Wouldn't he have to have any to begin with to runout?
Captain Hindsight hasn't had an original idea this entire pandemic, except for a circuit break which failed in Wales and he swiftly distanced himself from.
I see the "waverers" are back on the Boris bandwagon again, it's honestly hilarious to read their "I really am quitting this week" posts.
@HYUFD was right, I'd be a millionaire by now if I had a Pound for every time they said they were leaving.
To be fair on them, "waverers" are likely to, well, waver.
The hope is they waver in the right direction come the election. That's more likely now, as once you start wavering it's hard to stop.
They'll waver and then go back to voting Tory, it's not really wavering.
In 2005, I could not vote Labour because of Iraq, so I voted Lib Dem. In 2010 I voted Tory because it was time for a change of Government and Labour needed time to get itself together.
I am happy to reserve the right to do either again if and when Labour is elected. That's actually having principles.
And in 2019 I couldn't vote Conservatives because of Theresa May so I cast a protest vote myself too.
Right now the Conservatives are doing badly, but are better than all the alternatives in my eyes, for reasons I've made clear. If we get a decent Opposition then I could consider voting for them. The most likely alternative party for my vote being the Lib Dems if they could actually become liberal.
Then you'll understand why I am not a "partisan hack" as you keep claiming.
I am happy to go over what would stop me voting Labour if you would like to hear. I would also be quite happy to vote Lib Dem depending on constituency.
I can't vote Tory at the moment because it's an endorsement of populism and the party of Johnsonism which is something I despise almost as much as I now despise Corbynism
At the moment I'm disappointed with Boris because he seems burnt out and is turning against the things he's said and done in the past. If we had more "Johnsonism" that would be an improvement for me and could get me back on board, its the absence of that and the pure chaos and bullshit of recent weeks instead that is the problem.
You may despise "Johnsonism" but I don't I actually like what I consider it to be. And I think "populism" is simply democracy.
Iain Duncan Smith was very conciliatory to the PM on the radio this morning. Whatever you think of Johnson, it didn't sound like the rebels were about to storm the walls.
If Starmer took us into a pointless war I'd quit the Labour Party.
If Starmer ran out of ideas I'd probably vote Lib Dem.
The Tories can consider my vote when they go back to being the party of Ken Clarke and Rory Stewart
If he ran out of ideas? Wouldn't he have to have any to begin with to runout?
Captain Hindsight hasn't had an original idea this entire pandemic, except for a circuit break which failed in Wales and he swiftly distanced himself from.
What ideas does Johnson have? Isn't that the reason the Red Wall are currently running away?
I happen to think bringing the railways back into public ownership, cutting VAT on energy bills, investing in renewable energy, re-introducing SureStart and bringing the country back with competent leadership is probably a good thing.
But you seem to enjoy chaotic populism so his platform probably isn't for you
Honestly calling Keir Starmer Captain Hindsight makes you look incredibly partisan and undermines any point you're making, it's as useless and pathetic as calling Remainers Remoaners or calling Brexit Brexshit
Off-topic, its already increasingly clear how difficult it is going to be to get "groupage" loads across the GB / EU border from Saturday. The GB new customs computer isn't ready so have to rely on the old system which they said from the start was utterly incapable of such a thing. We haven't built the Border Control Posts, or staffed them, and the few we have built in Kent are utterly inadequate.
We have to start to impose these rules because there are a stack of countries ready to take us to the WTO for giving illegal preferential terms to the EU. But we aren't ready, and hauliers sensibly are saying "fuck that" at the prospect of having their vehicle stuck in Ashford over a weekend because one line on one page of one item of the thousands on their groupage load is wrong.
I've already been told that the pallet load chilled imports we have been doing happily so far (as the GB authorities aren't checking) are now likely impossible. We need to be doing full loads which we can't as the business hasn't grown sufficiently and now won't do if we can't import.
I expect we will get through this by simply dropping the 1st Jan / 1st April / 1st July implementation. Which isn't a long-term fix. Our border model doesn't work as drawn up...
That I think is already in place. I have pasted some of the weasel-words.
The irony is that this unfit-for-purpose set of processes will continue until the UK govt introduces enough of it to gum up the EU side of the border. Idiots.
Revised timetable will give businesses more time to adjust to new processes Global pandemic has affected supply chains in the UK and across Europe Controls will be phased in across 2022 The government has today set out a pragmatic new timetable for introducing full import controls for goods being imported from the EU to the UK.
Businesses have faced a range of challenges over recent months as they recover from the global pandemic which has impacted supply chains across Europe. This is being felt particularly by the agri-food sector, where new requirements on importing products of animal origin were due to be introduced from next month. Rather than introduce these controls at this time, the government has listened to those who have called for a new approach to give businesses more time to adjust.
This will be a great case study, for future students of international politics and game theory.
It was sadly predictable that the EU, and the French in particular, would be obstinate arseholes around the border, in the expectation that the UK would not retailiate in any meaningful way.
Hopefully, over time and as the politicians in charge change, everyone will realise that obstinate border arseholery benefits no-one, and that life is much better when everyone just gets their computers talking to each other.
The silver lining in the cloud appears to be the Dutch, who are planning to actively encourage EU>UK freight traffic through Rotterdam in the new year.
I'm not sure you're listening. This is not about the French. They can do what they like - they have a functional border. This is about our side of the border where inbound stuff is going to get stacked up faster than we can handle, because we do not have a functional border. The people who have insisted that we do this is us, not the French or EU.
He is being disingenuous by cherry picking and not doing a simple look up to current situation.
897,216 is current capacity.
And of course UK strategy has changed to much wider use of LFT from 11 months ago. Hardly any other country tests at the level the UK does, but there will always be some sort of ceiling.
And also a law of diminishing returns. I think we may well conclude when this was finally over that our over zealous testing was second only to T&T in the waste of public money and the diversion of resources that might have been more usefully spent.
The reality is that Johnson is in power because we put up Corbyn against him, something which I think about a lot and wish I'd listened to more people on my own side before I voted for him. I will have to live with that
I see the "waverers" are back on the Boris bandwagon again, it's honestly hilarious to read their "I really am quitting this week" posts.
@HYUFD was right, I'd be a millionaire by now if I had a Pound for every time they said they were leaving.
To be fair on them, "waverers" are likely to, well, waver.
The hope is they waver in the right direction come the election. That's more likely now, as once you start wavering it's hard to stop.
They'll waver and then go back to voting Tory, it's not really wavering.
In 2005, I could not vote Labour because of Iraq, so I voted Lib Dem. In 2010 I voted Tory because it was time for a change of Government and Labour needed time to get itself together.
I am happy to reserve the right to do either again if and when Labour is elected. That's actually having principles.
And in 2019 I couldn't vote Conservatives because of Theresa May so I cast a protest vote myself too.
Right now the Conservatives are doing badly, but are better than all the alternatives in my eyes, for reasons I've made clear. If we get a decent Opposition then I could consider voting for them. The most likely alternative party for my vote being the Lib Dems if they could actually become liberal.
Then you'll understand why I am not a "partisan hack" as you keep claiming.
I am happy to go over what would stop me voting Labour if you would like to hear. I would also be quite happy to vote Lib Dem depending on constituency.
I can't vote Tory at the moment because it's an endorsement of populism and the party of Johnsonism which is something I despise almost as much as I now despise Corbynism
At the moment I'm disappointed with Boris because he seems burnt out and is turning against the things he's said and done in the past. If we had more "Johnsonism" that would be an improvement for me and could get me back on board, its the absence of that and the pure chaos and bullshit of recent weeks instead that is the problem.
You may despise "Johnsonism" but I don't I actually like what I consider it to be. And I think "populism" is simply democracy.
Iain Duncan Smith was very conciliatory to the PM on the radio this morning. Whatever you think of Johnson, it didn't sound like the rebels were about to storm the walls.
That’ll be because the PM and Cabinet didn’t get bounced by the somewhat controversial data models, into restrictions over the last couple of weeks.
If they’d put forward more restrictions, Graham Brady would have had a Christmas hernia.
He is being disingenuous by cherry picking and not doing a simple look up to current situation.
897,216 is current capacity.
And of course UK strategy has changed to much wider use of LFT from 11 months ago. Hardly any other country tests at the level the UK does, but there will always be some sort of ceiling.
And also a law of diminishing returns. I think we may well conclude when this was finally over that our over zealous testing was second only to T&T in the waste of public money and the diversion of resources that might have been more usefully spent.
LFT has rather become a bit of a national pastime and you see on social media people are taking the piss by taking many per day. That's the downside when you make something free and easily available.
I think this is why they are doing the staggered released of PCR tests now.
Bartholomew will find it helpful as it leans towards his view, though he may want to note AM's point about why the public is slow to move in that direction. I'm gradually shifting myself towards accepting Omicron as something to live with, for the reasons AM sets out.
It's a very nice piece although for me this issue was settled long ago. It's been clear for ages that LIVE WITH IT is the endgame on Covid and is where we are heading. We aren't there quite yet but I expect we will be soon. I'll be surprised if it remains a big story in the UK beyond February.
That sort of post has a hint of "We've done it! We survived the Great War 1914-1917" about it. There's a lot of alphabet after omicron.
At the moment I'm disappointed with Boris because he seems burnt out and is turning against the things he's said and done in the past. If we had more "Johnsonism" that would be an improvement for me and could get me back on board, its the absence of that and the pure chaos and bullshit of recent weeks instead that is the problem.
I think many people would suggest that chaos and bullshit was in fact the essential core of "Johnsonism"...
To me though, I know the usual suspects won't agree but my natural politics is of the centre left and I am probably in reality somewhere between New Labour and 2017 Labour, which is why I have been able to vote Lib Dem and Tory.
I'm probably quite "woke" on the culture stuff - to be honest my attitude is "who cares" - but on everything else I'm pretty centrist.
I see the "waverers" are back on the Boris bandwagon again, it's honestly hilarious to read their "I really am quitting this week" posts.
@HYUFD was right, I'd be a millionaire by now if I had a Pound for every time they said they were leaving.
To be fair on them, "waverers" are likely to, well, waver.
The hope is they waver in the right direction come the election. That's more likely now, as once you start wavering it's hard to stop.
They'll waver and then go back to voting Tory, it's not really wavering.
In 2005, I could not vote Labour because of Iraq, so I voted Lib Dem. In 2010 I voted Tory because it was time for a change of Government and Labour needed time to get itself together.
I am happy to reserve the right to do either again if and when Labour is elected. That's actually having principles.
And in 2019 I couldn't vote Conservatives because of Theresa May so I cast a protest vote myself too.
Right now the Conservatives are doing badly, but are better than all the alternatives in my eyes, for reasons I've made clear. If we get a decent Opposition then I could consider voting for them. The most likely alternative party for my vote being the Lib Dems if they could actually become liberal.
Then you'll understand why I am not a "partisan hack" as you keep claiming.
I am happy to go over what would stop me voting Labour if you would like to hear. I would also be quite happy to vote Lib Dem depending on constituency.
I can't vote Tory at the moment because it's an endorsement of populism and the party of Johnsonism which is something I despise almost as much as I now despise Corbynism
At the moment I'm disappointed with Boris because he seems burnt out and is turning against the things he's said and done in the past. If we had more "Johnsonism" that would be an improvement for me and could get me back on board, its the absence of that and the pure chaos and bullshit of recent weeks instead that is the problem.
You may despise "Johnsonism" but I don't I actually like what I consider it to be. And I think "populism" is simply democracy.
Iain Duncan Smith was very conciliatory to the PM on the radio this morning. Whatever you think of Johnson, it didn't sound like the rebels were about to storm the walls.
"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
A couple of weeks ago it seemed like storming the walls would be necessary to change course.
Now it looks like the course has been changed and the 99 Rebel Loons have won their victory, why keep on fighting?
At the moment I'm disappointed with Boris because he seems burnt out and is turning against the things he's said and done in the past. If we had more "Johnsonism" that would be an improvement for me and could get me back on board, its the absence of that and the pure chaos and bullshit of recent weeks instead that is the problem.
I think many people would suggest that chaos and bullshit was in fact the essential core of "Johnsonism"...
Exactly, the "recent weeks" is simply another way of saying "I regret that people are now noticing".
If people think Labour would have done better at covid then take a look at Drakeford banning parkruns - utterly ridiculous and glad The SaJ has called him out on it
Honestly calling Keir Starmer Captain Hindsight makes you look incredibly partisan and undermines any point you're making, it's as useless and pathetic as calling Remainers Remoaners or calling Brexit Brexshit
Probably about as useful as calling covid the "Johnson variant", but supporters lap it up because it tickles them.
Comments
The man posts dangerous interpretations of preliminary evidence. It would appear in this instance, as more is known, the early signs were appropriate. I am more comfortable with those interpretations by scientists rather than a wishful thinker.
His anti- mask interpretation is yet to be proven, I'll stick to a more cautious approach thankyou.
I think that is a slightly different argument to optional WFH - I agree that should be up to the individual/employer.
I wouldn't visit anyone who's vulnerable or immunosuppressed if I had the common cold, but I would live normally otherwise. Post-vaccines we should be treating Covid exactly the same.
Analogously, consider the discipline relating to the handling of guns, which says that you never, ever point one at someone even if you are utterly certain it is unloaded. Nerys is the idiot who wants to point one at someone and pull the trigger for fun because hur hur hur it was obviously unloaded
Your posts are usually inhabited by shadowy and, crucially, unidentified strawmen, and I think we will put your colonialists and hawks in that category. All that was ever urged by anyone was prudence, as far as I remember.
Now might not be the right time to stop, but the right time probably isn't that far away. Spring, perhaps?
We're going to have to accept Covid-19 as just one more risk eventually. It's just a matter of time. And there's nothing particularly wrong in at least raising the possibility that the marginal costs from self-isolation may already outweigh the benefits, although I personally wouldn't be heading down that road quite yet.
If you're up to date on your vaccines very probably.
If you are like me (6 months to the very day from second jab), it is a lot worse.
I wouldn't want it to become a reason for folk not to bother with a booster or fourth jab when available.
Cos they will be ill.
People are fed up with restrictions. They have seen that they are not a solution. If zero Covid was ever a possibility (in the UK it wasn't) it very clearly isn't now so what is the point? Easy wins for politicians in being more "caring" or "cautious" no longer exist as I suspect Nicola and Drakeford will find out. Both are smart enough to reverse ferret fairly quickly though.
My fear before Christmas was that even a small percentage of a very large number was going to cause a crisis in the Health service but I am slowly coming around to the view that the evidence does not support that; Omicron is being caught in most cases by the least vulnerable and they are shrugging it off.
This does not mean Whitty & Co were wrong, there was a clear risk that had to be addressed, but Boris does seem to have got this right on this occasion. For either him or his cabinet it was a brave call and he deserves credit for getting it right.
That’s how you do gun safety.
Yes saying its "utterly impossible" is a really high bar, but "significantly more serious" is a really high bar that was never probable either.
It was paranoia rather than rationality that suggested that a country with much, much higher vaccination rates would find the problem more serious.
It's the logic of @NerysHughes that says don't wear a seat belt because the probability of a crash is so small, and anyway should you crash you will be thrown through the windscreen at speed to safety from the soon to be burning vehicle.
I would think that a reasonable starting point, once we are happy we’re not getting the healthcare system collapsing, would be to look at what a bad year of normal winter influenza looks like in terms of deaths. 1,000 deaths a week looks like a round number at which point you can drop restrictions on the non-vulnerable.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/deathsfrominfluenzain2019and2020
Plus there is some confusion over the definitions of Intensive Care, and High Dependency, and in some places IC is partly defined by staff ratio.
Not saying who has got it right; pointing out problems with a simple comparison.
Though, yes - I'd agree that UK is lowish even after the various adjustments for a real comparison.
Also in the UK, there is a discrepancy between England and the devolved govts. Not sure why. Again it could be definitions, or a London cluster effect.
No wonder we can't win a Test match.
Happily the government are listening to medics and scientists with knowledge and data rather than you and the other Don't Look Up! posters on here.
Six weeks on, I still can't run properly (OK, I'm a bit slower than I would like) and still quite tired. I haven't exactly been taking it easy so I am going to spend the next few days trying to get a good night's sleep.
If hospital is a place of transmission more likely than the general community (And it likely is) then that tilts it all back the other way.
And the NHS under breaking point pressure anecdotal argument is the boy who cried wolf every winter since time began.
It's all like that xkcd cartoon
Look at the smallest Labour lead during the last few weeks. Lab lead of 4 points.
Add in some small Con improvement, sample variation, and outliers then I reckon a small wager on the Tories having a polling lead seems fair.
Also worth remembering the Tories have led in some polls this month.
DW Report from Xian City
https://youtu.be/MG3ynIJ1Wko
Interesting tit bit from the report, China developing their own mRNA vaccines.
Now, there are two ways you could interpret this, depending on your politics:
Tories: English economy much more vulnerable to restrictions, so makes sense to have looser rules down south. Wales/Scot/NI are public sector heavy so were always going to do better
Everyone else: Tighter restrictions = a more resilient economy, fewer people off etc
Truss +73.5
Sunak +48.7
Javid +29.0
Raab +17.0
Gove +16.3
Patel -1.5
Johnson -33.8
https://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2021/12/our-cabinet-league-table-johnson-falls-to-his-lowest-ever-negative-rating.html
Regardless of the right or wrongs he would be slaughtered in the press if he did so. Have you been asleep for the last few weeks? He has been hammered in the press and some of the stuff wasn't even against the rules and look at the impact on the polls.
Anyway it is academic as I can't believe Boris would be stupid enough to do it, Although you seem to think it would have no impact. It is a strange world you live in.
Maybe would have made sense to have fever hospitals, if staff accommodation was provided then they could even have been staffed by positive-but-asymptomatic staff. But the NHS no longer knows how to deal with infectious diseases.
@HYUFD was right, I'd be a millionaire by now if I had a Pound for every time they said they were leaving.
(Insert Alec Baldwin joke here).
For partisan hacks like yourself and HYUFD its a lot easier to keep a 100% record.
For me, I'm still unhappy with Boris but since he rejected restrictions I'm a lot happier than I was a week or so ago when it looked like he was going to impose them. Funnily enough, when Boris does what I want then I'm happier, when he doesn't then I'm not. That's how principled people operate as opposed to partisans who change their principles to match whatever their party is doing today.
I have left here a few times when my mental health was in need of a break - and I have been quite open about that. Is there any need to bring this up?
The rest of us have our principles. When the party matches our principles, we vote accordingly. When it doesn't, then we can change our votes to whoever does match them best.
I wonder if you're ever going to understand the difference between principles and partisan?
The hope is they waver in the right direction come the election. That's more likely now, as once you start wavering it's hard to stop.
https://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/10166#comments
In 2005, I could not vote Labour because of Iraq, so I voted Lib Dem. In 2010 I voted Tory because it was time for a change of Government and Labour needed time to get itself together.
I am happy to reserve the right to do either again if and when Labour is elected. That's actually having principles.
Where have you been for the last 10 days?
Boris Johnson - "I've been in this country, where do you think" ...
The irony is that this unfit-for-purpose set of processes will continue until the UK govt introduces enough of it to gum up the EU side of the border. Idiots.
Revised timetable will give businesses more time to adjust to new processes
Global pandemic has affected supply chains in the UK and across Europe
Controls will be phased in across 2022
The government has today set out a pragmatic new timetable for introducing full import controls for goods being imported from the EU to the UK.
Businesses have faced a range of challenges over recent months as they recover from the global pandemic which has impacted supply chains across Europe. This is being felt particularly by the agri-food sector, where new requirements on importing products of animal origin were due to be introduced from next month. Rather than introduce these controls at this time, the government has listened to those who have called for a new approach to give businesses more time to adjust.
Full customs declarations and controls will be introduced on 1 January 2022 as previously announced, although safety and security declarations will now not be required until 1 July 2022.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-sets-out-pragmatic-new-timetable-for-introducing-border-controls
Right now the Conservatives are doing badly, but are better than all the alternatives in my eyes, for reasons I've made clear. If we get a decent Opposition then I could consider voting for them. The most likely alternative party for my vote being the Lib Dems if they could actually become liberal.
https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1476157161097019393
I remain appalled at the Owen Paterson episode in almost every aspect; the blatant corruption; the indifference; the attempt to destroy our ethics system in an attempt to save a twat from his just desserts and, perhaps most of all, the truly epic incompetence.
I am less excited about whether some civil servants had a drink together after working in the same rooms as each other all day although the lying is not great and insults our intelligence. Ditto about someone paying to indulge his wife's taste in Downing Street, again it is the lying and stupidity that irritates.
On the pandemic I would give Boris 6 or 7 out of 10. There have been a series of good calls of which both the focus on the rollout of boosters and the resisting of further restrictions are the latest. There has been some truly terrible incompetence of which T&T is perhaps the shinning example although our airport policy runs it close.
Does that make me a fanbois? I will leave that for you and others to judge.
I am happy to go over what would stop me voting Labour if you would like to hear. I would also be quite happy to vote Lib Dem depending on constituency.
I can't vote Tory at the moment because it's an endorsement of populism and the party of Johnsonism which is something I despise almost as much as I now despise Corbynism
Starmer as the asset of being dull and inoffensive, so basically anyone could vote for him.
The common factor - staff - is pretty much impossible to segregate. Due to the non-existence of several hundred thousand nurses and doctors sitting around, twiddling their thumbs for lack of work.
You may despise "Johnsonism" but I don't I actually like what I consider it to be. And I think "populism" is simply democracy.
Tough call. Luckily, Keir Starmer is providing firm, decisive leadership on this. Oh wait.
If Starmer ran out of ideas I'd probably vote Lib Dem.
The Tories can consider my vote when they go back to being the party of Ken Clarke and Rory Stewart
1,009 off 327 balls.
https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/bhandari-cup-2015-16-958395/kc-gandhi-english-school-vs-arya-gurukul-cbse-958397/full-scorecard
897,216 is current capacity.
And of course UK strategy has changed to much wider use of LFT from 11 months ago. Hardly any other country tests at the level the UK does, but there will always be some sort of ceiling.
It was sadly predictable that the EU, and the French in particular, would be obstinate arseholes around the border, in the expectation that the UK would not retailiate in any meaningful way.
Hopefully, over time and as the politicians in charge change, everyone will realise that obstinate border arseholery benefits no-one, and that life is much better when everyone just gets their computers talking to each other.
The silver lining in the cloud appears to be the Dutch, who are planning to actively encourage EU>UK freight traffic through Rotterdam in the new year.
I conclude Corbyn and Johnson are just as bad as each other, I really regret voting for Corbyn twice
Captain Hindsight hasn't had an original idea this entire pandemic, except for a circuit break which failed in Wales and he swiftly distanced himself from.
https://self-referral.test-for-coronavirus.service.gov.uk/antigen/channel-status
Every f##king day the media do this now and they know the deal. They are being deliberately disingenuous.
I happen to think bringing the railways back into public ownership, cutting VAT on energy bills, investing in renewable energy, re-introducing SureStart and bringing the country back with competent leadership is probably a good thing.
But you seem to enjoy chaotic populism so his platform probably isn't for you
If they’d put forward more restrictions, Graham Brady would have had a Christmas hernia.
I think this is why they are doing the staggered released of PCR tests now.
I'm probably quite "woke" on the culture stuff - to be honest my attitude is "who cares" - but on everything else I'm pretty centrist.
A couple of weeks ago it seemed like storming the walls would be necessary to change course.
Now it looks like the course has been changed and the 99 Rebel Loons have won their victory, why keep on fighting?