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New betting market – A CON vote lead before Jan 31st? – politicalbetting.com

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  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,912
    Dura_Ace said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Only ever voted for the Conservative candidate once, back around 1960 in a Co. Council election and my father was the candidate. Before and ever since then it's been Labour or Lib/LD until the last Co. Council, when I voted Green. I like to find out something about the candidate though. Don't necessarily feel I'm voting for the Party leader, although Priti Patel once asked if if I was really voting for Corbyn!

    You're supposed to be a Tory as a wise "old" (I hope you won't think me using this as disparaging) man, that's what they say here
    It's always on 'on average', otherwise you'd never have any old non-Tory voters. I don't think anyone has ever claimed that *everyone* becomes a Tory when they get older.
    Many of my u3a friends (all over 60 by definition) don't vote Tory.
    Is that really surprising? We like to spend time with people similar to ourselves. You can't deny that old people tend to vote Tory.
    You also can't deny that the tories have to keep adopting increasingly progressive political positions as their core vote keeps dying.

    Even its current abhorrent incarnation the tories are well to the left of where Red Ken's GLC were in the 80s on social issues.

    The people inevitably vote tory as they get older is true but the tories continually have to reposition to get them.
    Do they? It was the LDs and Labour MPs who passed gay marriage, most Tory MPs voted against.

    Most current Tory voters want lower immigration too.

    The Tories may accept social change, they rarely drive it, though they may like Thatcher or Cameron drive economic change
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,164

    Nice heatmap of the situation. Perhaps an idea for our own charter...

    If we look at the rate at which case rates are changing, this has shifted from people in their 20s, to people in their 70s and 80s. Which is obviously *bad*, even if the risks to those groups are much lower because Omicron is less severe and vaccines are awesome. https://t.co/y1xjMUhWwh

    I'm curious - do we know yet how bad Omicorn is for the double vaccinated - my partner here in Spain had the 2nd jab over 6 mnths ago - he's early 50s and is unlikely to get 'boostered' for at least 3/4 weeks. Omicron is rapidly taking over here now but if it is generally less virulent there may be less need for me to worry unduly. Anyone know?
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,989
    edited December 2021
    glw said:

    That doesn't make a good headline. Far easier and better to push a fake narrative that UK is failing on testing. As I pointed out down thread this is clearly deliberate as you can access the test capacity etc data with one click and see that they are talking horseshit.

    The fact the system hasn't fallen over yet given the incredible throughput and it being Christmas is quite something. There will always be an upper bound and I imagine if the government ordered that to be say 2 million PCR capacity, all we would hear about is what a waste of money, all these people standing around doing nothing etc etc etc.

    The only countries doing more per capita are places like Austria, Denmark, and Norway, as well as a couple of Gulf states.

    Taking all the different strands of testing, the LFTs, PCRs, sequencing, and surveillance, I genuinely believe that the UK is doing the most and the best testing against the coronavirus in the world. Now whether it it worth the cost and effort is a different matter.
    After a poor start, given by PHE saying "can't be done" to every suggestion, in my mind no doubt it has been one of the more successful parts of the UK response.

    Remember last Christmas when everybody laughed at Boris saying it will become the norm to take a test before you go out to a football match or the theatre...there will be tests you can take before you go and see a vulnerable person. The media piled in saying what total nonsense.

    Now the criticism is occasionally people can't get packs of 20 instantly so the whole family can't take 5 tests a day....
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 8,647
    Charles said:

    malcolmg said:

    geoffw said:

    Pulpstar said:

    MaxPB said:

    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
    Nightingales were warehouses with ventilators not hospitals. As we learnt more about the disease it was clear their practical utility was limited
    They were useful for scaring the shit out of everyone.

    The Chinese did the same with the huge mass graves.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,906

    glw said:

    That doesn't make a good headline. Far easier and better to push a fake narrative that UK is failing on testing. As I pointed out down thread this is clearly deliberate as you can access the test capacity etc data with one click and see that they are talking horseshit.

    The fact the system hasn't fallen over yet given the incredible throughput and it being Christmas is quite something. There will always be an upper bound and I imagine if the government ordered that to be say 2 million PCR capacity, all we would hear about is what a waste of money, all these people standing around doing nothing etc etc etc.

    The only countries doing more per capita are places like Austria, Denmark, and Norway, as well as a couple of Gulf states.

    Taking all the different strands of testing, the LFTs, PCRs, sequencing, and surveillance, I genuinely believe that the UK is doing the most and the best testing against the coronavirus in the world. Now whether it it worth the cost and effort is a different matter.
    After a poor start, given by PHE saying "can't be done" to every suggestion, in my mind no doubt it has been one of the more successful parts of the UK response.

    Remember last Christmas when everybody laughed at Boris saying it will become the norm to take a test before you go out to a football match or the theatre...there will be tests you can take before you go and see a vulnerable person.

    The media piled in saying what total nonsense.
    As you predicted, at 12:27 the BBC notes the LFTs and PCRs are available in every area again.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    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.
    Depends how fast you can run and how long it takes them to get the ball back

    [insert image of tiger with cricket ball between its feet if I could be bothered to google for one]
  • kinabalu said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    An impressive blog by Alastair Meeks, late of this parish (do we know why he left?):

    https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/the-end-of-the-affair-moving-from-pandemic-to-endemic-c1159c652205

    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.
    We'd done it before Omicron. We'd done it by about April or June this year, it's just taken some time for people to realise it.

    Once the vaccines were rolled out, it isn't the virus mutating that is the big change, it's having vaccines that is.

    We aren't in the trenches anymore. The vaccine rollout was Hiroshima and the booster is Nagasaki.

    You can be Hiroo Onoda if it pleases you.
    Nope. It's over once it's clear that our level of immunity, as topped up by regular vaccination, is such that NPIs can be dispensed with without material risk to the healthcare system. We're close to that now but we're not there yet.
    That's arse about tit and you're letting the Conservative government get away with it.

    You don't manage healthcare by capping demand to meet supply. Post vaccinations you should be demanding as much supply as is required to meet demand.

    If the healthcare system gets overloaded then that's a failure to implement proper triage and surge protocols. It's a failure to invest.

    Biden is responding to Omicron not by implementing restrictions but by activating FEMA to boost hospital and ambulance capacity to meet the extra demand.

    Capping demand should have been a short term solution to a novel virus not a long term solution two years into the pandemic after a vaccine rollout.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,248
    edited December 2021

    Nice heatmap of the situation. Perhaps an idea for our own charter...

    If we look at the rate at which case rates are changing, this has shifted from people in their 20s, to people in their 70s and 80s. Which is obviously *bad*, even if the risks to those groups are much lower because Omicron is less severe and vaccines are awesome. https://t.co/y1xjMUhWwh

    Yup

    image

    The massive jump in R for 10-24 was interesting... Now being replaced by older groups
    Younger groups show in waves first because they are more social?
    This tells the story, in conjunction with the graph above.

    image

    The London wave was/is massively in the younger groups. Hence while hospitalisation went up (and are going up) it didn't turn into a 10/10 Apocalypse.

    EDIT - Ignore the Scottish line, that's bad data caused by lack of reporting.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,368
    MattW said:

    eek said:

    Taz said:

    geoffw said:

    What a surprise - the profit motive eh! ;)

    Telegraph:

    Huge cargo ships carrying liquid gas that were destined for China have changed course and are now heading towards the UK as Europe remains trapped in a major supply crunch.

    While the Continent’s energy crisis and high prices have attracted ships away from other parts of the world, the new arrivals are now bringing prices down. Benchmark Dutch front-month gas fell for a fifth day yesterday, dropping as much as 9.2pc in Amsterdam.

    The UK gas price rocketed to a record 470p per therm last week, up from just 50p in April, but has since fallen to under 270p.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/12/28/cargo-ships-divert-gas-china-britain/

    The Tories ran down our storage capacity. This was absurd. Criminally inept but it pleased the green lobby.
    Nope, it pleased Centrica's shareholders in 2019 - probably rather less so this year.
    The Government made a decision that it was not needed.
    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/770450/gas-security-supply-assessment.pdf
    All based on the assumption that Russia continues to supply Gas on demand

    And what is the current issue - Russia is restricting Gas supplies prior to potentially invading the Ukraine.

    Also my point wasn't as much about what the Government allowed - imagine being in a position where you are sat on Gas bought at 30p a therm when everyone else in the market is spending £4+ to maintain supply.
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,164
    Dura_Ace said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Only ever voted for the Conservative candidate once, back around 1960 in a Co. Council election and my father was the candidate. Before and ever since then it's been Labour or Lib/LD until the last Co. Council, when I voted Green. I like to find out something about the candidate though. Don't necessarily feel I'm voting for the Party leader, although Priti Patel once asked if if I was really voting for Corbyn!

    You're supposed to be a Tory as a wise "old" (I hope you won't think me using this as disparaging) man, that's what they say here
    It's always on 'on average', otherwise you'd never have any old non-Tory voters. I don't think anyone has ever claimed that *everyone* becomes a Tory when they get older.
    Many of my u3a friends (all over 60 by definition) don't vote Tory.
    Is that really surprising? We like to spend time with people similar to ourselves. You can't deny that old people tend to vote Tory.
    You also can't deny that the tories have to keep adopting increasingly progressive political positions as their core vote keeps dying.

    Even its current abhorrent incarnation the tories are well to the left of where Red Ken's GLC were in the 80s on social issues.

    The people inevitably vote tory as they get older is true but the tories continually have to reposition to get them.
    Surely that is true of all parties. Views on issues, rather like the stock exchange, move in both directions.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,812

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Taz said:

    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
    Johnson has reneged on levelling up. Red Wall voters, as @RochdalePioneers says, are not fools.
    I think you'll know I have said that here many times, they are not stupid whatsoever.

    But my point is that levelling up has failed because it is an empty slogan with no actual ideas behind it.
    I think that was true when the phrase was invented but in placing Gove there, by far the most innovative minister in the government for good or ill, there is a good chance that we will see a plethora of new ideas this year. Whether we can afford them and whether they are good ideas of course remains to be seen.
    My point is that Starmer is accused of having no ideas yet the person who keeps saying that has just voted for somebody else with the same problem. The reality is that they like "Boris" whatever that means. It's about personality not really about policies, which is fine.

    I happen to think Gove is constantly underrated.
    I must confess I was a little uncertain about what was meant by Johnsonism. I agree that he does not have clearly defined principles or policies. The result is something of a muddle but seems in practice to result in a much more interventionist state than Tories are used to and higher levels of public spending because he finds saying no hard. Whether you consider that a good or a bad thing really depends on your own views about the benefits of state intervention.

    Being LOTO is hard. Even Cameron struggled at times and he was much better at it than anyone since Blair. You need to have ideas, to be informed, to be good at giving clear soundbites (Blair was particularly good at this) and to be heard. SKS did very poorly at this in his first year where he was clearly more focused on the internal disaster area that Corbyn left behind. More recently he has improved but he has a long way to go.
    David I know we frequently disagree but I do value your contributions greatly, as they always give me something to think about.

    I think the point about interventionism is a fair one but I am not sure this comes down to Johnson's principles - he was a supporter of austerity and didn't ever try to spend more money as far as I can tell, when he was Mayor of London - it comes down to more about what he thinks he needs to do to win.

    In many ways what he did was to steal the Labour 2017 manifesto in part and run on that.

    I think Johnson is a superb election winner and he's good at that - but I think he is terrible at actually doing anything afterwards. He saw that more spending was popular so he ran with it, but what he actually wants to spend the money on, he doesn't know.

    Being LOTO is hard - but I really think Starmer is better at it than he is given credit for. What he spent the first year doing was quietly removing the muppets from the party and sorting out anti-Semitism. The real prats removed themselves and removing Corbyn got rid of the others.

    He's now fixed the Shadow Cabinet and removed the poor performers.

    I think he's doing alright, not as good as Cameron was but I think he's doing the best of any LOTO since Cameron
    Personally, I had quite a lot of time for Ed Miliband. He had a lot of ideas and was interesting even if his record in government was poor to middling. I have no doubt at all that Labour chose the right brother. I think he was unfairly treated. I wouldn't put SKS in his class yet. If Labour are going to be a source of new ideas Ed will play an important role.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,494

    Nice heatmap of the situation. Perhaps an idea for our own charter...

    If we look at the rate at which case rates are changing, this has shifted from people in their 20s, to people in their 70s and 80s. Which is obviously *bad*, even if the risks to those groups are much lower because Omicron is less severe and vaccines are awesome. https://t.co/y1xjMUhWwh

    Yup

    image

    The massive jump in R for 10-24 was interesting... Now being replaced by older groups
    Younger groups show in waves first because they are more social?
    I’m not taking the piss, this is the key stat now, wave moving from young and social to old and… less social except for Christmas. But I reckon you need a graph with the following vectors - number of brand new sexual partners due to party season versus number of times picked up radio times this week and ending up wondering where the golden age of television went to.

    I’m catching up with Dirty Duchess now. Loving the funky theme tune, the skirts and red lips. Claire Foy is so ****able! If I met her at a party I’d let her know I was looking in her direction.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,145
    Sandpit said:

    MattW said:

    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.

    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
    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.
    One that I want to see is:

    1 - Stronger ferry links to Zeebrugge, to defang Macron's threats wrt Channel Tunnel. So attacks on that will harm mainly the French company that owns it.
    2 - Join Belgium in the European Court action to stop France building a windfarm across the Zeebrugge -> Dover link.
    3 - Pay for upgraded border force and migrant / refugee services via a levy on international travel to source countries, paid by the operators on the relevant border.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,989
    edited December 2021
    felix said:

    Nice heatmap of the situation. Perhaps an idea for our own charter...

    If we look at the rate at which case rates are changing, this has shifted from people in their 20s, to people in their 70s and 80s. Which is obviously *bad*, even if the risks to those groups are much lower because Omicron is less severe and vaccines are awesome. https://t.co/y1xjMUhWwh

    I'm curious - do we know yet how bad Omicorn is for the double vaccinated - my partner here in Spain had the 2nd jab over 6 mnths ago - he's early 50s and is unlikely to get 'boostered' for at least 3/4 weeks. Omicron is rapidly taking over here now but if it is generally less virulent there may be less need for me to worry unduly. Anyone know?
    Well just double jabbed 6 months ago, it seems like virtually no protection against catching Omicron.

    It is less clear cut about protection against serious illness, it looks like that has dropped some amount, but the error bars are massive on how much. There is also the complications of if you had prior COVID, which variant etc. Double jabbed and previous infection to Beta or Delta looks to still give you good level of protection.

    At the moment, lots of moving parts in terms of all the different vaccine combinations, the gaps between when people have been jabbed, plus at least in the UK, we are now only just starting to see the hospitalisations and deaths ramp up.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,926
    glw said:

    glw said:

    That doesn't make a good headline. Far easier and better to push a fake narrative that UK is failing on testing. As I pointed out down thread this is clearly deliberate as you can access the test capacity etc data with one click and see that they are talking horseshit.

    The fact the system hasn't fallen over yet given the incredible throughput and it being Christmas is quite something. There will always be an upper bound and I imagine if the government ordered that to be say 2 million PCR capacity, all we would hear about is what a waste of money, all these people standing around doing nothing etc etc etc.

    The only countries doing more per capita are places like Austria, Denmark, and Norway, as well as a couple of Gulf states.

    Taking all the different strands of testing, the LFTs, PCRs, sequencing, and surveillance, I genuinely believe that the UK is doing the most and the best testing against the coronavirus in the world. Now whether it it worth the cost and effort is a different matter.
    After a poor start, given by PHE saying "can't be done" to every suggestion, in my mind no doubt it has been one of the more successful parts of the UK response.

    Remember last Christmas when everybody laughed at Boris saying it will become the norm to take a test before you go out to a football match or the theatre...there will be tests you can take before you go and see a vulnerable person.

    The media piled in saying what total nonsense.
    As you predicted, at 12:27 the BBC notes the LFTs and PCRs are available in every area again.
    The juxtaposition of the two headlines is quite something:

    Posted at 9:17 9:17
    Covid test supply issues 'a total shambles' - Labour

    Posted at 9:27 9:27
    PCR and lateral flow tests available again

    Perhaps "Covid test supply reporting 'a total shambles'" would be more appropriate.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,989
    edited December 2021
    glw said:

    glw said:

    That doesn't make a good headline. Far easier and better to push a fake narrative that UK is failing on testing. As I pointed out down thread this is clearly deliberate as you can access the test capacity etc data with one click and see that they are talking horseshit.

    The fact the system hasn't fallen over yet given the incredible throughput and it being Christmas is quite something. There will always be an upper bound and I imagine if the government ordered that to be say 2 million PCR capacity, all we would hear about is what a waste of money, all these people standing around doing nothing etc etc etc.

    The only countries doing more per capita are places like Austria, Denmark, and Norway, as well as a couple of Gulf states.

    Taking all the different strands of testing, the LFTs, PCRs, sequencing, and surveillance, I genuinely believe that the UK is doing the most and the best testing against the coronavirus in the world. Now whether it it worth the cost and effort is a different matter.
    After a poor start, given by PHE saying "can't be done" to every suggestion, in my mind no doubt it has been one of the more successful parts of the UK response.

    Remember last Christmas when everybody laughed at Boris saying it will become the norm to take a test before you go out to a football match or the theatre...there will be tests you can take before you go and see a vulnerable person.

    The media piled in saying what total nonsense.
    As you predicted, at 12:27 the BBC notes the LFTs and PCRs are available in every area again.
    Its like they have put in place a demand management system or something....
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    Nice heatmap of the situation. Perhaps an idea for our own charter...

    If we look at the rate at which case rates are changing, this has shifted from people in their 20s, to people in their 70s and 80s. Which is obviously *bad*, even if the risks to those groups are much lower because Omicron is less severe and vaccines are awesome. https://t.co/y1xjMUhWwh

    The UK gov covid cases page has a nice heatmap for England and below data.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,188
    edited December 2021
    This graph isn't quite right as it assumes
    i) No hospital transmission
    ii) Hospitalisations and Covid +ve cases are similarly stratified by age.

    They're not, but they're also confounding.

    Nevertheless it's telling - I've used ONS prevalence estimations and England hospitalisations.



    Graph goes to 16th December.
  • Alistair said:

    Nice heatmap of the situation. Perhaps an idea for our own charter...

    If we look at the rate at which case rates are changing, this has shifted from people in their 20s, to people in their 70s and 80s. Which is obviously *bad*, even if the risks to those groups are much lower because Omicron is less severe and vaccines are awesome. https://t.co/y1xjMUhWwh

    The UK gov covid cases page has a nice heatmap for England and below data.
    Yes I know, why isn't it available for the UK?
  • DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Taz said:

    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
    Johnson has reneged on levelling up. Red Wall voters, as @RochdalePioneers says, are not fools.
    I think you'll know I have said that here many times, they are not stupid whatsoever.

    But my point is that levelling up has failed because it is an empty slogan with no actual ideas behind it.
    I think that was true when the phrase was invented but in placing Gove there, by far the most innovative minister in the government for good or ill, there is a good chance that we will see a plethora of new ideas this year. Whether we can afford them and whether they are good ideas of course remains to be seen.
    My point is that Starmer is accused of having no ideas yet the person who keeps saying that has just voted for somebody else with the same problem. The reality is that they like "Boris" whatever that means. It's about personality not really about policies, which is fine.

    I happen to think Gove is constantly underrated.
    I must confess I was a little uncertain about what was meant by Johnsonism. I agree that he does not have clearly defined principles or policies. The result is something of a muddle but seems in practice to result in a much more interventionist state than Tories are used to and higher levels of public spending because he finds saying no hard. Whether you consider that a good or a bad thing really depends on your own views about the benefits of state intervention.

    Being LOTO is hard. Even Cameron struggled at times and he was much better at it than anyone since Blair. You need to have ideas, to be informed, to be good at giving clear soundbites (Blair was particularly good at this) and to be heard. SKS did very poorly at this in his first year where he was clearly more focused on the internal disaster area that Corbyn left behind. More recently he has improved but he has a long way to go.
    David I know we frequently disagree but I do value your contributions greatly, as they always give me something to think about.

    I think the point about interventionism is a fair one but I am not sure this comes down to Johnson's principles - he was a supporter of austerity and didn't ever try to spend more money as far as I can tell, when he was Mayor of London - it comes down to more about what he thinks he needs to do to win.

    In many ways what he did was to steal the Labour 2017 manifesto in part and run on that.

    I think Johnson is a superb election winner and he's good at that - but I think he is terrible at actually doing anything afterwards. He saw that more spending was popular so he ran with it, but what he actually wants to spend the money on, he doesn't know.

    Being LOTO is hard - but I really think Starmer is better at it than he is given credit for. What he spent the first year doing was quietly removing the muppets from the party and sorting out anti-Semitism. The real prats removed themselves and removing Corbyn got rid of the others.

    He's now fixed the Shadow Cabinet and removed the poor performers.

    I think he's doing alright, not as good as Cameron was but I think he's doing the best of any LOTO since Cameron
    Personally, I had quite a lot of time for Ed Miliband. He had a lot of ideas and was interesting even if his record in government was poor to middling. I have no doubt at all that Labour chose the right brother. I think he was unfairly treated. I wouldn't put SKS in his class yet. If Labour are going to be a source of new ideas Ed will play an important role.
    He was advised extremely poorly and presented himself the wrong way. He's quite endearing now.

    Anyway, yes he has some great ideas and he should be at the forefront of any Labour Government, I enjoy his podcast
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,145

    Sandpit said:

    MattW said:

    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.

    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
    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.
    It's about both.

    The arrangements need redesigning because they are not fit for purpose in such a high-volume situation. And that requires a perception of that on both sides, which will not happen whilst the UK Gov keep kludging it.
  • https://twitter.com/lisanandy/status/1476175878170320901

    The Cabinet might not agree on what levelling up is but filling in potholes for a Conservative Peer is definitely not it. How many streets in Britain have had 330k to repair their roads? Ministers must come clean on how these shocking decisions are made.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,134

    kinabalu said:

    malcolmg said:

    Taz said:

    Jonathan said:

    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 don't know where you get all this "truth is muzzled in the corner" stuff.

    It isn't. You can say what the reason is. You can say it here. You can say it anywhere.
    I didn't say it was banned. I said it was problematic. Which is why, when the BBC puts up an article on vaccines refusal (for example), the actual reasons are rather elliptically alluded to.
    I've read countless pieces on a wide variety of platforms about the troubling lack of vaccine uptake amongst certain ethnic groups and what the reasons for this might be.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,248

    Nice heatmap of the situation. Perhaps an idea for our own charter...

    If we look at the rate at which case rates are changing, this has shifted from people in their 20s, to people in their 70s and 80s. Which is obviously *bad*, even if the risks to those groups are much lower because Omicron is less severe and vaccines are awesome. https://t.co/y1xjMUhWwh

    Yup

    image

    The massive jump in R for 10-24 was interesting... Now being replaced by older groups
    Younger groups show in waves first because they are more social?
    I’m not taking the piss, this is the key stat now, wave moving from young and social to old and… less social except for Christmas. But I reckon you need a graph with the following vectors - number of brand new sexual partners due to party season versus number of times picked up radio times this week and ending up wondering where the golden age of television went to.

    I’m catching up with Dirty Duchess now. Loving the funky theme tune, the skirts and red lips. Claire Foy is so ****able! If I met her at a party I’d let her know I was looking in her direction.
    "I’m not taking the piss" - why not? This is PB!

    I'll ask the Dashboard guys for the data.

    Hmmm. Surely we need a dimension for amount of champagne cocktails drunk? Then a dimension about the alcohol capacity across the population, quality of bar tenders...

    {Gets PhD application form out...}
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,248

    Alistair said:

    Nice heatmap of the situation. Perhaps an idea for our own charter...

    If we look at the rate at which case rates are changing, this has shifted from people in their 20s, to people in their 70s and 80s. Which is obviously *bad*, even if the risks to those groups are much lower because Omicron is less severe and vaccines are awesome. https://t.co/y1xjMUhWwh

    The UK gov covid cases page has a nice heatmap for England and below data.
    Yes I know, why isn't it available for the UK?
    Ask the devolved administrations... case rates in the 5 year segments not being recorded etc.

    When I asked about the 18-64 segmentation in the admissions data, you could *hear* the sigh. In an email....
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,134

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    An impressive blog by Alastair Meeks, late of this parish (do we know why he left?):

    https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/the-end-of-the-affair-moving-from-pandemic-to-endemic-c1159c652205

    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.
    We'd done it before Omicron. We'd done it by about April or June this year, it's just taken some time for people to realise it.

    Once the vaccines were rolled out, it isn't the virus mutating that is the big change, it's having vaccines that is.

    We aren't in the trenches anymore. The vaccine rollout was Hiroshima and the booster is Nagasaki.

    You can be Hiroo Onoda if it pleases you.
    The Nativity Play fallacy at work again.A story is not true just because it is heartwarming. There is no reason at all to discount the possibility of a vaccine resistant and much more lethal strain emeging.
    You're right there's no reason to discount it.

    There's also no reason to discount a coup in Russia leading to nuclear conflict.

    Or a Carrington Event/Coronal Mass Ejection stopping our modern life as we know it.

    Or an asteroid striking the earth.

    Or a Rise of the Machines.

    But just because something is possible in the future doesn't mean that it's happening right now. It remains science fiction.
    You know how some people can argue a weak case so persuasively that you end up half-agreeing with them even though you know they're wrong?

    Ok. Well your talent is for the dead opposite of that. And hats off because what you do is just as difficult.
  • Great British Railways is a perfect example of Johnson's empty rhetoric.

    The problems of the current system are no actual competition, high fares, lack of strategic planning and long term thinking, unreliable trains that don't run on time.

    So the Johnson solution is erh...rename Network Rail
  • They can't support nationalisation because they're ideologically opposed so they'll remove any advantages of private ownership and gain none of the benefits of public. But something has changed and they've got a new logo.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,355
    Pulpstar said:

    This graph isn't quite right as it assumes
    i) No hospital transmission
    ii) Hospitalisations and Covid +ve cases are similarly stratified by age.

    They're not, but they're also confounding.

    Nevertheless it's telling - I've used ONS prevalence estimations and England hospitalisations.



    Graph goes to 16th December.

    Excellent. Any chance of plotting the difference between the two lines - i.e. the implied rate of hospitalisations due to Covid-caused illness?
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,859

    RobD said:

    Only ever voted for the Conservative candidate once, back around 1960 in a Co. Council election and my father was the candidate. Before and ever since then it's been Labour or Lib/LD until the last Co. Council, when I voted Green. I like to find out something about the candidate though. Don't necessarily feel I'm voting for the Party leader, although Priti Patel once asked if if I was really voting for Corbyn!

    You're supposed to be a Tory as a wise "old" (I hope you won't think me using this as disparaging) man, that's what they say here
    It's always on 'on average', otherwise you'd never have any old non-Tory voters. I don't think anyone has ever claimed that *everyone* becomes a Tory when they get older.
    Many of my u3a friends (all over 60 by definition) don't vote Tory.
    That's what the university education has done for them...
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,582

    Alistair said:

    Nice heatmap of the situation. Perhaps an idea for our own charter...

    If we look at the rate at which case rates are changing, this has shifted from people in their 20s, to people in their 70s and 80s. Which is obviously *bad*, even if the risks to those groups are much lower because Omicron is less severe and vaccines are awesome. https://t.co/y1xjMUhWwh

    The UK gov covid cases page has a nice heatmap for England and below data.
    Yes I know, why isn't it available for the UK?
    Ask the devolved administrations... case rates in the 5 year segments not being recorded etc.

    When I asked about the 18-64 segmentation in the admissions data, you could *hear* the sigh. In an email....
    The 18-64 segmentation makes no sense for today’s data requirement. It may have made sense in the pre-covid past, when all they wanted was split into children, adults and pensioners. Even cutting the group in half at 40 or 45 would help.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,494

    Nice heatmap of the situation. Perhaps an idea for our own charter...

    If we look at the rate at which case rates are changing, this has shifted from people in their 20s, to people in their 70s and 80s. Which is obviously *bad*, even if the risks to those groups are much lower because Omicron is less severe and vaccines are awesome. https://t.co/y1xjMUhWwh

    Yup

    image

    The massive jump in R for 10-24 was interesting... Now being replaced by older groups
    Younger groups show in waves first because they are more social?
    I’m not taking the piss, this is the key stat now, wave moving from young and social to old and… less social except for Christmas. But I reckon you need a graph with the following vectors - number of brand new sexual partners due to party season versus number of times picked up radio times this week and ending up wondering where the golden age of television went to.

    I’m catching up with Dirty Duchess now. Loving the funky theme tune, the skirts and red lips. Claire Foy is so ****able! If I met her at a party I’d let her know I was looking in her direction.
    "I’m not taking the piss" - why not? This is PB!

    I'll ask the Dashboard guys for the data.

    Hmmm. Surely we need a dimension for amount of champagne cocktails drunk? Then a dimension about the alcohol capacity across the population, quality of bar tenders...

    {Gets PhD application form out...}
    LOL. We don’t need to know how many geriatrics (those over 50) have been shagging around during Omicron, nor if anyone under 50 had heard of the Radio Times. 🙂 but firstly waves get into socially active first, and they tend not to need hospitalisation for it, so maybe Daily Express too quick to claim today Boris has beaten it, covid over in UK as we still need to infect lots of geriatrics (those over 50) and see how they cope. In my opinion.

    *girl crush post*

    Beauty personified.

    image
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,989
    edited December 2021
    Sandpit said:

    Alistair said:

    Nice heatmap of the situation. Perhaps an idea for our own charter...

    If we look at the rate at which case rates are changing, this has shifted from people in their 20s, to people in their 70s and 80s. Which is obviously *bad*, even if the risks to those groups are much lower because Omicron is less severe and vaccines are awesome. https://t.co/y1xjMUhWwh

    The UK gov covid cases page has a nice heatmap for England and below data.
    Yes I know, why isn't it available for the UK?
    Ask the devolved administrations... case rates in the 5 year segments not being recorded etc.

    When I asked about the 18-64 segmentation in the admissions data, you could *hear* the sigh. In an email....
    The 18-64 segmentation makes no sense for today’s data requirement. It may have made sense in the pre-covid past, when all they wanted was split into children, adults and pensioners. Even cutting the group in half at 40 or 45 would help.
    It makes no sense they don't report on cases by vaccination status or (not) all cases including reinfections.....at very least as a % taken as a sample from the data. Tim Spector regularly estimates that unvaccinated account for 2/3 of the total number of cases.
  • https://twitter.com/lisanandy/status/1476175878170320901

    The Cabinet might not agree on what levelling up is but filling in potholes for a Conservative Peer is definitely not it. How many streets in Britain have had 330k to repair their roads? Ministers must come clean on how these shocking decisions are made.

    Repairing and improving roads absolutely should be a priority. What's your problem? If it was 330k to fix a problem on a rail track would you be moaning?

    How about complaining about potholes that AREN'T repaired instead of bitching about those that are?
  • glwglw Posts: 9,906
    RobD said:

    The juxtaposition of the two headlines is quite something:

    Posted at 9:17 9:17
    Covid test supply issues 'a total shambles' - Labour

    Posted at 9:27 9:27
    PCR and lateral flow tests available again

    Perhaps "Covid test supply reporting 'a total shambles'" would be more appropriate.

    Wes Streeting made to look like quite a berk, again.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,248
    Sandpit said:

    Alistair said:

    Nice heatmap of the situation. Perhaps an idea for our own charter...

    If we look at the rate at which case rates are changing, this has shifted from people in their 20s, to people in their 70s and 80s. Which is obviously *bad*, even if the risks to those groups are much lower because Omicron is less severe and vaccines are awesome. https://t.co/y1xjMUhWwh

    The UK gov covid cases page has a nice heatmap for England and below data.
    Yes I know, why isn't it available for the UK?
    Ask the devolved administrations... case rates in the 5 year segments not being recorded etc.

    When I asked about the 18-64 segmentation in the admissions data, you could *hear* the sigh. In an email....
    The 18-64 segmentation makes no sense for today’s data requirement. It may have made sense in the pre-covid past, when all they wanted was split into children, adults and pensioners. Even cutting the group in half at 40 or 45 would help.
    "I felt a great disturbance in the Cloud, as if millions of Data Scientists simultaneously sobbed in pain..."
  • Italian anti-vaxx radio personality who boasted of being a 'plague spreader' who walked through supermarkets without a mask while feverish dies from Covid aged 61

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10352163/Italian-anti-vaxx-radio-personality-boasted-plague-spreader-dies-Covid.html
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,989
    edited December 2021
    glw said:

    RobD said:

    The juxtaposition of the two headlines is quite something:

    Posted at 9:17 9:17
    Covid test supply issues 'a total shambles' - Labour

    Posted at 9:27 9:27
    PCR and lateral flow tests available again

    Perhaps "Covid test supply reporting 'a total shambles'" would be more appropriate.

    Wes Streeting made to look like quite a berk, again.
    Nah, nobody holds people account for shooting their mouth off too early on things like this. If they were to do so, the whole media would have to start criticising themselves. They just move on, until same time tomorrow...and rinse and repeat.

    I imagine at least one day over the next week, the system will overload, and the reaction will be see, I told you so....despite the fact it managed to get going doing millions and millions of tests.

    We have all the spreading due to Christmas and New Year, plus all back to work / school, which will cause loads of people to say "better just check, you know in case, it would be terrible if I couldn't go back to work yet"....
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,552
    "Chinese lockdown rule-breakers are publicly shamed and paraded through the streets carrying placards with their names on in bid to ensure Covid rules are obeyed"

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10352249/Chinese-lockdown-rule-breakers-publicly-shamed-ensure-Covid-rules-obeyed.html
  • Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    An impressive blog by Alastair Meeks, late of this parish (do we know why he left?):

    https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/the-end-of-the-affair-moving-from-pandemic-to-endemic-c1159c652205

    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.
    We'd done it before Omicron. We'd done it by about April or June this year, it's just taken some time for people to realise it.

    Once the vaccines were rolled out, it isn't the virus mutating that is the big change, it's having vaccines that is.

    We aren't in the trenches anymore. The vaccine rollout was Hiroshima and the booster is Nagasaki.

    You can be Hiroo Onoda if it pleases you.
    The Nativity Play fallacy at work again.A story is not true just because it is heartwarming. There is no reason at all to discount the possibility of a vaccine resistant and much more lethal strain emeging.
    You're right there's no reason to discount it.

    There's also no reason to discount a coup in Russia leading to nuclear conflict.

    Or a Carrington Event/Coronal Mass Ejection stopping our modern life as we know it.

    Or an asteroid striking the earth.

    Or a Rise of the Machines.

    But just because something is possible in the future doesn't mean that it's happening right now. It remains science fiction.
    You know how some people can argue a weak case so persuasively that you end up half-agreeing with them even though you know they're wrong?

    Ok. Well your talent is for the dead opposite of that. And hats off because what you do is just as difficult.
    Did you see the "vaccines are Hiroshima" gem?
    Lest we forget.
    Yes they are. What's your issue with that?

    Are you an antivaxxer?
  • glw said:

    That doesn't make a good headline. Far easier and better to push a fake narrative that UK is failing on testing. As I pointed out down thread this is clearly deliberate as you can access the test capacity etc data with one click and see that they are talking horseshit.

    The fact the system hasn't fallen over yet given the incredible throughput and it being Christmas is quite something. There will always be an upper bound and I imagine if the government ordered that to be say 2 million PCR capacity, all we would hear about is what a waste of money, all these people standing around doing nothing etc etc etc.

    The only countries doing more per capita are places like Austria, Denmark, and Norway, as well as a couple of Gulf states.

    Taking all the different strands of testing, the LFTs, PCRs, sequencing, and surveillance, I genuinely believe that the UK is doing the most and the best testing against the coronavirus in the world. Now whether it it worth the cost and effort is a different matter.
    After a poor start, given by PHE saying "can't be done" to every suggestion, in my mind no doubt it has been one of the more successful parts of the UK response.

    Remember last Christmas when everybody laughed at Boris saying it will become the norm to take a test before you go out to a football match or the theatre...there will be tests you can take before you go and see a vulnerable person. The media piled in saying what total nonsense.

    Now the criticism is occasionally people can't get packs of 20 instantly so the whole family can't take 5 tests a day....
    I'm curious as to the LFT usage.

    How many people are:

    1) Taking a test a day
    2) Taking a test only if ill / been in close proximity to someone infected
    3) Not taking tests at all
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,400
    felix said:

    Nice heatmap of the situation. Perhaps an idea for our own charter...

    If we look at the rate at which case rates are changing, this has shifted from people in their 20s, to people in their 70s and 80s. Which is obviously *bad*, even if the risks to those groups are much lower because Omicron is less severe and vaccines are awesome. https://t.co/y1xjMUhWwh

    I'm curious - do we know yet how bad Omicorn is for the double vaccinated - my partner here in Spain had the 2nd jab over 6 mnths ago - he's early 50s and is unlikely to get 'boostered' for at least 3/4 weeks. Omicron is rapidly taking over here now but if it is generally less virulent there may be less need for me to worry unduly. Anyone know?
    Anecdote from me as similar. 55 years old, tested positive 6 months after second jab.
    Worse than a bad cold for me. Nowhere near hospital.
    Fatigue beyond anything else was the worst symptom. Also brain fog.
    3 weeks and I'm pretty much over it. But I haven't done a great deal.
    Hope that is of some use to put your mind at rest.
  • Great British Railways is a perfect example of Johnson's empty rhetoric.

    The problems of the current system are no actual competition, high fares, lack of strategic planning and long term thinking, unreliable trains that don't run on time.

    So the Johnson solution is erh...rename Network Rail

    You've got a rather rose-tinted view of BR if you felt competition, low fares, strategic planning and long-term thinking - yet alone running on time - was common in the 1970s and 1980s.

    But unlike then, passengers seem to quite like travelling by train (pre Covid), and the railways are massively safer as well.
    I happen to think BR would have run immensely better had it been given the proper funding. The rail network may have improved but that's because it has a tonne more spent on it by the taxpayer.

    So we spend the money, foreign governments take a cut and the leasing companies make a killing on the trains.

    I do not understand what private companies bring to the trains and the new structure makes this even less clear. We pay companies to operate the trains but why can't we just operate the trains ourselves? It seems utterly pointless
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,134
    edited December 2021

    kinabalu said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    An impressive blog by Alastair Meeks, late of this parish (do we know why he left?):

    https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/the-end-of-the-affair-moving-from-pandemic-to-endemic-c1159c652205

    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.
    We'd done it before Omicron. We'd done it by about April or June this year, it's just taken some time for people to realise it.

    Once the vaccines were rolled out, it isn't the virus mutating that is the big change, it's having vaccines that is.

    We aren't in the trenches anymore. The vaccine rollout was Hiroshima and the booster is Nagasaki.

    You can be Hiroo Onoda if it pleases you.
    Nope. It's over once it's clear that our level of immunity, as topped up by regular vaccination, is such that NPIs can be dispensed with without material risk to the healthcare system. We're close to that now but we're not there yet.
    That's arse about tit and you're letting the Conservative government get away with it.

    You don't manage healthcare by capping demand to meet supply. Post vaccinations you should be demanding as much supply as is required to meet demand.

    If the healthcare system gets overloaded then that's a failure to implement proper triage and surge protocols. It's a failure to invest.

    Biden is responding to Omicron not by implementing restrictions but by activating FEMA to boost hospital and ambulance capacity to meet the extra demand.

    Capping demand should have been a short term solution to a novel virus not a long term solution two years into the pandemic after a vaccine rollout.
    NPIs are a short term solution. Once we've transitioned to post pandemic they'll be dropped. I predict from March at the latest.

    On the general point, you have to manage the supply AND demand side for healthcare. If you only do the first you'll soon turn that fatuous soundbite - "NHS with a country attached" - into a reality.
  • The Tories are patriotic until it comes to running the railways, then just get the German Government to do it.

    Labour are missing a trick here, they could sell nationalisation as a patriotic policy
  • TazTaz Posts: 14,376
    edited December 2021
    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Taz said:

    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
    Johnson has reneged on levelling up. Red Wall voters, as @RochdalePioneers says, are not fools.
    I think you'll know I have said that here many times, they are not stupid whatsoever.

    But my point is that levelling up has failed because it is an empty slogan with no actual ideas behind it.
    Oh, I wasn’t implying otherwise. Just giving one reason why the red wall is abandoning the Tories. You can see from the likes of HYUFD a thinly disguised disregard for these seats and these people but they are the new Tories. Boris would be wise to re engage. Strategically it makes sense too as it cuts off a path back for labour. I suspect where the red wall is concerned there are far more Tories like HYUFD than there are so want to re engage.
    The Tories will never outspend Labour, if redwall voters only voted for Boris to get Brexit done no amount of spending on redwall seats will win them back now Brexit is done. Only if Starmer said he would restore free movement and go back to the single market could the Tories hope to win back those former lifelong Labour voters.

    If the Tories are re elected it will be only narrowly like 1992, 2015 or 2017 in my view and based on holding the seats Cameron won in 2015 and May won in 2017 and Boris held in 2019. Certainly on that basis there is no point putting up tax on those Tory seats in the South and Midlands Cameron and May won to spend on redwall seats Brown and Ed Milliband won

    But in 2015 and 2017 the Tories were already making inroads and gaining red wall seats. You cannot win on traditional Tory seats as the demographics are changing in places like Wycombe, Hastings, Worthing and the like. These will go sooner or later as Canterbury has. If you look at many places in the old red wall these have only been labour because people traditionally vote labour. Lots of owner occupation, nice new estates, decent levels of disposable income.

    Your core vote strategy is the same as Ed M in 2015. It failed him, it will fail you if you got for it.
  • Interesting comment by Nick Triggle on the BBC website:

    Hospital data requires much closer analysis than it once did.

    On paper there is the highest number in hospital in England since early March.

    But that has been artificially inflated by two things this week.

    Firstly, the number of people being discharged from hospital will have dropped significantly over the festive period. Last year the rate of discharged halved, meaning there are likely to be hundreds of patients in hospital who have recovered from Covid.

    Secondly a growing proportion of hospitalisations are for what is known as an incidental admission. They are people being treated for something else, but just happen to have Covid.

    Last week this stood at about three in 10, but the expectation is this will have increased by now. The latest figures will be released on Thursday.

    Therefore, it is possible of the 9,500 in hospital maybe around 6,000 are acutely unwell with Covid.

    These numbers are undoubtedly going to go up in the coming weeks as Omicron spreads.

    But the raw data will only tell us so much.


    He's definitely been the BBC's most worthwhile correspondent about covid.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,248

    Great British Railways is a perfect example of Johnson's empty rhetoric.

    The problems of the current system are no actual competition, high fares, lack of strategic planning and long term thinking, unreliable trains that don't run on time.

    So the Johnson solution is erh...rename Network Rail

    You've got a rather rose-tinted view of BR if you felt competition, low fares, strategic planning and long-term thinking - yet alone running on time - was common in the 1970s and 1980s.

    But unlike then, passengers seem to quite like travelling by train (pre Covid), and the railways are massively safer as well.
    BR used fare rises to reduce demand, so that expensive investment (blocked by the Treasury) wouldn't be required.

    The major problem with nationalised industries was that they ended up being run for the benefit of the producers, not the consumers. Oh, and the politicians - so nothing would be done on a cycle of more than one election.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,134
    felix said:

    Nice heatmap of the situation. Perhaps an idea for our own charter...

    If we look at the rate at which case rates are changing, this has shifted from people in their 20s, to people in their 70s and 80s. Which is obviously *bad*, even if the risks to those groups are much lower because Omicron is less severe and vaccines are awesome. https://t.co/y1xjMUhWwh

    I'm curious - do we know yet how bad Omicorn is for the double vaccinated - my partner here in Spain had the 2nd jab over 6 mnths ago - he's early 50s and is unlikely to get 'boostered' for at least 3/4 weeks. Omicron is rapidly taking over here now but if it is generally less virulent there may be less need for me to worry unduly. Anyone know?
    Still good protection against serious illness.
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 8,647

    Great British Railways is a perfect example of Johnson's empty rhetoric.

    The problems of the current system are no actual competition, high fares, lack of strategic planning and long term thinking, unreliable trains that don't run on time.

    So the Johnson solution is erh...rename Network Rail

    You've got a rather rose-tinted view of BR if you felt competition, low fares, strategic planning and long-term thinking - yet alone running on time - was common in the 1970s and 1980s.

    But unlike then, passengers seem to quite like travelling by train (pre Covid), and the railways are massively safer as well.
    I happen to think BR would have run immensely better had it been given the proper funding. The rail network may have improved but that's because it has a tonne more spent on it by the taxpayer.

    So we spend the money, foreign governments take a cut and the leasing companies make a killing on the trains.

    I do not understand what private companies bring to the trains and the new structure makes this even less clear. We pay companies to operate the trains but why can't we just operate the trains ourselves? It seems utterly pointless
    The answer to all public sector woes is "chuck money at it".

    Not that I agree with the current model.
  • EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,976

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    An impressive blog by Alastair Meeks, late of this parish (do we know why he left?):

    https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/the-end-of-the-affair-moving-from-pandemic-to-endemic-c1159c652205

    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.
    We'd done it before Omicron. We'd done it by about April or June this year, it's just taken some time for people to realise it.

    Once the vaccines were rolled out, it isn't the virus mutating that is the big change, it's having vaccines that is.

    We aren't in the trenches anymore. The vaccine rollout was Hiroshima and the booster is Nagasaki.

    You can be Hiroo Onoda if it pleases you.
    The Nativity Play fallacy at work again.A story is not true just because it is heartwarming. There is no reason at all to discount the possibility of a vaccine resistant and much more lethal strain emeging.
    You're right there's no reason to discount it.

    There's also no reason to discount a coup in Russia leading to nuclear conflict.

    Or a Carrington Event/Coronal Mass Ejection stopping our modern life as we know it.

    Or an asteroid striking the earth.

    Or a Rise of the Machines.

    But just because something is possible in the future doesn't mean that it's happening right now. It remains science fiction.
    You know how some people can argue a weak case so persuasively that you end up half-agreeing with them even though you know they're wrong?

    Ok. Well your talent is for the dead opposite of that. And hats off because what you do is just as difficult.
    Did you see the "vaccines are Hiroshima" gem?
    Lest we forget.
    Yes they are. What's your issue with that?

    Are you an antivaxxer?
    It strikes me that if one just saw "Vaccines are Hiroshima", with absolutely no further context, they might well draw the opposite conclusion to the one you intended.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,494
    Endillion said:

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    An impressive blog by Alastair Meeks, late of this parish (do we know why he left?):

    https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/the-end-of-the-affair-moving-from-pandemic-to-endemic-c1159c652205

    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.
    We'd done it before Omicron. We'd done it by about April or June this year, it's just taken some time for people to realise it.

    Once the vaccines were rolled out, it isn't the virus mutating that is the big change, it's having vaccines that is.

    We aren't in the trenches anymore. The vaccine rollout was Hiroshima and the booster is Nagasaki.

    You can be Hiroo Onoda if it pleases you.
    The Nativity Play fallacy at work again.A story is not true just because it is heartwarming. There is no reason at all to discount the possibility of a vaccine resistant and much more lethal strain emeging.
    You're right there's no reason to discount it.

    There's also no reason to discount a coup in Russia leading to nuclear conflict.

    Or a Carrington Event/Coronal Mass Ejection stopping our modern life as we know it.

    Or an asteroid striking the earth.

    Or a Rise of the Machines.

    But just because something is possible in the future doesn't mean that it's happening right now. It remains science fiction.
    You know how some people can argue a weak case so persuasively that you end up half-agreeing with them even though you know they're wrong?

    Ok. Well your talent is for the dead opposite of that. And hats off because what you do is just as difficult.
    Did you see the "vaccines are Hiroshima" gem?
    Lest we forget.
    Yes they are. What's your issue with that?

    Are you an antivaxxer?
    It strikes me that if one just saw "Vaccines are Hiroshima", with absolutely no further context, they might well draw the opposite conclusion to the one you intended.
    I just thought of mushrooms and bacon.

    Does that make me a bad person?
  • Eabhal said:

    Great British Railways is a perfect example of Johnson's empty rhetoric.

    The problems of the current system are no actual competition, high fares, lack of strategic planning and long term thinking, unreliable trains that don't run on time.

    So the Johnson solution is erh...rename Network Rail

    You've got a rather rose-tinted view of BR if you felt competition, low fares, strategic planning and long-term thinking - yet alone running on time - was common in the 1970s and 1980s.

    But unlike then, passengers seem to quite like travelling by train (pre Covid), and the railways are massively safer as well.
    I happen to think BR would have run immensely better had it been given the proper funding. The rail network may have improved but that's because it has a tonne more spent on it by the taxpayer.

    So we spend the money, foreign governments take a cut and the leasing companies make a killing on the trains.

    I do not understand what private companies bring to the trains and the new structure makes this even less clear. We pay companies to operate the trains but why can't we just operate the trains ourselves? It seems utterly pointless
    The answer to all public sector woes is "chuck money at it".

    Not that I agree with the current model.
    Well you saw with BR what happened when you did the opposite and cut it, it fell into decline.

    I don't think the answer is "chuck money at it" but that is what we do anyway, so why do we let it leak out to the Germans and French?
  • StockyStocky Posts: 10,213
    edited December 2021

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    An impressive blog by Alastair Meeks, late of this parish (do we know why he left?):

    https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/the-end-of-the-affair-moving-from-pandemic-to-endemic-c1159c652205

    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.
    We'd done it before Omicron. We'd done it by about April or June this year, it's just taken some time for people to realise it.

    Once the vaccines were rolled out, it isn't the virus mutating that is the big change, it's having vaccines that is.

    We aren't in the trenches anymore. The vaccine rollout was Hiroshima and the booster is Nagasaki.

    You can be Hiroo Onoda if it pleases you.
    The Nativity Play fallacy at work again.A story is not true just because it is heartwarming. There is no reason at all to discount the possibility of a vaccine resistant and much more lethal strain emeging.
    You're right there's no reason to discount it.

    There's also no reason to discount a coup in Russia leading to nuclear conflict.

    Or a Carrington Event/Coronal Mass Ejection stopping our modern life as we know it.

    Or an asteroid striking the earth.

    Or a Rise of the Machines.

    But just because something is possible in the future doesn't mean that it's happening right now. It remains science fiction.
    You know how some people can argue a weak case so persuasively that you end up half-agreeing with them even though you know they're wrong?

    Ok. Well your talent is for the dead opposite of that. And hats off because what you do is just as difficult.
    Did you see the "vaccines are Hiroshima" gem?
    Lest we forget.
    Yes they are. What's your issue with that?

    Are you an antivaxxer?
    The breakdown in trust in the vaccines by those who previously insisted on authoritarian measures in anticipation of the vaccines is really something to behold.
  • The point about railways is there is no competition. So let's stop pretending there is and run them ourselves.

    Just like water.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,677
    I have just found out one of my school friends has died of covid having caught it at Riyadh airport. At school, whenever somebody had to fart the rest of us would hold him down while the designated farter sat on his face. The Old Boys Whatsapp group darkly suggests that one of us should perform an act of sepulchral flatuosity on his coffin at the funeral.

    He was double vaxxed and boosted but fat as fuck.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,400
    Andy_JS said:

    "Chinese lockdown rule-breakers are publicly shamed and paraded through the streets carrying placards with their names on in bid to ensure Covid rules are obeyed"

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10352249/Chinese-lockdown-rule-breakers-publicly-shamed-ensure-Covid-rules-obeyed.html

    Tbf that's a cultural thing. Parading around with a sign on your neck was common in Taiwan too.
    "I'm a lazy idiot" hat was how discipline was kept in schools.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,582

    Great British Railways is a perfect example of Johnson's empty rhetoric.

    The problems of the current system are no actual competition, high fares, lack of strategic planning and long term thinking, unreliable trains that don't run on time.

    So the Johnson solution is erh...rename Network Rail

    You've got a rather rose-tinted view of BR if you felt competition, low fares, strategic planning and long-term thinking - yet alone running on time - was common in the 1970s and 1980s.

    But unlike then, passengers seem to quite like travelling by train (pre Covid), and the railways are massively safer as well.
    BR used fare rises to reduce demand, so that expensive investment (blocked by the Treasury) wouldn't be required.

    The major problem with nationalised industries was that they ended up being run for the benefit of the producers, not the consumers. Oh, and the politicians - so nothing would be done on a cycle of more than one election.
    I wonder if anyone will bring up the perils of having a health system that’s around 85% public sector, at the Covid enquiry?

    I’m sure Dan Hannan will write something in the Telegraph on the subject, but increasing diversity of healthcare provision, especially retaining some excess capacity, should really form part of the future planning.
  • HYUFD said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Only ever voted for the Conservative candidate once, back around 1960 in a Co. Council election and my father was the candidate. Before and ever since then it's been Labour or Lib/LD until the last Co. Council, when I voted Green. I like to find out something about the candidate though. Don't necessarily feel I'm voting for the Party leader, although Priti Patel once asked if if I was really voting for Corbyn!

    You're supposed to be a Tory as a wise "old" (I hope you won't think me using this as disparaging) man, that's what they say here
    It's always on 'on average', otherwise you'd never have any old non-Tory voters. I don't think anyone has ever claimed that *everyone* becomes a Tory when they get older.
    Many of my u3a friends (all over 60 by definition) don't vote Tory.
    Is that really surprising? We like to spend time with people similar to ourselves. You can't deny that old people tend to vote Tory.
    You also can't deny that the tories have to keep adopting increasingly progressive political positions as their core vote keeps dying.

    Even its current abhorrent incarnation the tories are well to the left of where Red Ken's GLC were in the 80s on social issues.

    The people inevitably vote tory as they get older is true but the tories continually have to reposition to get them.
    Do they? It was the LDs and Labour MPs who passed gay marriage, most Tory MPs voted against.

    Most current Tory voters want lower immigration too.

    The Tories may accept social change, they rarely drive it, though they may like Thatcher or Cameron drive economic change
    A few weeks ago, this government allowed HIV positive people to join the armed forces.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    An impressive blog by Alastair Meeks, late of this parish (do we know why he left?):

    https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/the-end-of-the-affair-moving-from-pandemic-to-endemic-c1159c652205

    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.
    We'd done it before Omicron. We'd done it by about April or June this year, it's just taken some time for people to realise it.

    Once the vaccines were rolled out, it isn't the virus mutating that is the big change, it's having vaccines that is.

    We aren't in the trenches anymore. The vaccine rollout was Hiroshima and the booster is Nagasaki.

    You can be Hiroo Onoda if it pleases you.
    The Nativity Play fallacy at work again.A story is not true just because it is heartwarming. There is no reason at all to discount the possibility of a vaccine resistant and much more lethal strain emeging.
    You're right there's no reason to discount it.

    There's also no reason to discount a coup in Russia leading to nuclear conflict.

    Or a Carrington Event/Coronal Mass Ejection stopping our modern life as we know it.

    Or an asteroid striking the earth.

    Or a Rise of the Machines.

    But just because something is possible in the future doesn't mean that it's happening right now. It remains science fiction.
    There are four Variants of Concern currently listed by WHO. Happy to bet you 100gbp at evens another one is identified in 2022
  • eekeek Posts: 28,368

    The point about railways is there is no competition. So let's stop pretending there is and run them ourselves.

    Just like water.

    Oh there is competition - which is why services such as Grand Central, Hull Trains and Lumo exist.

    One thing that concentrated LNERs mind when it tried to cut services this year was getting Ben Houchen to ask Lumo to stop at Darlington alongside Edinburgh and Newcastle.

    Bin the monopoly and train prices would be a lot cheaper.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    Alistair said:

    Nice heatmap of the situation. Perhaps an idea for our own charter...

    If we look at the rate at which case rates are changing, this has shifted from people in their 20s, to people in their 70s and 80s. Which is obviously *bad*, even if the risks to those groups are much lower because Omicron is less severe and vaccines are awesome. https://t.co/y1xjMUhWwh

    The UK gov covid cases page has a nice heatmap for England and below data.
    Yes I know, why isn't it available for the UK?
    Devolved nations aren't gathering data with the same age buckets (mostly at the lower age ranges).
  • The point about railways is there is no competition. So let's stop pretending there is and run them ourselves.

    Just like water.

    But water would then be in competition with the NHS for public funding, and we know who wins that battle.
  • Great British Railways is a perfect example of Johnson's empty rhetoric.

    The problems of the current system are no actual competition, high fares, lack of strategic planning and long term thinking, unreliable trains that don't run on time.

    So the Johnson solution is erh...rename Network Rail

    You've got a rather rose-tinted view of BR if you felt competition, low fares, strategic planning and long-term thinking - yet alone running on time - was common in the 1970s and 1980s.

    But unlike then, passengers seem to quite like travelling by train (pre Covid), and the railways are massively safer as well.
    BR used fare rises to reduce demand, so that expensive investment (blocked by the Treasury) wouldn't be required.

    The major problem with nationalised industries was that they ended up being run for the benefit of the producers, not the consumers. Oh, and the politicians - so nothing would be done on a cycle of more than one election.
    Just like how certain people want the NHS to be managed by us living for reducing demand instead of it being there to serve the country.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,582

    The point about railways is there is no competition. So let's stop pretending there is and run them ourselves.

    Just like water.

    If there is a problem of a lack of competition, then the solution is to introduce more competition.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,134
    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    An impressive blog by Alastair Meeks, late of this parish (do we know why he left?):

    https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/the-end-of-the-affair-moving-from-pandemic-to-endemic-c1159c652205

    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.
    We'd done it before Omicron. We'd done it by about April or June this year, it's just taken some time for people to realise it.

    Once the vaccines were rolled out, it isn't the virus mutating that is the big change, it's having vaccines that is.

    We aren't in the trenches anymore. The vaccine rollout was Hiroshima and the booster is Nagasaki.

    You can be Hiroo Onoda if it pleases you.
    The Nativity Play fallacy at work again.A story is not true just because it is heartwarming. There is no reason at all to discount the possibility of a vaccine resistant and much more lethal strain emeging.
    You're right there's no reason to discount it.

    There's also no reason to discount a coup in Russia leading to nuclear conflict.

    Or a Carrington Event/Coronal Mass Ejection stopping our modern life as we know it.

    Or an asteroid striking the earth.

    Or a Rise of the Machines.

    But just because something is possible in the future doesn't mean that it's happening right now. It remains science fiction.
    You know how some people can argue a weak case so persuasively that you end up half-agreeing with them even though you know they're wrong?

    Ok. Well your talent is for the dead opposite of that. And hats off because what you do is just as difficult.
    Did you see the "vaccines are Hiroshima" gem?
    Lest we forget.
    The name of the river has changed but it flows unabated exactly as it did before. An opportunity for reinvention has been spurned.
  • Farooq said:

    Endillion said:

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    An impressive blog by Alastair Meeks, late of this parish (do we know why he left?):

    https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/the-end-of-the-affair-moving-from-pandemic-to-endemic-c1159c652205

    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.
    We'd done it before Omicron. We'd done it by about April or June this year, it's just taken some time for people to realise it.

    Once the vaccines were rolled out, it isn't the virus mutating that is the big change, it's having vaccines that is.

    We aren't in the trenches anymore. The vaccine rollout was Hiroshima and the booster is Nagasaki.

    You can be Hiroo Onoda if it pleases you.
    The Nativity Play fallacy at work again.A story is not true just because it is heartwarming. There is no reason at all to discount the possibility of a vaccine resistant and much more lethal strain emeging.
    You're right there's no reason to discount it.

    There's also no reason to discount a coup in Russia leading to nuclear conflict.

    Or a Carrington Event/Coronal Mass Ejection stopping our modern life as we know it.

    Or an asteroid striking the earth.

    Or a Rise of the Machines.

    But just because something is possible in the future doesn't mean that it's happening right now. It remains science fiction.
    You know how some people can argue a weak case so persuasively that you end up half-agreeing with them even though you know they're wrong?

    Ok. Well your talent is for the dead opposite of that. And hats off because what you do is just as difficult.
    Did you see the "vaccines are Hiroshima" gem?
    Lest we forget.
    Yes they are. What's your issue with that?

    Are you an antivaxxer?
    It strikes me that if one just saw "Vaccines are Hiroshima", with absolutely no further context, they might well draw the opposite conclusion to the one you intended.
    He just says stuff without thinking, and when someone points out the wild eccentricity of it, he asks incongruous questions like IS YOU ANTIVAX?

    The answer, of course, is no, I'm extremely PRO vaccination, to the extent that I usually don't compare vaccinations with NUCLEAR WARFARE.
    Why? Nuclear warfare won the war!

    Are you an anti nuke idiot who thinks dropping the bomb was a bad idea instead?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,572

    Great British Railways is a perfect example of Johnson's empty rhetoric.

    The problems of the current system are no actual competition, high fares, lack of strategic planning and long term thinking, unreliable trains that don't run on time.

    So the Johnson solution is erh...rename Network Rail

    You've got a rather rose-tinted view of BR if you felt competition, low fares, strategic planning and long-term thinking - yet alone running on time - was common in the 1970s and 1980s.

    But unlike then, passengers seem to quite like travelling by train (pre Covid), and the railways are massively safer as well.
    I happen to think BR would have run immensely better had it been given the proper funding. The rail network may have improved but that's because it has a tonne more spent on it by the taxpayer.

    So we spend the money, foreign governments take a cut and the leasing companies make a killing on the trains.

    I do not understand what private companies bring to the trains and the new structure makes this even less clear. We pay companies to operate the trains but why can't we just operate the trains ourselves? It seems utterly pointless
    Do you realise that those 'foreign governments' often lost money on their deals, and were hence subsidising the network? ;)

    I was calling for a move to the concessions system on here for a decade (or as long as I've been on here). It's a good move IMO.

    As for funding, in 2018/9 Train Operating Companies received a net subsidy from the government (the first since 2009/10), of £417 million. The year before, TOCs paid the government £227 million. So pre-Covid, the TOCs were often giving money to the exchequer.

    Where government money really goes is NR. There are three forms of funding of NR: maintenance, renewals, and enhancements. From memory, in many years NR breaks even on maintenance and renewals costs; the enhancements is where the vast majority of the money goes (e.g. HS2, Crossrail, Werrington, etc).

    Our subsidy is also much less than other European countries operating fully nationalised systems. Italy, for instance, has about two-thirds of the passenger-KM, and nearly double the subsidy. Germany has more passenger-KM (80 bn cf 65bn) and nearly four times the subsidy.

    This may cause you to spit out your coffee, but I think privatisation of the railways has been a success as a whole - improved safety, doubling of passenger numbers, subsidies under control. And about the correct split between public and user funding. The place it's most failed is freight - and the destruction of trainload coal has been at the heart of that.

    https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/1547/rail-finance-statistical-release-2018-19.pdf
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_subsidies
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,145

    The Tories are patriotic until it comes to running the railways, then just get the German Government to do it.

    Labour are missing a trick here, they could sell nationalisation as a patriotic policy

    Nationalisation does not work in the UK because we end up with politically driven Trades Unions which own the Government which employs their members.
  • Sandpit said:

    The point about railways is there is no competition. So let's stop pretending there is and run them ourselves.

    Just like water.

    If there is a problem of a lack of competition, then the solution is to introduce more competition.
    You cannot have competition on the railways, same track. Same infrastructure.
  • Andy_JS said:

    New survey of Tory members:

    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

    As I keep saying, Truss is their best option. Which is why it won’t be Truss.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,926

    Andy_JS said:

    New survey of Tory members:

    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

    As I keep saying, Truss is their best option. Which is why it won’t be Truss.
    What makes you say that?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,572

    Sandpit said:

    The point about railways is there is no competition. So let's stop pretending there is and run them ourselves.

    Just like water.

    If there is a problem of a lack of competition, then the solution is to introduce more competition.
    You cannot have competition on the railways, same track. Same infrastructure.
    Wrong. Are you saying that we cannot have competition in road freight, as they all use the same infrastructure (roads?).

    That's slightly disingenuous of me, as the railways are much more highly regulated than roads. But Open Access is an example of where there is very much competition, and something I would like to see more of. I'd like to see OA expanded within the concessions system.
  • EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,976

    Sandpit said:

    The point about railways is there is no competition. So let's stop pretending there is and run them ourselves.

    Just like water.

    If there is a problem of a lack of competition, then the solution is to introduce more competition.
    You cannot have competition on the railways, same track. Same infrastructure.
    Which is why Network Rail own the infrastructure, and National Rail - a separate company - operate the services. There's no reason in principle why you couldn't have multiple firms operating services on each line.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Stocky said:

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    An impressive blog by Alastair Meeks, late of this parish (do we know why he left?):

    https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/the-end-of-the-affair-moving-from-pandemic-to-endemic-c1159c652205

    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.
    We'd done it before Omicron. We'd done it by about April or June this year, it's just taken some time for people to realise it.

    Once the vaccines were rolled out, it isn't the virus mutating that is the big change, it's having vaccines that is.

    We aren't in the trenches anymore. The vaccine rollout was Hiroshima and the booster is Nagasaki.

    You can be Hiroo Onoda if it pleases you.
    The Nativity Play fallacy at work again.A story is not true just because it is heartwarming. There is no reason at all to discount the possibility of a vaccine resistant and much more lethal strain emeging.
    You're right there's no reason to discount it.

    There's also no reason to discount a coup in Russia leading to nuclear conflict.

    Or a Carrington Event/Coronal Mass Ejection stopping our modern life as we know it.

    Or an asteroid striking the earth.

    Or a Rise of the Machines.

    But just because something is possible in the future doesn't mean that it's happening right now. It remains science fiction.
    You know how some people can argue a weak case so persuasively that you end up half-agreeing with them even though you know they're wrong?

    Ok. Well your talent is for the dead opposite of that. And hats off because what you do is just as difficult.
    Did you see the "vaccines are Hiroshima" gem?
    Lest we forget.
    Yes they are. What's your issue with that?

    Are you an antivaxxer?
    The breakdown in trust in the vaccines by those who previously insisted on authoritarian measures in anticipation of the vaccines is really something to behold.
    This habit of generalised strawmanning is passive aggressive nonsense. Who insisted on what measures when, and has given what signs of breakdown of trust in the vaccines?

    And have you not noticed that Pfizer initially offered gtrthn 95% protection against INFECTION after 2 shots, whereas now 2 shots plus booster gives SOME degree of protection against SERIOUS ILLNESS, we hope. Would you not expect any rational agent to reduce the amount of trust they placed in the vaccine given that utterly uncontroversial information?
  • Sandpit said:

    The point about railways is there is no competition. So let's stop pretending there is and run them ourselves.

    Just like water.

    If there is a problem of a lack of competition, then the solution is to introduce more competition.
    You cannot have competition on the railways, same track. Same infrastructure.
    Wrong. Are you saying that we cannot have competition in road freight, as they all use the same infrastructure (roads?).

    That's slightly disingenuous of me, as the railways are much more highly regulated than roads. But Open Access is an example of where there is very much competition, and something I would like to see more of. I'd like to see OA expanded within the concessions system.
    Open Access has not reduced prices
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,552
    "George Galloway
    @georgegalloway
    My daughter - carrying her baby! - was told to “get back to England, you English c**t” in your Dumfries store
    @Tesco at 12.50pm today. I have a picture of her racial abuser. I will not let this drop. I’m not that sort of father
    @PoliceScotland @DumfriesGPolice @scotgov"

    https://twitter.com/georgegalloway/status/1475829164531982336
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Farooq said:

    Endillion said:

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    An impressive blog by Alastair Meeks, late of this parish (do we know why he left?):

    https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/the-end-of-the-affair-moving-from-pandemic-to-endemic-c1159c652205

    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.
    We'd done it before Omicron. We'd done it by about April or June this year, it's just taken some time for people to realise it.

    Once the vaccines were rolled out, it isn't the virus mutating that is the big change, it's having vaccines that is.

    We aren't in the trenches anymore. The vaccine rollout was Hiroshima and the booster is Nagasaki.

    You can be Hiroo Onoda if it pleases you.
    The Nativity Play fallacy at work again.A story is not true just because it is heartwarming. There is no reason at all to discount the possibility of a vaccine resistant and much more lethal strain emeging.
    You're right there's no reason to discount it.

    There's also no reason to discount a coup in Russia leading to nuclear conflict.

    Or a Carrington Event/Coronal Mass Ejection stopping our modern life as we know it.

    Or an asteroid striking the earth.

    Or a Rise of the Machines.

    But just because something is possible in the future doesn't mean that it's happening right now. It remains science fiction.
    You know how some people can argue a weak case so persuasively that you end up half-agreeing with them even though you know they're wrong?

    Ok. Well your talent is for the dead opposite of that. And hats off because what you do is just as difficult.
    Did you see the "vaccines are Hiroshima" gem?
    Lest we forget.
    Yes they are. What's your issue with that?

    Are you an antivaxxer?
    It strikes me that if one just saw "Vaccines are Hiroshima", with absolutely no further context, they might well draw the opposite conclusion to the one you intended.
    He just says stuff without thinking, and when someone points out the wild eccentricity of it, he asks incongruous questions like IS YOU ANTIVAX?

    The answer, of course, is no, I'm extremely PRO vaccination, to the extent that I usually don't compare vaccinations with NUCLEAR WARFARE.
    Why? Nuclear warfare won the war!

    Are you an anti nuke idiot who thinks dropping the bomb was a bad idea instead?
    Not really helping yourself here.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,912
    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Taz said:

    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
    Johnson has reneged on levelling up. Red Wall voters, as @RochdalePioneers says, are not fools.
    I think you'll know I have said that here many times, they are not stupid whatsoever.

    But my point is that levelling up has failed because it is an empty slogan with no actual ideas behind it.
    Oh, I wasn’t implying otherwise. Just giving one reason why the red wall is abandoning the Tories. You can see from the likes of HYUFD a thinly disguised disregard for these seats and these people but they are the new Tories. Boris would be wise to re engage. Strategically it makes sense too as it cuts off a path back for labour. I suspect where the red wall is concerned there are far more Tories like HYUFD than there are so want to re engage.
    The Tories will never outspend Labour, if redwall voters only voted for Boris to get Brexit done no amount of spending on redwall seats will win them back now Brexit is done. Only if Starmer said he would restore free movement and go back to the single market could the Tories hope to win back those former lifelong Labour voters.

    If the Tories are re elected it will be only narrowly like 1992, 2015 or 2017 in my view and based on holding the seats Cameron won in 2015 and May won in 2017 and Boris held in 2019. Certainly on that basis there is no point putting up tax on those Tory seats in the South and Midlands Cameron and May won to spend on redwall seats Brown and Ed Milliband won

    But in 2015 and 2017 the Tories were already making inroads and gaining red wall seats. You cannot win on traditional Tory seats as the demographics are changing in places like Wycombe, Hastings, Worthing and the like. These will go sooner or later as Canterbury has. If you look at many places in the old red wall these have only been labour because people traditionally vote labour. Lots of owner occupation, nice new estates, decent levels of disposable income.

    Your core vote strategy is the same as Ed M in 2015. It failed him, it will fail you if you got for it.
    In some but many of these same seats went Labour in 2015 and 2017 remember, the only reason they went Tory in 2019 was to get Brexit done. There is no point fighting the last war, when a big Tory majority was needed to get Brexit done, at the next general election when even a hung parliament will do if the Tories are largest party still and can do a deal with the DUP.

    Remember the seats Cameron and May won in the Midlands and South still generally have higher home ownership rates and higher house prices than the redwall seats. No point in raising taxes on them and sending them to RefUK or even the LDs when the Tories must hold those seats to stay in power to spend on Redwall seats the Tories do not need to stay in power
  • IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    An impressive blog by Alastair Meeks, late of this parish (do we know why he left?):

    https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/the-end-of-the-affair-moving-from-pandemic-to-endemic-c1159c652205

    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.
    We'd done it before Omicron. We'd done it by about April or June this year, it's just taken some time for people to realise it.

    Once the vaccines were rolled out, it isn't the virus mutating that is the big change, it's having vaccines that is.

    We aren't in the trenches anymore. The vaccine rollout was Hiroshima and the booster is Nagasaki.

    You can be Hiroo Onoda if it pleases you.
    The Nativity Play fallacy at work again.A story is not true just because it is heartwarming. There is no reason at all to discount the possibility of a vaccine resistant and much more lethal strain emeging.
    You're right there's no reason to discount it.

    There's also no reason to discount a coup in Russia leading to nuclear conflict.

    Or a Carrington Event/Coronal Mass Ejection stopping our modern life as we know it.

    Or an asteroid striking the earth.

    Or a Rise of the Machines.

    But just because something is possible in the future doesn't mean that it's happening right now. It remains science fiction.
    There are four Variants of Concern currently listed by WHO. Happy to bet you 100gbp at evens another one is identified in 2022
    There can be four, ten or forty seven it wouldn't be relevant to my point. There can be several solar flares per day, it doesn't make any of them cause a Carrington Event.

    Unless any of these variants of concern take us back to a pre-vaccines scenario, which they haven't, then it's moot to me.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,926

    Sandpit said:

    The point about railways is there is no competition. So let's stop pretending there is and run them ourselves.

    Just like water.

    If there is a problem of a lack of competition, then the solution is to introduce more competition.
    You cannot have competition on the railways, same track. Same infrastructure.
    Wrong. Are you saying that we cannot have competition in road freight, as they all use the same infrastructure (roads?).

    That's slightly disingenuous of me, as the railways are much more highly regulated than roads. But Open Access is an example of where there is very much competition, and something I would like to see more of. I'd like to see OA expanded within the concessions system.
    Open Access has not reduced prices
    I think that calls for more competition, not less.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,926
    Farooq said:

    Let's nuke Covid!
    I am very smart.

    Which one?
  • Great British Railways is a perfect example of Johnson's empty rhetoric.

    The problems of the current system are no actual competition, high fares, lack of strategic planning and long term thinking, unreliable trains that don't run on time.

    So the Johnson solution is erh...rename Network Rail

    You've got a rather rose-tinted view of BR if you felt competition, low fares, strategic planning and long-term thinking - yet alone running on time - was common in the 1970s and 1980s.

    But unlike then, passengers seem to quite like travelling by train (pre Covid), and the railways are massively safer as well.
    BR used fare rises to reduce demand, so that expensive investment (blocked by the Treasury) wouldn't be required.

    The major problem with nationalised industries was that they ended up being run for the benefit of the producers, not the consumers. Oh, and the politicians - so nothing would be done on a cycle of more than one election.
    Just like how certain people want the NHS to be managed by us living for reducing demand instead of it being there to serve the country.
    Of course people could always reduce demand by being healthier, some of that is under our control.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,802
    IshmaelZ said:

    Stocky said:

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    An impressive blog by Alastair Meeks, late of this parish (do we know why he left?):

    https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/the-end-of-the-affair-moving-from-pandemic-to-endemic-c1159c652205

    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.
    We'd done it before Omicron. We'd done it by about April or June this year, it's just taken some time for people to realise it.

    Once the vaccines were rolled out, it isn't the virus mutating that is the big change, it's having vaccines that is.

    We aren't in the trenches anymore. The vaccine rollout was Hiroshima and the booster is Nagasaki.

    You can be Hiroo Onoda if it pleases you.
    The Nativity Play fallacy at work again.A story is not true just because it is heartwarming. There is no reason at all to discount the possibility of a vaccine resistant and much more lethal strain emeging.
    You're right there's no reason to discount it.

    There's also no reason to discount a coup in Russia leading to nuclear conflict.

    Or a Carrington Event/Coronal Mass Ejection stopping our modern life as we know it.

    Or an asteroid striking the earth.

    Or a Rise of the Machines.

    But just because something is possible in the future doesn't mean that it's happening right now. It remains science fiction.
    You know how some people can argue a weak case so persuasively that you end up half-agreeing with them even though you know they're wrong?

    Ok. Well your talent is for the dead opposite of that. And hats off because what you do is just as difficult.
    Did you see the "vaccines are Hiroshima" gem?
    Lest we forget.
    Yes they are. What's your issue with that?

    Are you an antivaxxer?
    The breakdown in trust in the vaccines by those who previously insisted on authoritarian measures in anticipation of the vaccines is really something to behold.
    This habit of generalised strawmanning is passive aggressive nonsense. Who insisted on what measures when, and has given what signs of breakdown of trust in the vaccines?

    And have you not noticed that Pfizer initially offered gtrthn 95% protection against INFECTION after 2 shots, whereas now 2 shots plus booster gives SOME degree of protection against SERIOUS ILLNESS, we hope. Would you not expect any rational agent to reduce the amount of trust they placed in the vaccine given that utterly uncontroversial information?
    "SOME" being 93-95% efficacy. 🙄
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,485

    kinabalu said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    An impressive blog by Alastair Meeks, late of this parish (do we know why he left?):

    https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/the-end-of-the-affair-moving-from-pandemic-to-endemic-c1159c652205

    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.
    We'd done it before Omicron. We'd done it by about April or June this year, it's just taken some time for people to realise it.

    Once the vaccines were rolled out, it isn't the virus mutating that is the big change, it's having vaccines that is.

    We aren't in the trenches anymore. The vaccine rollout was Hiroshima and the booster is Nagasaki.

    You can be Hiroo Onoda if it pleases you.
    Nope. It's over once it's clear that our level of immunity, as topped up by regular vaccination, is such that NPIs can be dispensed with without material risk to the healthcare system. We're close to that now but we're not there yet.
    That's arse about tit and you're letting the Conservative government get away with it.

    You don't manage healthcare by capping demand to meet supply. Post vaccinations you should be demanding as much supply as is required to meet demand.

    If the healthcare system gets overloaded then that's a failure to implement proper triage and surge protocols. It's a failure to invest.

    Biden is responding to Omicron not by implementing restrictions but by activating FEMA to boost hospital and ambulance capacity to meet the extra demand.

    Capping demand should have been a short term solution to a novel virus not a long term solution two years into the pandemic after a vaccine rollout.
    Absolutely right. One of the big problems with lockdownism is that when a hammer is your only tool, everything looks like a nail.

    The ease at which we fold back into (at times effing stupid) restrictions like insisting on masks in theatres just gives the government cover for a avoiding more important policy debates like investing in surge capacity and antivirals. A straw poll of my (fairly clued up) friends revealed that only about 10% even knew there is an antiviral with 80%+ efficacy. Which rather says it all.
  • IshmaelZ said:

    Farooq said:

    Endillion said:

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    An impressive blog by Alastair Meeks, late of this parish (do we know why he left?):

    https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/the-end-of-the-affair-moving-from-pandemic-to-endemic-c1159c652205

    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.
    We'd done it before Omicron. We'd done it by about April or June this year, it's just taken some time for people to realise it.

    Once the vaccines were rolled out, it isn't the virus mutating that is the big change, it's having vaccines that is.

    We aren't in the trenches anymore. The vaccine rollout was Hiroshima and the booster is Nagasaki.

    You can be Hiroo Onoda if it pleases you.
    The Nativity Play fallacy at work again.A story is not true just because it is heartwarming. There is no reason at all to discount the possibility of a vaccine resistant and much more lethal strain emeging.
    You're right there's no reason to discount it.

    There's also no reason to discount a coup in Russia leading to nuclear conflict.

    Or a Carrington Event/Coronal Mass Ejection stopping our modern life as we know it.

    Or an asteroid striking the earth.

    Or a Rise of the Machines.

    But just because something is possible in the future doesn't mean that it's happening right now. It remains science fiction.
    You know how some people can argue a weak case so persuasively that you end up half-agreeing with them even though you know they're wrong?

    Ok. Well your talent is for the dead opposite of that. And hats off because what you do is just as difficult.
    Did you see the "vaccines are Hiroshima" gem?
    Lest we forget.
    Yes they are. What's your issue with that?

    Are you an antivaxxer?
    It strikes me that if one just saw "Vaccines are Hiroshima", with absolutely no further context, they might well draw the opposite conclusion to the one you intended.
    He just says stuff without thinking, and when someone points out the wild eccentricity of it, he asks incongruous questions like IS YOU ANTIVAX?

    The answer, of course, is no, I'm extremely PRO vaccination, to the extent that I usually don't compare vaccinations with NUCLEAR WARFARE.
    Why? Nuclear warfare won the war!

    Are you an anti nuke idiot who thinks dropping the bomb was a bad idea instead?
    Not really helping yourself here.
    Ok Hiroo Onoda.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,912

    HYUFD said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Only ever voted for the Conservative candidate once, back around 1960 in a Co. Council election and my father was the candidate. Before and ever since then it's been Labour or Lib/LD until the last Co. Council, when I voted Green. I like to find out something about the candidate though. Don't necessarily feel I'm voting for the Party leader, although Priti Patel once asked if if I was really voting for Corbyn!

    You're supposed to be a Tory as a wise "old" (I hope you won't think me using this as disparaging) man, that's what they say here
    It's always on 'on average', otherwise you'd never have any old non-Tory voters. I don't think anyone has ever claimed that *everyone* becomes a Tory when they get older.
    Many of my u3a friends (all over 60 by definition) don't vote Tory.
    Is that really surprising? We like to spend time with people similar to ourselves. You can't deny that old people tend to vote Tory.
    You also can't deny that the tories have to keep adopting increasingly progressive political positions as their core vote keeps dying.

    Even its current abhorrent incarnation the tories are well to the left of where Red Ken's GLC were in the 80s on social issues.

    The people inevitably vote tory as they get older is true but the tories continually have to reposition to get them.
    Do they? It was the LDs and Labour MPs who passed gay marriage, most Tory MPs voted against.

    Most current Tory voters want lower immigration too.

    The Tories may accept social change, they rarely drive it, though they may like Thatcher or Cameron drive economic change
    A few weeks ago, this government allowed HIV positive people to join the armed forces.
    So, that is hardly a major change.

    It was a Labour government that legalised abortion and a Labour and LD government that introduced civil partnerships and a majority of Labour and LD MPs voted for gay marriage when most Tory MPs voted against.

    It was also a Tory government that ended free movement from the EEA
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,582

    Sandpit said:

    The point about railways is there is no competition. So let's stop pretending there is and run them ourselves.

    Just like water.

    If there is a problem of a lack of competition, then the solution is to introduce more competition.
    You cannot have competition on the railways, same track. Same infrastructure.
    Of course you can. One (possibly public) company owns the infrastructure, and other companies provide competitive services and compete for business. Same as road haulage, airports, broadband…

    The mistake with rail, was the huge regional service monopolies, especially on intercity routes.
  • MISTYMISTY Posts: 1,594

    Sandpit said:

    The point about railways is there is no competition. So let's stop pretending there is and run them ourselves.

    Just like water.

    If there is a problem of a lack of competition, then the solution is to introduce more competition.
    You cannot have competition on the railways, same track. Same infrastructure.
    A combination of WFH and EVTOL air cars will ensure that in 10 years' time railways will face serious competition for moving people around. State owned or not, they will have to offer better services to survive.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,368

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    An impressive blog by Alastair Meeks, late of this parish (do we know why he left?):

    https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/the-end-of-the-affair-moving-from-pandemic-to-endemic-c1159c652205

    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.
    We'd done it before Omicron. We'd done it by about April or June this year, it's just taken some time for people to realise it.

    Once the vaccines were rolled out, it isn't the virus mutating that is the big change, it's having vaccines that is.

    We aren't in the trenches anymore. The vaccine rollout was Hiroshima and the booster is Nagasaki.

    You can be Hiroo Onoda if it pleases you.
    The Nativity Play fallacy at work again.A story is not true just because it is heartwarming. There is no reason at all to discount the possibility of a vaccine resistant and much more lethal strain emeging.
    You're right there's no reason to discount it.

    There's also no reason to discount a coup in Russia leading to nuclear conflict.

    Or a Carrington Event/Coronal Mass Ejection stopping our modern life as we know it.

    Or an asteroid striking the earth.

    Or a Rise of the Machines.

    But just because something is possible in the future doesn't mean that it's happening right now. It remains science fiction.
    There are four Variants of Concern currently listed by WHO. Happy to bet you 100gbp at evens another one is identified in 2022
    There can be four, ten or forty seven it wouldn't be relevant to my point. There can be several solar flares per day, it doesn't make any of them cause a Carrington Event.

    Unless any of these variants of concern take us back to a pre-vaccines scenario, which they haven't, then it's moot to me.
    Since when did you become a PHD level epidemiologist?

    The simple fact is that every mutation may make something more or less infectious and more or less serious.

    Omicron is seemingly (and for which we should be thankful) more infectious but less serious... That doesn't mean the next variant will follow the same path.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,368
    Dura_Ace said:

    I have just found out one of my school friends has died of covid having caught it at Riyadh airport. At school, whenever somebody had to fart the rest of us would hold him down while the designated farter sat on his face. The Old Boys Whatsapp group darkly suggests that one of us should perform an act of sepulchral flatuosity on his coffin at the funeral.

    He was double vaxxed and boosted but fat as fuck.

    So you went to a very progressive school.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,912

    Andy_JS said:

    New survey of Tory members:

    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

    As I keep saying, Truss is their best option. Which is why it won’t be Truss.
    For you maybe not for us Tories

    Truss gives Labour a 16% lead if she is Tory leader according to Opinium

    https://twitter.com/OpiniumResearch/status/1475566541273980929?s=20
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,134

    Great British Railways is a perfect example of Johnson's empty rhetoric.

    The problems of the current system are no actual competition, high fares, lack of strategic planning and long term thinking, unreliable trains that don't run on time.

    So the Johnson solution is erh...rename Network Rail

    You've got a rather rose-tinted view of BR if you felt competition, low fares, strategic planning and long-term thinking - yet alone running on time - was common in the 1970s and 1980s.

    But unlike then, passengers seem to quite like travelling by train (pre Covid), and the railways are massively safer as well.
    BR used fare rises to reduce demand, so that expensive investment (blocked by the Treasury) wouldn't be required.

    The major problem with nationalised industries was that they ended up being run for the benefit of the producers, not the consumers. Oh, and the politicians - so nothing would be done on a cycle of more than one election.
    Plenty of things are run more for the benefit of participants than users. Eg most professional firms and almost every outfit in the City.
  • MISTYMISTY Posts: 1,594

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    An impressive blog by Alastair Meeks, late of this parish (do we know why he left?):

    https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/the-end-of-the-affair-moving-from-pandemic-to-endemic-c1159c652205

    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.
    We'd done it before Omicron. We'd done it by about April or June this year, it's just taken some time for people to realise it.

    Once the vaccines were rolled out, it isn't the virus mutating that is the big change, it's having vaccines that is.

    We aren't in the trenches anymore. The vaccine rollout was Hiroshima and the booster is Nagasaki.

    You can be Hiroo Onoda if it pleases you.
    The Nativity Play fallacy at work again.A story is not true just because it is heartwarming. There is no reason at all to discount the possibility of a vaccine resistant and much more lethal strain emeging.
    You're right there's no reason to discount it.

    There's also no reason to discount a coup in Russia leading to nuclear conflict.

    Or a Carrington Event/Coronal Mass Ejection stopping our modern life as we know it.

    Or an asteroid striking the earth.

    Or a Rise of the Machines.

    But just because something is possible in the future doesn't mean that it's happening right now. It remains science fiction.
    There are four Variants of Concern currently listed by WHO. Happy to bet you 100gbp at evens another one is identified in 2022
    There can be four, ten or forty seven it wouldn't be relevant to my point. There can be several solar flares per day, it doesn't make any of them cause a Carrington Event.

    Unless any of these variants of concern take us back to a pre-vaccines scenario, which they haven't, then it's moot to me.
    Whether a certain varient take us back to a pre-vaccines scenario is surely beside the point.

    The lesson of omicron is that its enough for the right medics and health bodies to warn that a certain variant might take us pre-vaccine.

    For many places, that warning is more than enough to bring the restrictions crashing down.

  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,926
    kinabalu said:

    Great British Railways is a perfect example of Johnson's empty rhetoric.

    The problems of the current system are no actual competition, high fares, lack of strategic planning and long term thinking, unreliable trains that don't run on time.

    So the Johnson solution is erh...rename Network Rail

    You've got a rather rose-tinted view of BR if you felt competition, low fares, strategic planning and long-term thinking - yet alone running on time - was common in the 1970s and 1980s.

    But unlike then, passengers seem to quite like travelling by train (pre Covid), and the railways are massively safer as well.
    BR used fare rises to reduce demand, so that expensive investment (blocked by the Treasury) wouldn't be required.

    The major problem with nationalised industries was that they ended up being run for the benefit of the producers, not the consumers. Oh, and the politicians - so nothing would be done on a cycle of more than one election.
    Plenty of things are run more for the benefit of participants than users. Eg most professional firms and almost every outfit in the City.
    Would you like public transport to join that list? ;)
  • Residents in locked-down Chinese city plead for food

    Chinese officials have admitted supply issues for residents in locked-down Xi'an, after the city's inhabitants decried food shortages and called for help.

    Some 13 million residents in northern Xi'an are in their seventh day of home confinement, and national health officials have called for measures to be strengthened further as China battles its worst virus surge in months.

    Beijing has followed a strict "zero Covid" strategy involving tight border restrictions and targeted lockdowns since the virus first surfaced in a central city in late 2019.

    But officials admitted at a press conference on Wednesday that "low staff attendance and difficulties in logistics and distribution" had led to trouble providing essential supplies.

    A day before, many residents asked on social media for help acquiring food and other essentials, with some saying their housing compounds would not let them out even though they were running out of food.

    ----

    Its definitely only 200 cases.....
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,400
    HYUFD said:

    Andy_JS said:

    New survey of Tory members:

    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

    As I keep saying, Truss is their best option. Which is why it won’t be Truss.
    For you maybe not for us Tories

    Truss gives Labour a 16% lead if she is Tory leader according to Opinium

    https://twitter.com/OpiniumResearch/status/1475566541273980929?s=20
    Yet Tory members continue to mysteriously rate her very highly indeed.
    Maybe they are sick of winning?
  • eek said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    kinabalu said:

    An impressive blog by Alastair Meeks, late of this parish (do we know why he left?):

    https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/the-end-of-the-affair-moving-from-pandemic-to-endemic-c1159c652205

    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.
    We'd done it before Omicron. We'd done it by about April or June this year, it's just taken some time for people to realise it.

    Once the vaccines were rolled out, it isn't the virus mutating that is the big change, it's having vaccines that is.

    We aren't in the trenches anymore. The vaccine rollout was Hiroshima and the booster is Nagasaki.

    You can be Hiroo Onoda if it pleases you.
    The Nativity Play fallacy at work again.A story is not true just because it is heartwarming. There is no reason at all to discount the possibility of a vaccine resistant and much more lethal strain emeging.
    You're right there's no reason to discount it.

    There's also no reason to discount a coup in Russia leading to nuclear conflict.

    Or a Carrington Event/Coronal Mass Ejection stopping our modern life as we know it.

    Or an asteroid striking the earth.

    Or a Rise of the Machines.

    But just because something is possible in the future doesn't mean that it's happening right now. It remains science fiction.
    There are four Variants of Concern currently listed by WHO. Happy to bet you 100gbp at evens another one is identified in 2022
    There can be four, ten or forty seven it wouldn't be relevant to my point. There can be several solar flares per day, it doesn't make any of them cause a Carrington Event.

    Unless any of these variants of concern take us back to a pre-vaccines scenario, which they haven't, then it's moot to me.
    Since when did you become a PHD level epidemiologist?

    The simple fact is that every mutation may make something more or less infectious and more or less serious.

    Omicron is seemingly (and for which we should be thankful) more infectious but less serious... That doesn't mean the next variant will follow the same path.
    Absolutely the next one could be more serious but considering the vaccines has ~95% efficacy against the most serious outcomes basic logic would suggest that the next mutation would need to be 20x more serious in order to revert us back to a pre-vaccines scenario.

    Colour me skeptical that's ever going to happen.
This discussion has been closed.