"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"
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
As I keep saying, Truss is their best option. Which is why it won’t be Truss.
Is Truss their best option, electorally? We all know winning a party membership is possibly different to winning the public. I'm wholly unconvinced about Truss, and I think Sunak and Hunt would both land better with the public. All better than the FLSoJ, though.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The key decision with railways (and bus services) is simple: what proportion of the cost should be borne by the service users, and what proportion by the state?
I reckon we've got it about right in this country, for rail services at least. Bus services should have more money invested.
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.
Yes, Triggle is excellent. Sadly he seems to be excluded from the main news programmes in favour of irrational hysterions.
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.
Indeed. Aren't companies obliged to act in the interests of shareholders? Not consumers?
"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"
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?
Another assumption, all 141,000 hospital beds are occupied. Now that's clearly not true, but as we've got a backlog on operations & waiting ambulances & last minute cancelled operations it's not an assumption that's going to be colossally wrong
The key decision with railways (and bus services) is simple: what proportion of the cost should be borne by the service users, and what proportion by the state?
I reckon we've got it about right in this country, for rail services at least. Bus services should have more money invested.
Yep. The starting point question rarely asked is "What are buses for?" If it is to make a profit, then they wouldn't exist but for a few routes at certain hours in big cities. So it clearly isn't that.
Yet Tory members continue to mysteriously rate her very highly indeed. Maybe they are sick of winning?
Tory members love her past republicanism.
Truss has now told Nick Robinson she backs a constitutional monarchy. She is an ex LD Republican, Remainer pitching herself now as a Tory, Thatcherite Brexiteer. However on that Opinium poll Truss would lead the Tories to their worst defeat in voteshare terms since 1832 and even fewer seats than Major got in 1997. Truss would be a UK Kim Campbell who led the Canadian Tories to a landslide defeat in 1993 based on Opinium.
Though remember less than a third of Tory members backed her in that survey still
Interesting that the energy industry is asking for a £20bn 10 year state backed loan for energy subsidies and the government is considering giving it to them in order to keep prices down. Imagine winding the clock back to 2012 and creating the same £20bn state backed loan fund for companies to borrow and invest cheaply in renewable energy creation and for industry to borrow cheaply to create a whole renewable energy industry for countries where solar isn't viable.
We're going to spend the money either way, this way all we're doing is subsidising high gas prices, effectively a transfer of taxpayer cash to Qatar, Russia and Shell.
Once again, a real lack of strategic thinking from the government and the same treasury bods who don't understand the concept of value creation.
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.
Indeed. Aren't companies obliged to act in the interests of shareholders? Not consumers?
The market ultra argument is the profit motive effectively means the consumer is king but in practice this is often hard to detect. To put it mildly.
Yet Tory members continue to mysteriously rate her very highly indeed. Maybe they are sick of winning?
I think mostly she has very poor name recognition generally compared with the other possibilities, and with Starmer - she's only been foreign sec for a few months and attention has largely been focused on the domestic agenda in that time.
I have absolutely no idea why she's so incredibly highly rated; she did an excellent job at Trade but was mostly invisible in her sundry other Ministerial positions. I think Sunak beats her 75-25 in a head-to-head if it comes to that, which I assume it won't because they have similar bases within the Parliamentary party).
Personally, I think she'd be out of her depth as PM, although she's still young and could be a good candidate in the future. She may not even stand this time - it could end up harming her prospects in the same way that Leadsom looked a better prospect before standing in 2016.
Yet Tory members continue to mysteriously rate her very highly indeed. Maybe they are sick of winning?
I think mostly she has very poor name recognition generally compared with the other possibilities, and with Starmer - she's only been foreign sec for a few months and attention has largely been focused on the domestic agenda in that time.
I have absolutely no idea why she's so incredibly highly rated; she did an excellent job at Trade but was mostly invisible in her sundry other Ministerial positions. I think Sunak beats her 75-25 in a head-to-head if it comes to that, which I assume it won't because they have similar bases within the Parliamentary party).
Personally, I think she'd be out of her depth as PM, although she's still young and could be a good candidate in the future. She may not even stand this time - it could end up harming her prospects in the same way that Leadsom looked a better prospect before standing in 2016.
Being invisible in ministerial positions generally means you haven't cocked anything up.
Yet Tory members continue to mysteriously rate her very highly indeed. Maybe they are sick of winning?
Tory members love her past republicanism.
Truss has now told Nick Robinson she bscks a constitutional monarchy. She is an ex LD Republican, Remainer pitching herself now as a Thatcherite. However on that Opinium poll Truss would lead the Tories to their worst defeat in voteshare terms since 1832 and even fewer seats than Major got in 1997
Though remember less than a third of Tory members backed her in that survey still
A Tory whose beliefs are framed entirely around the question "What will get me the gig, then?" If only there were a recent, similar exemplar for comparison.
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.
Oh God.
Bartholomew - that is Not How Numbers Work. To prove this to yourself, have a think about what would happen if the next mutation was 40x more serious. Would vaccine efficacy drop to -100%?
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.
Oh God.
Bartholomew - that is Not How Numbers Work. To prove this to yourself, have a think about what would happen if the next mutation was 40x more serious. Would vaccine efficacy drop to -100%?
Oh, so you're in FAVOUR of a Carrington Event are you, Hiroo?
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
It has introduced the discipline of the market, and has provided reduced prices.
For example, I can book a ticket from London to Leeds in a few days time for £27 return. Superb value.
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.
Why isn't there more competition with bus services? Most places end up with a local monopoly.
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
It has introduced the discipline of the market, and has provided reduced prices.
For example, I can book a ticket from London to Leeds in a few days time for £27 return. Superb value.
Yet Tory members continue to mysteriously rate her very highly indeed. Maybe they are sick of winning?
Tory members love her past republicanism.
Truss has now told Nick Robinson she backs a constitutional monarchy. She is an ex LD Republican, Remainer pitching herself now as a Tory, Thatcherite Brexiteer. However on that Opinium poll Truss would lead the Tories to their worst defeat in voteshare terms since 1832 and even fewer seats than Major got in 1997. Truss would be a UK Kim Campbell who led the Canadian Tories to a landslide defeat in 1993 based on Opinium.
Though remember less than a third of Tory members backed her in that survey still
Campbell of course not only saw the Canadian Tories trounced by the Liberals in 1993 but even overtaken by the populist rightwing Reform party. Our populist rightwing non Tory party now coincidentally called ReformUK
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
I personally am in the 3) section. The whole testing thing is ridiculous as is disrupting the economy and essential services when people are not ill but test positive
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?
The case for public ownership of rail is pretty strong imo but I doubt it'll make the Labour manifesto. Hope to be proved wrong.
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.....
I, for one, like the use of videos. After yesterday's mass spraying, we have name and shame parades.
I guess the timing is completely coincidental. Completely.
Interesting that the energy industry is asking for a £20bn 10 year state backed loan for energy subsidies and the government is considering giving it to them in order to keep prices down. Imagine winding the clock back to 2012 and creating the same £20bn state backed loan fund for companies to borrow and invest cheaply in renewable energy creation and for industry to borrow cheaply to create a whole renewable energy industry for countries where solar isn't viable.
We're going to spend the money either way, this way all we're doing is subsidising high gas prices, effectively a transfer of taxpayer cash to Qatar, Russia and Shell.
Once again, a real lack of strategic thinking from the government and the same treasury bods who don't understand the concept of value creation.
The IEA came up with the astonishing claim the other day the government actually wants much higher energy prices because of the potential profit motive. The logic is that high prices will supercharge investment in new non carbon alternatives to make a buck - bringing the price down long term.
Yet Tory members continue to mysteriously rate her very highly indeed. Maybe they are sick of winning?
Tory members love her past republicanism.
Truss has now told Nick Robinson she bscks a constitutional monarchy. She is an ex LD Republican, Remainer pitching herself now as a Thatcherite. However on that Opinium poll Truss would lead the Tories to their worst defeat in voteshare terms since 1832 and even fewer seats than Major got in 1997
Though remember less than a third of Tory members backed her in that survey still
A Tory whose beliefs are framed entirely around the question "What will get me the gig, then?" If only there were a recent, similar exemplar for comparison.
The difference was Boris backed Leave in the referendum and delivered Brexit, has always backed the monarchy and polls were clear he would beat Labour in 2019
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.
Oh God.
Bartholomew - that is Not How Numbers Work. To prove this to yourself, have a think about what would happen if the next mutation was 40x more serious. Would vaccine efficacy drop to -100%?
It is how numbers work.
20x 5% = 1 40x 5% = 2
Yes if a mutation was 40x as serious, then so long as VE remained 95% then yes we'd be in a situation twice as bad as pre vaccines.
Yet Tory members continue to mysteriously rate her very highly indeed. Maybe they are sick of winning?
Tory members love her past republicanism.
Truss has now told Nick Robinson she bscks a constitutional monarchy. She is an ex LD Republican, Remainer pitching herself now as a Thatcherite. However on that Opinium poll Truss would lead the Tories to their worst defeat in voteshare terms since 1832 and even fewer seats than Major got in 1997
Though remember less than a third of Tory members backed her in that survey still
A Tory whose beliefs are framed entirely around the question "What will get me the gig, then?" If only there were a recent, similar exemplar for comparison.
The difference was Boris backed Leave in the referendum and delivered Brexit, has always backed the monarchy and polls were clear he would beat Labour in 2019
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.
Oh for the good old days when one attached one's own personal carriage to the engine and didn't have to mix with the great unwashed!
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.
Hmmm. This is incredibly thin.
The so-called "Conservative Peer" - Viscount Gage - has not been a member of the House of Lords for more than 20 years.
Far from the work being done "for him, on his estate", afaics it is being done on an access road to an independent museum who made the application.
I don't think stooping nearly to Angela Rayner levels will help Nandy. Doesn't she have anything better?
I wonder if in a few days we will see another of those Michael Gove rebuttals?
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.
Oh God.
Bartholomew - that is Not How Numbers Work. To prove this to yourself, have a think about what would happen if the next mutation was 40x more serious. Would vaccine efficacy drop to -100%?
It is how numbers work.
20x 5% = 1 40x 5% = 2
Yes if a mutation was 40x as serious, then so long as VE remained 95% then yes we'd be in a situation twice as bad as pre vaccines.
Yet Tory members continue to mysteriously rate her very highly indeed. Maybe they are sick of winning?
I think mostly she has very poor name recognition generally compared with the other possibilities, and with Starmer - she's only been foreign sec for a few months and attention has largely been focused on the domestic agenda in that time.
I have absolutely no idea why she's so incredibly highly rated; she did an excellent job at Trade but was mostly invisible in her sundry other Ministerial positions. I think Sunak beats her 75-25 in a head-to-head if it comes to that, which I assume it won't because they have similar bases within the Parliamentary party).
Personally, I think she'd be out of her depth as PM, although she's still young and could be a good candidate in the future. She may not even stand this time - it could end up harming her prospects in the same way that Leadsom looked a better prospect before standing in 2016.
Being invisible in ministerial positions generally means you haven't cocked anything up.
Foreign Minister is usually subject to disasters elsewhere and given Covid and the new state of Afghanistan there isn't that many places that are going to have disasters in the short term.
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?
A private road for their Tory pal, corrupt to the core.
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.
Yes, Triggle is excellent. Sadly he seems to be excluded from the main news programmes in favour of irrational hysterions.
The latter generate the numbers - twas ever thus.
EDIT: Actually it was not ever thus - the BBC used to have standards.
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.
Oh God.
Bartholomew - that is Not How Numbers Work. To prove this to yourself, have a think about what would happen if the next mutation was 40x more serious. Would vaccine efficacy drop to -100%?
It is how numbers work.
20x 5% = 1 40x 5% = 2
Yes if a mutation was 40x as serious, then so long as VE remained 95% then yes we'd be in a situation twice as bad as pre vaccines.
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
It has introduced the discipline of the market, and has provided reduced prices.
For example, I can book a ticket from London to Leeds in a few days time for £27 return. Superb value.
That is hideously expensive
Really?
It is about 200 miles, or 400 miles return. At 15 pence per mile by car, that is £60.
The journey also takes 4 hours by car (one way). The train takes 2hr20m to 2ht40m.
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.
Oh God.
Bartholomew - that is Not How Numbers Work. To prove this to yourself, have a think about what would happen if the next mutation was 40x more serious. Would vaccine efficacy drop to -100%?
It is how numbers work.
20x 5% = 1 40x 5% = 2
Yes if a mutation was 40x as serious, then so long as VE remained 95% then yes we'd be in a situation twice as bad as pre vaccines.
I can't be arsed to try and explain to you why vaccine effectiveness isn't a linear function of disease severity - and as a corollary, why case loads and hospitalisation rates aren't linear functions of either - so let's just pretend I did my best and you still didn't get it, OK?
Actually, here's my one go: - Omicron is milder than Delta - Vaccines are less effective against Omicron than against Delta - This is incompatible with your argument, above
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.
Indeed. Aren't companies obliged to act in the interests of shareholders? Not consumers?
The market ultra argument is the profit motive effectively means the consumer is king but in practice this is often hard to detect. To put it mildly.
Also, how do you definitively decide what is the best interests of shareholders, who themselves are a diverse body? Are short-term profits more in their interests than financial sustainability? Or environmental sustainability?
In fact, most corporations seem to be run for the benefit of the C-suite.
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
It has introduced the discipline of the market, and has provided reduced prices.
For example, I can book a ticket from London to Leeds in a few days time for £27 return. Superb value.
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
It has introduced the discipline of the market, and has provided reduced prices.
For example, I can book a ticket from London to Leeds in a few days time for £27 return. Superb value.
That is hideously expensive
Really?
It is about 200 miles, or 400 miles return. At 15 pence per mile by car, that is £60.
The journey also takes 4 hours by car (one way). The train takes 2hr20m to 2ht40m.
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
It has introduced the discipline of the market, and has provided reduced prices.
For example, I can book a ticket from London to Leeds in a few days time for £27 return. Superb value.
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?
A private road for their Tory pal, corrupt to the core.
As ever with such stories, the reality is more nuanced. If I've got the story correct, there is a museum on the estate that is open to the public, and that is where the money has been spent. The roads from the museum to the rest of the estate buildings were paid for by the estate.
It looks bad though. Although I can remember Labour people defending Tony and Hilary Benn having their private seawall around their estate funded by the state - when other areas were going undefended...
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
It has introduced the discipline of the market, and has provided reduced prices.
For example, I can book a ticket from London to Leeds in a few days time for £27 return. Superb value.
That is hideously expensive
Really?
It is about 200 miles, or 400 miles return. At 15 pence per mile by car, that is £60.
The journey also takes 4 hours by car (one way). The train takes 2hr20m to 2ht40m.
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.
Hmmm. This is incredibly thin.
The so-called "Conservative Peer" - Viscount Gage - has not been a member of the House of Lords for more than 20 years.
Far from the work being done "for him, on his estate", afaics it is being done on an access road to an independent museum who made the application.
I don't think stooping nearly to Angela Rayner levels will help Nandy. Doesn't she have anything better?
I wonder if in a few days we will see another of those Michael Gove rebuttals?
If it's Firle Place then no, it's not just a museum, it's also a venue that can be used for weddings and private events. I'm reserving judgement on this til some clearer information comes out.
"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"
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
It has introduced the discipline of the market, and has provided reduced prices.
For example, I can book a ticket from London to Leeds in a few days time for £27 return. Superb value.
That is hideously expensive
Really?
It is about 200 miles, or 400 miles return. At 15 pence per mile by car, that is £60.
The journey also takes 4 hours by car (one way). The train takes 2hr20m to 2ht40m.
Care to say why it is 'hideously expensive' ?
Compare it to the cost of a train in Europe
Isn't the trope that the UK has the highest rail prices massively distorted by relatively short-distance commuter rail?
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
It has introduced the discipline of the market, and has provided reduced prices.
For example, I can book a ticket from London to Leeds in a few days time for £27 return. Superb value.
That is hideously expensive
Really?
It is about 200 miles, or 400 miles return. At 15 pence per mile by car, that is £60.
The journey also takes 4 hours by car (one way). The train takes 2hr20m to 2ht40m.
Care to say why it is 'hideously expensive' ?
Compare it to the cost of a train in Europe
Florence to Rome - picking a random date (Thursday 13th Jan) €32.90 or €43.90 business class one way
So actually that London to Leeds train is about half the price of a similar journey in Italy.
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?
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.
Oh God.
Bartholomew - that is Not How Numbers Work. To prove this to yourself, have a think about what would happen if the next mutation was 40x more serious. Would vaccine efficacy drop to -100%?
It is how numbers work.
20x 5% = 1 40x 5% = 2
Yes if a mutation was 40x as serious, then so long as VE remained 95% then yes we'd be in a situation twice as bad as pre vaccines.
I can't be arsed to try and explain to you why vaccine effectiveness isn't a linear function of disease severity - and as a corollary, why case loads and hospitalisation rates aren't linear functions of either - so let's just pretend I did my best and you still didn't get it, OK?
Actually, here's my one go: - Omicron is milder than Delta - Vaccines are less effective against Omicron than against Delta - This is incompatible with your argument, above
No shit Sherlock its not linear to severity, of course its not, but that's why I never used the word severity in the post you replied to I said "serious" and in overall seriousness I'm factoring in the vaccine effectiveness.
If a new variant was exactly as severe as Delta but eliminated all vaccine efficacy then that'd be basically 20x more serious for us than Delta is because of removing the 95% protection. If a new variant was twice as severe and eliminated all vaccine efficacy then we'd have your 40x more serious scenario.
But its both not very probable and if it does happen then we should cross that bridge if and when we get there.
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
It has introduced the discipline of the market, and has provided reduced prices.
For example, I can book a ticket from London to Leeds in a few days time for £27 return. Superb value.
That is hideously expensive
Really?
It is about 200 miles, or 400 miles return. At 15 pence per mile by car, that is £60.
The journey also takes 4 hours by car (one way). The train takes 2hr20m to 2ht40m.
Care to say why it is 'hideously expensive' ?
Compare it to the cost of a train in Europe
Please, go on and compare.
And if it is the case, why aren't the European railways massively more used compared to the subsidies they get? If Germany (a bigger country) pays four times the subsidy, how come they don't get four times as many passenger-KM as us? In fact, they don't get much more (8bn cf 65bn).
The point is this: for one person, and often two, railways can be very competitive with roads for many journeys, particularly ones into conurbations. I think that's probably the sweet spot.
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
It has introduced the discipline of the market, and has provided reduced prices.
For example, I can book a ticket from London to Leeds in a few days time for £27 return. Superb value.
That is hideously expensive
No it really isn't!
Yes it is
It's a very good price.
Rail privatisation has been superb for massively increased patronage, far better safety, greater investment and generally much improved quality of service. As is shown, for example, by data from the European Commission, which has the UK rail system just below the top 3 or 4 across Europe.
The changes are interesting - franchisees will get a fixed fee for running their railways, and ticket marketing / risk will transfer to the new body.
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
It has introduced the discipline of the market, and has provided reduced prices.
For example, I can book a ticket from London to Leeds in a few days time for £27 return. Superb value.
That is hideously expensive
£27 for a 200 mile journey is not hideously expensive IMO.
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
It has introduced the discipline of the market, and has provided reduced prices.
For example, I can book a ticket from London to Leeds in a few days time for £27 return. Superb value.
That is hideously expensive
Really?
It is about 200 miles, or 400 miles return. At 15 pence per mile by car, that is £60.
The journey also takes 4 hours by car (one way). The train takes 2hr20m to 2ht40m.
Care to say why it is 'hideously expensive' ?
Compare it to the cost of a train in Europe
Madrid to Valencia today €64.60 - much the cheapest offer with most around €73.
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
It has introduced the discipline of the market, and has provided reduced prices.
For example, I can book a ticket from London to Leeds in a few days time for £27 return. Superb value.
That is hideously expensive
£27 for a 200 mile journey is not hideously expensive IMO.
You could do it for a quid with Ryanair.
Although you'd still end up 200 miles from your destination.
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.
Oh God.
Bartholomew - that is Not How Numbers Work. To prove this to yourself, have a think about what would happen if the next mutation was 40x more serious. Would vaccine efficacy drop to -100%?
It is how numbers work.
20x 5% = 1 40x 5% = 2
Yes if a mutation was 40x as serious, then so long as VE remained 95% then yes we'd be in a situation twice as bad as pre vaccines.
I can't be arsed to try and explain to you why vaccine effectiveness isn't a linear function of disease severity - and as a corollary, why case loads and hospitalisation rates aren't linear functions of either - so let's just pretend I did my best and you still didn't get it, OK?
Actually, here's my one go: - Omicron is milder than Delta - Vaccines are less effective against Omicron than against Delta - This is incompatible with your argument, above
No shit Sherlock its not linear to severity, of course its not, but that's why I never used the word severity in the post you replied to I said "serious" and in overall seriousness I'm factoring in the vaccine effectiveness.
If a new variant was exactly as severe as Delta but eliminated all vaccine efficacy then that'd be basically 20x more serious for us than Delta is because of removing the 95% protection. If a new variant was twice as severe and eliminated all vaccine efficacy then we'd have your 40x more serious scenario.
But its both not very probable and if it does happen then we should cross that bridge if and when we get there.
You're out of your depth and it shows. What are your qualifications?
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
It has introduced the discipline of the market, and has provided reduced prices.
For example, I can book a ticket from London to Leeds in a few days time for £27 return. Superb value.
That is hideously expensive
Really?
It is about 200 miles, or 400 miles return. At 15 pence per mile by car, that is £60.
The journey also takes 4 hours by car (one way). The train takes 2hr20m to 2ht40m.
Care to say why it is 'hideously expensive' ?
Compare it to the cost of a train in Europe
Isn't the trope that the UK has the highest rail prices massively distorted by relatively short-distance commuter rail?
That's why it's good to compare subsidy to passenger-miles - although that doesn't account for things like freight.
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
It has introduced the discipline of the market, and has provided reduced prices.
For example, I can book a ticket from London to Leeds in a few days time for £27 return. Superb value.
That is hideously expensive
No it really isn't!
Yes it is
Are you saying that going to Leeds is something you don't value, and hence this is horrendously expensive?
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.
Oh God.
Bartholomew - that is Not How Numbers Work. To prove this to yourself, have a think about what would happen if the next mutation was 40x more serious. Would vaccine efficacy drop to -100%?
It is how numbers work.
20x 5% = 1 40x 5% = 2
Yes if a mutation was 40x as serious, then so long as VE remained 95% then yes we'd be in a situation twice as bad as pre vaccines.
I can't be arsed to try and explain to you why vaccine effectiveness isn't a linear function of disease severity - and as a corollary, why case loads and hospitalisation rates aren't linear functions of either - so let's just pretend I did my best and you still didn't get it, OK?
Actually, here's my one go: - Omicron is milder than Delta - Vaccines are less effective against Omicron than against Delta - This is incompatible with your argument, above
No shit Sherlock its not linear to severity, of course its not, but that's why I never used the word severity in the post you replied to I said "serious" and in overall seriousness I'm factoring in the vaccine effectiveness.
If a new variant was exactly as severe as Delta but eliminated all vaccine efficacy then that'd be basically 20x more serious for us than Delta is because of removing the 95% protection. If a new variant was twice as severe and eliminated all vaccine efficacy then we'd have your 40x more serious scenario.
But its both not very probable and if it does happen then we should cross that bridge if and when we get there.
You're out of your depth and it shows. What are your qualifications?
For knowing that 40x 5% = 2?
Being able to handle arithmetic without a calculator.
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.
Oh God.
Bartholomew - that is Not How Numbers Work. To prove this to yourself, have a think about what would happen if the next mutation was 40x more serious. Would vaccine efficacy drop to -100%?
It is how numbers work.
20x 5% = 1 40x 5% = 2
Yes if a mutation was 40x as serious, then so long as VE remained 95% then yes we'd be in a situation twice as bad as pre vaccines.
I can't be arsed to try and explain to you why vaccine effectiveness isn't a linear function of disease severity - and as a corollary, why case loads and hospitalisation rates aren't linear functions of either - so let's just pretend I did my best and you still didn't get it, OK?
Actually, here's my one go: - Omicron is milder than Delta - Vaccines are less effective against Omicron than against Delta - This is incompatible with your argument, above
No shit Sherlock its not linear to severity, of course its not, but that's why I never used the word severity in the post you replied to I said "serious" and in overall seriousness I'm factoring in the vaccine effectiveness.
If a new variant was exactly as severe as Delta but eliminated all vaccine efficacy then that'd be basically 20x more serious for us than Delta is because of removing the 95% protection. If a new variant was twice as severe and eliminated all vaccine efficacy then we'd have your 40x more serious scenario.
But its both not very probable and if it does happen then we should cross that bridge if and when we get there.
You're out of your depth and it shows. What are your qualifications?
Ah, he's only seriously out of his depth, not severely.
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
It has introduced the discipline of the market, and has provided reduced prices.
For example, I can book a ticket from London to Leeds in a few days time for £27 return. Superb value.
That is hideously expensive
Last time I was in Germany, rail fares seemed quite high, especially if bought at short notice. I did get a good deal from Berlin to Leipzig, but I was able to buy that one in advance. There are some good group tickets, but I was travelling on my own. The Land/Regional day tickets can be good value, especially if bought as a group, but some seem no longer available - I'm sure there used to be a Berlin-Brandenburg-Vorpommen one that took you to Szczecin, but it no longer seemed to exist.
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
It has introduced the discipline of the market, and has provided reduced prices.
For example, I can book a ticket from London to Leeds in a few days time for £27 return. Superb value.
That is hideously expensive
Really?
It is about 200 miles, or 400 miles return. At 15 pence per mile by car, that is £60.
The journey also takes 4 hours by car (one way). The train takes 2hr20m to 2ht40m.
Interesting that the energy industry is asking for a £20bn 10 year state backed loan for energy subsidies and the government is considering giving it to them in order to keep prices down. Imagine winding the clock back to 2012 and creating the same £20bn state backed loan fund for companies to borrow and invest cheaply in renewable energy creation and for industry to borrow cheaply to create a whole renewable energy industry for countries where solar isn't viable.
We're going to spend the money either way, this way all we're doing is subsidising high gas prices, effectively a transfer of taxpayer cash to Qatar, Russia and Shell.
Once again, a real lack of strategic thinking from the government and the same treasury bods who don't understand the concept of value creation.
The IEA came up with the astonishing claim the other day the government actually wants much higher energy prices because of the potential profit motive. The logic is that high prices will supercharge investment in new non carbon alternatives to make a buck - bringing the price down long term.
Its brave, minister.
It wouldn't surprise me. Not particularly brave either, given that such idiotic thinking is shared by the other side, so there's political cover.
Are these figures for the whole period 25-29 Dec or just for today? In which case where are 25-28?
From the source:
"On Wednesday 29 December and Wednesday 5 January, we will provide the latest daily data for that day and the previous 4 days."
That's unclear. "Providing daily data" would seem to me to require data ascribed to each previous day. As England did on 27th. But yes I think these are just lumped-in figures.
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
It has introduced the discipline of the market, and has provided reduced prices.
For example, I can book a ticket from London to Leeds in a few days time for £27 return. Superb value.
That is hideously expensive
Really?
It is about 200 miles, or 400 miles return. At 15 pence per mile by car, that is £60.
The journey also takes 4 hours by car (one way). The train takes 2hr20m to 2ht40m.
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?
Another assumption, all 141,000 hospital beds are occupied. Now that's clearly not true, but as we've got a backlog on operations & waiting ambulances & last minute cancelled operations it's not an assumption that's going to be colossally wrong
An interesting data point is 04 July 2021 to 10 July 2021
ONS estimates 1.06% prevalence amongst the general population. Hospitalisations on the 7th were 2,144; You'd expect there to be about 1,500 hospitalisations "incidental covid" in hospital. That's the low point with "ill because of Covid" as a proportion. If you look at the heatmap, Covid was very much amongst young people at this point.
It's amusing to see so many zero Covid zealots in a circlejerk denying that a smaller percentage of a bigger number is as serious as a bigger percentage of a smaller number ... When that was the entire point of the Omicron panic.
Chris Whitty and others have been saying that even if the virus is less severe if it effects more people it's just as serious a problem.
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
It has introduced the discipline of the market, and has provided reduced prices.
For example, I can book a ticket from London to Leeds in a few days time for £27 return. Superb value.
That is hideously expensive
Really?
It is about 200 miles, or 400 miles return. At 15 pence per mile by car, that is £60.
The journey also takes 4 hours by car (one way). The train takes 2hr20m to 2ht40m.
TLDR: UK has a wider range of prices - more expensive for walk up tickets, much cheaper for prebooked and off-peak.
A wider range of options and prices, as one would expect from a more market-based philosophy.
A wider range of prices which will better utilise the infrastructure across the whole day and week. Much better.
Aye its bollocks. The tickets should be the same price regardless of if they are booked in advance, otherwise driving will always be more convenient.
Imagine if you had to book the tube in advance?
Why? That would prevent a lot of people who find the full price difficult to afford from travelling by train. I know friends for whom a price of (approx correct prices) £20 prebooked rather than £60 walk up fare for a day trip to London from Sheffield makes the difference between travelling and not.
Why should high demand times be subsidised by low demand times?
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
It has introduced the discipline of the market, and has provided reduced prices.
For example, I can book a ticket from London to Leeds in a few days time for £27 return. Superb value.
That is hideously expensive
Really?
It is about 200 miles, or 400 miles return. At 15 pence per mile by car, that is £60.
The journey also takes 4 hours by car (one way). The train takes 2hr20m to 2ht40m.
TLDR: UK has a wider range of prices - more expensive for walk up tickets, much cheaper for prebooked and off-peak.
A wider range of options and prices, as one would expect from a more market-based philosophy.
A wider range of prices which will better utilise the infrastructure across the whole day and week. Much better.
Aye its bollocks. The tickets should be the same price regardless of if they are booked in advance, otherwise driving will always be more convenient.
Imagine if you had to book the tube in advance?
Ultimately I shouldn't have to guess how much it will cost. Charge more in peak times to "better utilise the infrastructure", sure, but the price from Newcastle Central to London Kings X at say, 10am on a weekday, should always be the same price.
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.
Why isn't there more competition with bus services? Most places end up with a local monopoly.
Local bus services are usually loss-making, and end up either run by the council or under council subsidy. Where there’s competition for buses, is in large cities and on long-distance services, and you usually see competition on those routes.
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
It has introduced the discipline of the market, and has provided reduced prices.
For example, I can book a ticket from London to Leeds in a few days time for £27 return. Superb value.
That is hideously expensive
Really?
It is about 200 miles, or 400 miles return. At 15 pence per mile by car, that is £60.
The journey also takes 4 hours by car (one way). The train takes 2hr20m to 2ht40m.
TLDR: UK has a wider range of prices - more expensive for walk up tickets, much cheaper for prebooked and off-peak.
A wider range of options and prices, as one would expect from a more market-based philosophy.
A wider range of prices which will better utilise the infrastructure across the whole day and week. Much better.
Aye its bollocks. The tickets should be the same price regardless of if they are booked in advance, otherwise driving will always be more convenient.
Imagine if you had to book the tube in advance?
Why? That would prevent a lot of people who find the full price difficult to afford from travelling by train. I know friends for whom a price of (approx correct prices) £20 prebooked rather than £60 walk up fare for a day trip to London from Sheffield makes the difference between travelling and not.
Why should high demand times be subsidised by low demand times?
I didn't say high demand times should be subsidised by low demand times.
Comments
@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
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
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.
I am very smart.
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.
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
The mistake with rail, was the huge regional service monopolies, especially on intercity routes.
I'm wholly unconvinced about Truss, and I think Sunak and Hunt would both land better with the public. All better than the FLSoJ, though.
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.
Truss gives Labour a 16% lead if she is Tory leader according to Opinium
https://twitter.com/OpiniumResearch/status/1475566541273980929?s=20
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.
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.....
Maybe they are sick of winning?
Colour me skeptical that's ever going to happen.
I reckon we've got it about right in this country, for rail services at least. Bus services should have more money invested.
Another assumption, all 141,000 hospital beds are occupied. Now that's clearly not true, but as we've got a backlog on operations & waiting ambulances & last minute cancelled operations it's not an assumption that's going to be colossally wrong
If it is to make a profit, then they wouldn't exist but for a few routes at certain hours in big cities.
So it clearly isn't that.
https://twitter.com/shjfrench/status/1476084727312523264
It's basically find a few £bn or be prepared for very large price increases.
Though remember less than a third of Tory members backed her in that survey still
We're going to spend the money either way, this way all we're doing is subsidising high gas prices, effectively a transfer of taxpayer cash to Qatar, Russia and Shell.
Once again, a real lack of strategic thinking from the government and the same treasury bods who don't understand the concept of value creation.
I have absolutely no idea why she's so incredibly highly rated; she did an excellent job at Trade but was mostly invisible in her sundry other Ministerial positions. I think Sunak beats her 75-25 in a head-to-head if it comes to that, which I assume it won't because they have similar bases within the Parliamentary party).
Personally, I think she'd be out of her depth as PM, although she's still young and could be a good candidate in the future. She may not even stand this time - it could end up harming her prospects in the same way that Leadsom looked a better prospect before standing in 2016.
If only there were a recent, similar exemplar for comparison.
Bartholomew - that is Not How Numbers Work. To prove this to yourself, have a think about what would happen if the next mutation was 40x more serious. Would vaccine efficacy drop to -100%?
For example, I can book a ticket from London to Leeds in a few days time for £27 return. Superb value.
and essential services when people are not ill but test positive
https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-daily-data-for-scotland/
I guess the timing is completely coincidental. Completely.
Its brave, minister.
20x 5% = 1
40x 5% = 2
Yes if a mutation was 40x as serious, then so long as VE remained 95% then yes we'd be in a situation twice as bad as pre vaccines.
https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/hermes-3114.gif?w=440&h=247&crop=1&quality=90&strip=all&zoom=1
The so-called "Conservative Peer" - Viscount Gage - has not been a member of the House of Lords for more than 20 years.
Far from the work being done "for him, on his estate", afaics it is being done on an access road to an independent museum who made the application.
I don't think stooping nearly to Angela Rayner levels will help Nandy. Doesn't she have anything better?
I wonder if in a few days we will see another of those Michael Gove rebuttals?
EDIT: Actually it was not ever thus - the BBC used to have standards.
It is about 200 miles, or 400 miles return. At 15 pence per mile by car, that is £60.
The journey also takes 4 hours by car (one way). The train takes 2hr20m to 2ht40m.
Care to say why it is 'hideously expensive' ?
Actually, here's my one go:
- Omicron is milder than Delta
- Vaccines are less effective against Omicron than against Delta
- This is incompatible with your argument, above
In fact, most corporations seem to be run for the benefit of the C-suite.
It looks bad though. Although I can remember Labour people defending Tony and Hilary Benn having their private seawall around their estate funded by the state - when other areas were going undefended...
I'm reserving judgement on this til some clearer information comes out.
So actually that London to Leeds train is about half the price of a similar journey in Italy.
If a new variant was exactly as severe as Delta but eliminated all vaccine efficacy then that'd be basically 20x more serious for us than Delta is because of removing the 95% protection. If a new variant was twice as severe and eliminated all vaccine efficacy then we'd have your 40x more serious scenario.
But its both not very probable and if it does happen then we should cross that bridge if and when we get there.
And if it is the case, why aren't the European railways massively more used compared to the subsidies they get? If Germany (a bigger country) pays four times the subsidy, how come they don't get four times as many passenger-KM as us? In fact, they don't get much more (8bn cf 65bn).
The point is this: for one person, and often two, railways can be very competitive with roads for many journeys, particularly ones into conurbations. I think that's probably the sweet spot.
Rail privatisation has been superb for massively increased patronage, far better safety, greater investment and generally much improved quality of service. As is shown, for example, by data from the European Commission, which has the UK rail system just below the top 3 or 4 across Europe.
The changes are interesting - franchisees will get a fixed fee for running their railways, and ticket marketing / risk will transfer to the new body.
Although you'd still end up 200 miles from your destination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_subsidies#Europe
Being able to handle arithmetic without a calculator.
"On Wednesday 29 December and Wednesday 5 January, we will provide the latest daily data for that day and the previous 4 days."
https://www.seat61.com/uk-europe-train-fares-comparison.html
TLDR: UK has a wider range of prices - more expensive for walk up tickets, much cheaper for prebooked and off-peak.
A wider range of options and prices, as one would expect from a more market-based philosophy.
A wider range of prices which will better utilise the infrastructure across the whole day and week. Much better.
Imagine if you had to book the tube in advance?
ONS estimates 1.06% prevalence amongst the general population. Hospitalisations on the 7th were 2,144;
You'd expect there to be about 1,500 hospitalisations "incidental covid" in hospital. That's the low point with "ill because of Covid" as a proportion.
If you look at the heatmap, Covid was very much amongst young people at this point.
That's the case also at 13 December
Chris Whitty and others have been saying that even if the virus is less severe if it effects more people it's just as serious a problem.
So yes 20x5% = 1. That is a mathematical truism.
Why should high demand times be subsidised by low demand times?