Is Boris gonna lock us down again, in some form or other, at 5pm?
Quick vote?
My vote is No, he won't. But I'm worried
My guess is No. If we were going to do it it would have been at Christmas, it's too late to slow the spread.
My guess is tonight is to try and kick start the booster programme again, bit Omicron has been sold as mild (even though it won't be mild for everyone, and the reason it's mild in many is because of boosters) so he is going to have difficulty selling it.
Definitely no. He's missed the boat on making a difference.
Is Boris gonna lock us down again, in some form or other, at 5pm?
Quick vote?
My vote is No, he won't. But I'm worried
I think No. I hope No. I am not 100% convinced though. I think he might crumble.
Johnson is no doubt getting a load of pressure from medical professionals on one side and from Tory MPs on the other. Only one of those groups can remove him this week.
Yep I think that is probably right. Though he might feel safe enough to risk it.
For my two pennth, the best meal I have ever had was at a restaurant that doesn't even have a michelin star. It wasn't cheap, but it certainly isn't the most expensive meal I have had.
Most of my best meals have been at non-Michelin places
Random top ten (I could choose eighty more)
Eating at Marco Pierre White's very first place, in south London (forget where) - before he had a star, wow
A crab and asparagus dish in a restaurant made from a garage outside Chiang Mai, Thailand
A beef massaman curry on a beach in Ko Tao, also Thailand
Eating at the first Barrafina off the Strand
Osyters and foie gras and gingerbread in some brilliant old school brasserie in Nantes, France
Dinner by Heston (that has a star or two)
A steak at G W Bush's favourite steak restaurant in Austin Texas
Another steak at Cabana Las Lilas in Buenos Aires
Tiny gnocchi in a private restaurant on a private vineyard on the island of Pantelleria, Italy
Some sardines, recently, in a scruffy cafe above a fish market in Sagres, Portugal
How much of this is about company, location, mood, weather, post-coital bliss - rather than food? At least half of it
I am not sure where to even begin with best food, overall.
For steak, I do. The Tasting Room in Frederick MD does a filet mignon that is the best I have had anywhere, including the best that Buenos Aires or Texas has to offer.
For Indian food, sorry to say that my best experience has been neither in India nor in the UK, but in downtown Washington DC. Rasika (chef was in London prior to moving to the US). Their palak chaat is the most delicious single Indian dish I have ever eaten. For Northern Indian, Bukhara in New York used to be the place.
For the most inventive, surprising and incredible meal I've ever eaten, Contra in lower Manhattan wins: https://contra.nyc It has one star.
For the single ingredient of a dish, Brian Voltaggio at Volt (now sadly gone) outdid everything else I have ever experienced. He does molecular cuisine, which is not my favorite style. But he made 'caviar' out of virgin olive oil. It was the most intensely pleasurable tasting experience of my life to date.
I realize this is a very US-centric list. I have had many spectacular meals in France, Italy, the UK, and Switzerland. But none of them truly stand out from the rest.
I must be incredibly unlucky because 98% of my eating experiences in America are mediocre or worse. And I have been there a LOT, and all over, and in all kinds of joints, from top NYC starred places to innovative California pop-ups to famous BBQ shacks in the Deep South
The one exception is Louisiana especially New Orleans. The food there is consistently great, and they don't do the off-puttingly enormous servings you commonly get in the USA. How can such a rich country still believe "great food = tons of food"?
I think we forget how much better food in the UK has got. Because not many pubs can survive as shitty boozers and huge competition in the restaurant sector, "bog standard" offers across the board have got a hell of a lot better in the past 20-30 years. Sure we still have cheap and crap, but that £10 for a main range has got infinity better in lots of places, and many more people are willing to pay for really good stuff (I presume tv chefs lot has helped this).
Its not that long ago that the Olympic Breakfast at a Little Chef was what people did...now they queue for the overpriced but still better offering from the likes of the Breakfast Club.
The US its seems to be cheap and shit, middle price range, eat your weight in meat...then the small niche high end.
WE DEMAND JUBILEE PANCAKES.
(Which used to be 99p)
Used to be the one of the highlight of my family holidays to Cornwall as a kid....stopping off at a Little Chef for jubilee pancakes.
Now I imagine the kids of today in Cornwall are having organic fresh hand crafted crepes with matcha ice cream...
I'm not sure things have changed that much. When we go to Cornwall we usually have a few meals at the cafe on the cliff top above Treganhawke that does all day breakfasts. Plus a few cream teas, fish and chips and ice creams. The fanciest food is usually consumed at the Eden Project.
I go to Cornwall all the time and all my extended family live there. You're really not trying very hard. There is fine food in every major town. You can get excellent Indian and Thai everywhere, for a start
This wasn't intended as a criticism. I live in London so don't go to Cornwall for interesting world cuisine, but things like cream teas and fish and chips on the beach are things we can't get at home and are handy on walks or days on the beach which is what we tend to be doing. We usually go self catering and cook dinner at the chalet anyway, it's more relaxing than eating out with kids. And we don't really visit the major towns either - we always stay in the SE corner so the only close town is across the Tamar in Plymouth which is not especially nice (it is the city of many of my forebears, so I am well disposed to it but it is not an attractive place).
Fair enough
I know I am in a TINY minority here, but I love Plymouth. It is an extraordinary city. Extraordinarily hideous in places, but extraordinarily beautiful and historic in others. An amazing topography. Also some good places to eat!
Exeter is much nicer.
I've love to say Exeter is great, but it ain't. "Exeter was a jewel, and we have destroyed it" - Hermann Goering
The Nazis razed the best of it and the town planners did the rest. It was rebuilt in hideous cheap brick and concrete. Only the tiny corner around the (gorgeous) cathedral survives
One day we should rebuild Exeter just as it was. Ditto Coventry, and so many others
Keir needs to go with the slogan Make Brexit Work.
Yes but how
The UK holds all the cards so it'll be easy for Sir Keir.
To be honest it is a genuine question and needs asking
If Mr Johnson has had his go, though, it's about time someone else tried a different approach.
Before the electorate vote in Starmer the Conservatives can shoot Labours fox by installing a proper Primeminister and government.
Am I the only person on PB.com convinced Boris is about to get vonked? Boris can’t go a fortnight without being all over papers with some shameful scandal. It’s what he is, he can’t change. The chances of a Tory poll lead under him now are zilch.
Anyone think his knew haircut is an improvement? He is beginning to look really ugly old man without trademark hair to hide it.
Anyway, important Conservative Party news. My Dad reckons the Conservative party members he knows are United the party are about to replace Bozo now because they need to get proper economic policy’s and financial policy for all the economic and financial problems Boris won’t do anything about and doesn’t have a clue about.
That’s true isn’t it? Under Boris it’s not clear what the Conservative economic and financial policy is despite Boris set piece speeches to spell it out. And that’s the reason he is being got rid of next week.
*political betting post* I had a £50 bet on Javid because I thought Rishi Sunak had wasted too much money without looking after it properly, but I’m now 99 parcent convinced Sunak is taking over this month. Can I now bet on Sunak as well, bet against my own bet?
Today's YouGov on which party would be best at handling the economy
Conservative 31% - Labour 18%
How did the missing 51% answer?
AAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!
This Party has no economic policy nor has this one, which one gets your vote. Lol.
What Big G doesn’t realise, if the government goes through another 6 months without sane financial steering, they are going to be buried in a hole there’s no getting out of. But based on my soundings up here in Yorkshire, conservative supporters do appreciate this now.
I would predict the Conservative leadership campaigns in next couple of months is going to be very educational as the candidates, like Rishi, liz and Jav are going to spell out what Conservative socio economics mean to them with policies to achieve their values.
Labour have a problem here as by summer Conservatives are going to be in a fresh new popular place.
A conservative election win next spring is even possible once failure Boris is quickly dealt with this year.
There won't be an election next Spring - the Tories want the extra seats the boundary commission changes create (and the existing boundaries are getting beyond a joke).
As for the economy I hope the candidates have enough common sense to treat Covid as a unique one off expense (so can be printed away) in ways nothing else can be.
Yes, think of the pandemic the same as a war. I’d try and see if I could get a few billion 30 year bonds off at 2% or thereabouts.
'We can’t vaccinate the planet every six months', says JCVI chief Fourth Covid jabs should not be offered until there is more evidence, the head of Britain's vaccine body has said - as he warned that giving boosters to people every six months was “not sustainable”.
6 monthly jabs may or may not be the right thing, but his remit is not "THE PLANET". It's the UK. Once again heading outside their remit.
Unless we vaccinate the planet - collectively - then we aren't immune from the next mutation.
That's another covid myth apparently: Myth #1,765 in a regular series...
We should share Covid vaccines with the world, because it is the right thing to do, but not because it will limit of emergence of 'variants' - vaccines don't generate variants but they don't preclude their emergence either - it's all a bit unclear and complicated.
Not just people either, Covid is a general mammalian phenomenon
Nevertheless a world with Covid raging is more likely to throw up things which come and fuck us up than a world with Covid under control. And the quicker we vaccinate the world the quicker we get from that first situation to the second. It's as much a practical imperative as a moral one.
No it isn't necessarily a practical or moral one and probably not a scientific one either. All governments have their first responsibility to their own population. IMHO, the first priority of Western governments is to figure out how to defeat or contain the virus. The strategies that they use will then inform them how they support other governments to do the same.
The virus respects no borders. It's a global pandemic and the best response to it is global. The more inefficient and illogical is the vaccine rollout - eg 5 or 6 jabs in one country and zero in another - the longer the pandemic will last, and the longer it lasts the more the damage will be and the more likely it is that we will be impacted.
The question then is this - to what extent should the normal rules of national centric politics - which you outline - be flexed in order to facilitate the optimum globally efficient solution?
I say the answer to this is "to a very great extent" and I think this is the correct answer. After all, this is a once-a-century emergency with an awful lot at stake. If we can't get our (global) act together for this, at least better than we are atm, when will we ever be able to?
So I am going to ask a question. I don't claim it is a fair question or perhaps even valid but it is the question that any politician has to be able to answer if they wish to accept your view.
How many people should we allow to die in this country, who could otherwise be saved, so that we can save lives of people in Africa, India, Russia or Poland?
As I say I am not saying it is a fair question but it is the question that cannot be dodged by politicians choosing to follow the route of putting global well being ahead of national well being.
And I know the obvious answer to you and probably to me is that in the long term we might actually save more lives here. But that is not certain and you are asking people to accept deaths now for fewer deaths tomorrow. That is a hard, if not impossible, sell for any politician.
It certainly was when vaccines were scarce. They no longer are though so the question is how much help are we going to give to facilitate their distribution? It should, without question, be our number 1 foreign aid objective at the moment.
Agreed. It's no longer a capacity constrained zero sum game. And even from a selfish economic point of view, it would be a sensible investment for the richer economies.
I think we get to the point soon when, in a theoretical supply constraint, even short to medium term enlightened self interest says send more vaccines abroad.
We have third and fourth doses, we are a highly vaccinated country which now favours evolutionarily nimble, mild, upper respiratory, immune evading strains like Omicron over the likes of Delta - this arrow doesn't reverse - which is not as true everywhere. We will be getting a lot of immunity from Omicron infection, including large amounts of asymptomatic and abortive infection (abortive means fought off at the front door such that it would never show up on a test). Constantly jabbing to make things milder and milder in people who already have multiple layers of immunity is a diminishing returns task.
Ultimately, people would like to travel freely again when this is ended, and once this is almost exclusively a mild disease in the UK, bringing it to an end elsewhere would become the priority, even in scarcity.
We can buy more vaccines from India than the world needs - the issue as @MaxPB has continually pointed out hasn't been on the supply side of things for months - the issue is that the demand for vaccines isn't there for multiple reasons.
For my two pennth, the best meal I have ever had was at a restaurant that doesn't even have a michelin star. It wasn't cheap, but it certainly isn't the most expensive meal I have had.
Most of my best meals have been at non-Michelin places
Random top ten (I could choose eighty more)
Eating at Marco Pierre White's very first place, in south London (forget where) - before he had a star, wow
A crab and asparagus dish in a restaurant made from a garage outside Chiang Mai, Thailand
A beef massaman curry on a beach in Ko Tao, also Thailand
Eating at the first Barrafina off the Strand
Osyters and foie gras and gingerbread in some brilliant old school brasserie in Nantes, France
Dinner by Heston (that has a star or two)
A steak at G W Bush's favourite steak restaurant in Austin Texas
Another steak at Cabana Las Lilas in Buenos Aires
Tiny gnocchi in a private restaurant on a private vineyard on the island of Pantelleria, Italy
Some sardines, recently, in a scruffy cafe above a fish market in Sagres, Portugal
How much of this is about company, location, mood, weather, post-coital bliss - rather than food? At least half of it
MPW's first restaurant was in Earlsfield SW17 in Wandsworth - it was over the road from Wandsworth common and very near my first 2 London homes - a rental in Balham when it was still quite cheap and my first ever property in Honeywell road, Wandsworth - in 1981 I think again before the area became super pricey during the glory years of the blessed one! Checking google maps looks like the restaurant is now called Chez Bruce!
When my sister was at Oxford many years ago we took our parents out for dinner at a very unprepossessing, but well-known place "Les Quats'Saison" in Summertown. The chef came over was very chatty (and French) and the portions miniscule. We enjoyed the food such as it was, came home, and ate packets of chocolate digestive biscuits because we were still famished.
Great Milton, not Summertown. Went to a wedding there once (the only time I've ever been) and had what was probably the best food I've ever had at a wedding.
That's "Le Manoir..." Les Quats'Saison was in a row of shops in Summertown for a while after it opened. Then he/it went orbital and moved to Great Milton.
I didn't know that: when did you go?
Let me think - as I said my sister was at the Uni so must have been, say, 1980-ish. It was certainly "a place" at that time but he (Blanc) hadn't gone stratospheric.
I went in 1979. it was a manky little ex-newsagents, it was freezing cold, and the food was just unbelievably good
For my two pennth, the best meal I have ever had was at a restaurant that doesn't even have a michelin star. It wasn't cheap, but it certainly isn't the most expensive meal I have had.
Most of my best meals have been at non-Michelin places
Random top ten (I could choose eighty more)
Eating at Marco Pierre White's very first place, in south London (forget where) - before he had a star, wow
A crab and asparagus dish in a restaurant made from a garage outside Chiang Mai, Thailand
A beef massaman curry on a beach in Ko Tao, also Thailand
Eating at the first Barrafina off the Strand
Osyters and foie gras and gingerbread in some brilliant old school brasserie in Nantes, France
Dinner by Heston (that has a star or two)
A steak at G W Bush's favourite steak restaurant in Austin Texas
Another steak at Cabana Las Lilas in Buenos Aires
Tiny gnocchi in a private restaurant on a private vineyard on the island of Pantelleria, Italy
Some sardines, recently, in a scruffy cafe above a fish market in Sagres, Portugal
How much of this is about company, location, mood, weather, post-coital bliss - rather than food? At least half of it
I am not sure where to even begin with best food, overall.
For steak, I do. The Tasting Room in Frederick MD does a filet mignon that is the best I have had anywhere, including the best that Buenos Aires or Texas has to offer.
For Indian food, sorry to say that my best experience has been neither in India nor in the UK, but in downtown Washington DC. Rasika (chef was in London prior to moving to the US). Their palak chaat is the most delicious single Indian dish I have ever eaten. For Northern Indian, Bukhara in New York used to be the place.
For the most inventive, surprising and incredible meal I've ever eaten, Contra in lower Manhattan wins: https://contra.nyc It has one star.
For the single ingredient of a dish, Brian Voltaggio at Volt (now sadly gone) outdid everything else I have ever experienced. He does molecular cuisine, which is not my favorite style. But he made 'caviar' out of virgin olive oil. It was the most intensely pleasurable tasting experience of my life to date.
I realize this is a very US-centric list. I have had many spectacular meals in France, Italy, the UK, and Switzerland. But none of them truly stand out from the rest.
I must be incredibly unlucky because 98% of my eating experiences in America are mediocre or worse. And I have been there a LOT, and all over, and in all kinds of joints, from top NYC starred places to innovative California pop-ups to famous BBQ shacks in the Deep South
The one exception is Louisiana especially New Orleans. The food there is consistently great, and they don't do the off-puttingly enormous servings you commonly get in the USA. How can such a rich country still believe "great food = tons of food"?
I think we forget how much better food in the UK has got. Because not many pubs can survive as shitty boozers and huge competition in the restaurant sector, "bog standard" offers across the board have got a hell of a lot better in the past 20-30 years. Sure we still have cheap and crap, but that £10 for a main range has got infinity better in lots of places, and many more people are willing to pay for really good stuff (I presume tv chefs lot has helped this).
Its not that long ago that the Olympic Breakfast at a Little Chef was what people did...now they queue for the overpriced but still better offering from the likes of the Breakfast Club.
The US its seems to be cheap and shit, middle price range, eat your weight in meat...then the small niche high end.
WE DEMAND JUBILEE PANCAKES.
(Which used to be 99p)
Used to be the one of the highlight of my family holidays to Cornwall as a kid....stopping off at a Little Chef for jubilee pancakes.
Now I imagine the kids of today in Cornwall are having organic fresh hand crafted crepes with matcha ice cream...
I'm not sure things have changed that much. When we go to Cornwall we usually have a few meals at the cafe on the cliff top above Treganhawke that does all day breakfasts. Plus a few cream teas, fish and chips and ice creams. The fanciest food is usually consumed at the Eden Project.
I go to Cornwall all the time and all my extended family live there. You're really not trying very hard. There is fine food in every major town. You can get excellent Indian and Thai everywhere, for a start
This wasn't intended as a criticism. I live in London so don't go to Cornwall for interesting world cuisine, but things like cream teas and fish and chips on the beach are things we can't get at home and are handy on walks or days on the beach which is what we tend to be doing. We usually go self catering and cook dinner at the chalet anyway, it's more relaxing than eating out with kids. And we don't really visit the major towns either - we always stay in the SE corner so the only close town is across the Tamar in Plymouth which is not especially nice (it is the city of many of my forebears, so I am well disposed to it but it is not an attractive place).
Fair enough
I know I am in a TINY minority here, but I love Plymouth. It is an extraordinary city. Extraordinarily hideous in places, but extraordinarily beautiful and historic in others. An amazing topography. Also some good places to eat!
I'll say this for Plymouth: arriving there by ferry is in my book the finest way to arrive in England.
'We can’t vaccinate the planet every six months', says JCVI chief Fourth Covid jabs should not be offered until there is more evidence, the head of Britain's vaccine body has said - as he warned that giving boosters to people every six months was “not sustainable”.
6 monthly jabs may or may not be the right thing, but his remit is not "THE PLANET". It's the UK. Once again heading outside their remit.
Unless we vaccinate the planet - collectively - then we aren't immune from the next mutation.
That's another covid myth apparently: Myth #1,765 in a regular series...
We should share Covid vaccines with the world, because it is the right thing to do, but not because it will limit of emergence of 'variants' - vaccines don't generate variants but they don't preclude their emergence either - it's all a bit unclear and complicated.
Not just people either, Covid is a general mammalian phenomenon
Nevertheless a world with Covid raging is more likely to throw up things which come and fuck us up than a world with Covid under control. And the quicker we vaccinate the world the quicker we get from that first situation to the second. It's as much a practical imperative as a moral one.
No it isn't necessarily a practical or moral one and probably not a scientific one either. All governments have their first responsibility to their own population. IMHO, the first priority of Western governments is to figure out how to defeat or contain the virus. The strategies that they use will then inform them how they support other governments to do the same.
The virus respects no borders. It's a global pandemic and the best response to it is global. The more inefficient and illogical is the vaccine rollout - eg 5 or 6 jabs in one country and zero in another - the longer the pandemic will last, and the longer it lasts the more the damage will be and the more likely it is that we will be impacted.
The question then is this - to what extent should the normal rules of national centric politics - which you outline - be flexed in order to facilitate the optimum globally efficient solution?
I say the answer to this is "to a very great extent" and I think this is the correct answer. After all, this is a once-a-century emergency with an awful lot at stake. If we can't get our (global) act together for this, at least better than we are atm, when will we ever be able to?
So I am going to ask a question. I don't claim it is a fair question or perhaps even valid but it is the question that any politician has to be able to answer if they wish to accept your view.
How many people should we allow to die in this country, who could otherwise be saved, so that we can save lives of people in Africa, India, Russia or Poland?
As I say I am not saying it is a fair question but it is the question that cannot be dodged by politicians choosing to follow the route of putting global well being ahead of national well being.
And I know the obvious answer to you and probably to me is that in the long term we might actually save more lives here. But that is not certain and you are asking people to accept deaths now for fewer deaths tomorrow. That is a hard, if not impossible, sell for any politician.
I'll avoid the obvious answer and instead acknowledge what you say - that it's hard for any national government not to be driven entirely by high viz short term national interest, eg (for here) what booster strategy gets us out of all restrictions asap this year, end of story.
So, in practice, I guess the best we can hope for is that the global case is pushed by the likes of the WHO and various leading scientists and that it gets at least some traction with decision makers. Ie I feel the dead opposite to those who see that case being made by such people and respond "They should shut up. Not in their brief". I think the more noise is made about this the better.
Imagine we reach end of 2023 and Covid is conquered (for now) in the developed world but still raging most everywhere else. That, given the early brilliance in developing vaccines and treatments, would be such a shame - and furthermore a depressing sign that for all our tech and intelligence and progress we can't meet the big challenges.
Is Boris gonna lock us down again, in some form or other, at 5pm?
Quick vote?
My vote is No, he won't. But I'm worried
My guess is No. If we were going to do it it would have been at Christmas, it's too late to slow the spread.
My guess is tonight is to try and kick start the booster programme again, bit Omicron has been sold as mild (even though it won't be mild for everyone, and the reason it's mild in many is because of boosters) so he is going to have difficulty selling it.
Back again denying Omicron is milder again I see. Presumably South African's non-existant booster campaign made it milder there?
Don't be an arse. Covid has been mild for the vast 'majority' from original strain to Omicron, especially thanks to vaccines.
But it won't be mild for everyone like it is being sold by many right now. It also doesn't help when you are trying to get people to have boosters to protect the.most vulnerable, it's key we keep this programme going.
Jog on!
Omicron has a lower average case severity in unvaccinated people than Delta. It is "milder". There's too many studies and clinical evidence showing that to deny it. I don't understand why anyone would either.
For my two pennth, the best meal I have ever had was at a restaurant that doesn't even have a michelin star. It wasn't cheap, but it certainly isn't the most expensive meal I have had.
Most of my best meals have been at non-Michelin places
Random top ten (I could choose eighty more)
Eating at Marco Pierre White's very first place, in south London (forget where) - before he had a star, wow
A crab and asparagus dish in a restaurant made from a garage outside Chiang Mai, Thailand
A beef massaman curry on a beach in Ko Tao, also Thailand
Eating at the first Barrafina off the Strand
Osyters and foie gras and gingerbread in some brilliant old school brasserie in Nantes, France
Dinner by Heston (that has a star or two)
A steak at G W Bush's favourite steak restaurant in Austin Texas
Another steak at Cabana Las Lilas in Buenos Aires
Tiny gnocchi in a private restaurant on a private vineyard on the island of Pantelleria, Italy
Some sardines, recently, in a scruffy cafe above a fish market in Sagres, Portugal
How much of this is about company, location, mood, weather, post-coital bliss - rather than food? At least half of it
MPW's first restaurant was in Earlsfield SW17 in Wandsworth - it was over the road from Wandsworth common and very near my first 2 London homes - a rental in Balham when it was still quite cheap and my first ever property in Honeywell road, Wandsworth - in 1981 I think again before the area became super pricey during the glory years of the blessed one! Checking google maps looks like the restaurant is now called Chez Bruce!
When my sister was at Oxford many years ago we took our parents out for dinner at a very unprepossessing, but well-known place "Les Quats'Saison" in Summertown. The chef came over was very chatty (and French) and the portions miniscule. We enjoyed the food such as it was, came home, and ate packets of chocolate digestive biscuits because we were still famished.
Great Milton, not Summertown. Went to a wedding there once (the only time I've ever been) and had what was probably the best food I've ever had at a wedding.
That's "Le Manoir..." Les Quats'Saison was in a row of shops in Summertown for a while after it opened. Then he/it went orbital and moved to Great Milton.
I didn't know that: when did you go?
Let me think - as I said my sister was at the Uni so must have been, say, 1980-ish. It was certainly "a place" at that time but he (Blanc) hadn't gone stratospheric.
I went in 1979. it was a manky little ex-newsagents, it was freezing cold, and the food was just unbelievably good
Yep. But absolutely miniscule portions. Right at the height (depths?) of the nouvelle cuisine movement. It became a family joke that we came back and scoffed chocolate digestive biscuits.
For my two pennth, the best meal I have ever had was at a restaurant that doesn't even have a michelin star. It wasn't cheap, but it certainly isn't the most expensive meal I have had.
Most of my best meals have been at non-Michelin places
Random top ten (I could choose eighty more)
Eating at Marco Pierre White's very first place, in south London (forget where) - before he had a star, wow
A crab and asparagus dish in a restaurant made from a garage outside Chiang Mai, Thailand
A beef massaman curry on a beach in Ko Tao, also Thailand
Eating at the first Barrafina off the Strand
Osyters and foie gras and gingerbread in some brilliant old school brasserie in Nantes, France
Dinner by Heston (that has a star or two)
A steak at G W Bush's favourite steak restaurant in Austin Texas
Another steak at Cabana Las Lilas in Buenos Aires
Tiny gnocchi in a private restaurant on a private vineyard on the island of Pantelleria, Italy
Some sardines, recently, in a scruffy cafe above a fish market in Sagres, Portugal
How much of this is about company, location, mood, weather, post-coital bliss - rather than food? At least half of it
MPW's first restaurant was in Earlsfield SW17 in Wandsworth - it was over the road from Wandsworth common and very near my first 2 London homes - a rental in Balham when it was still quite cheap and my first ever property in Honeywell road, Wandsworth - in 1981 I think again before the area became super pricey during the glory years of the blessed one! Checking google maps looks like the restaurant is now called Chez Bruce!
When my sister was at Oxford many years ago we took our parents out for dinner at a very unprepossessing, but well-known place "Les Quats'Saison" in Summertown. The chef came over was very chatty (and French) and the portions miniscule. We enjoyed the food such as it was, came home, and ate packets of chocolate digestive biscuits because we were still famished.
Great Milton, not Summertown. Went to a wedding there once (the only time I've ever been) and had what was probably the best food I've ever had at a wedding.
That's "Le Manoir..." Les Quats'Saison was in a row of shops in Summertown for a while after it opened. Then he/it went orbital and moved to Great Milton.
I didn't know that: when did you go?
Let me think - as I said my sister was at the Uni so must have been, say, 1980-ish. It was certainly "a place" at that time but he (Blanc) hadn't gone stratospheric.
It was in Great Milton by the end of that decade: I wonder when he moved.
Is Boris gonna lock us down again, in some form or other, at 5pm?
Quick vote?
My vote is No, he won't. But I'm worried
After his poll bounce from not locking down over Christmas and New Year I would guess not.
Nothing in it for him. Those who want a new lockdown or more restrictions are almost all Labour or SNP voters anyway
Are they? I thought they skewed predominantly old? The young and city dwellers seem to be the ones getting on with it.
If that was the case why has Boris got a bounce in the latest poll for the Tories after imposing not a single new restriction over Christmas and New Year almost entirely from anti restriction voters going back from RefUK and LDs to the Tories while the Labour vote is little changed?
O/T - There have been a couple of articles about risks in 2022. None particularly great and worth linking. However they often point to similar themes - Inflation, Putin, Chinese aggression, Chinese collapse. My top two worries would be Putin and inflation.
With Putin nothing is likely to happen until the spring - insane to fight in winter. I don't think it's at all likely that anything will happen anyway.
Inflation - I know monetarism apparently conquered inflation, but the evidence since has been really unconvincing. I really don't think economists (or anyone else) understand economics, and inflation really can be bad in so many ways.
Would others here have similar worries and thoughts?
Disagree re Putin. I'm surprised he hasn't already gone in. Why? gas. By far his biggest lever over the West is restricting the gas supply to Europe and I've little doubt that he'd play that card if the Western response to an invasion was sufficiently severe. Surely that's why he's been keeping supplies tight these last months - to draw down Europe's stocks and make it all the more vulnerable to supply?
(Yes, Russia is doing very well out of the high gas price at the moment but it's a silly medium-term strategy as it just encourages customers to look to other suppliers and other fuels. As a policy, it only makes sense in the short term).
Once the temperatures start to pick up - or once Europe's stocks start to recover from other imports - Putin loses that leverage.
I agree re inflation being a serious risk in 2022. Turkey may well undergo some kind of revolution this year as it heads towards hyperinflation. I could easily see the US hitting double-digit growth in prices given the scale of monetary growth these last two years, combined with low interest rates and incredibly loose fiscal policy. The UK shouldn't go that high but even here, the govt and BoE are running very expansionary policies and Brexit adds a load of friction to heat the economy further.
Inflation is of course a blessing and a curse. Gets rid of government debt and kills the holders of bonds and generally is awful for companies.
Oldthink. 25%+ of govt debt is indexed these days, so no longer a free ride for them
Is Boris gonna lock us down again, in some form or other, at 5pm?
Quick vote?
My vote is No, he won't. But I'm worried
My guess is No. If we were going to do it it would have been at Christmas, it's too late to slow the spread.
My guess is tonight is to try and kick start the booster programme again, bit Omicron has been sold as mild (even though it won't be mild for everyone, and the reason it's mild in many is because of boosters) so he is going to have difficulty selling it.
Back again denying Omicron is milder again I see. Presumably South African's non-existant booster campaign made it milder there?
Don't be an arse. Covid has been mild for the vast 'majority' from original strain to Omicron, especially thanks to vaccines.
But it won't be mild for everyone like it is being sold by many right now. It also doesn't help when you are trying to get people to have boosters to protect the.most vulnerable, it's key we keep this programme going.
Jog on!
Omicron has a lower average case severity in unvaccinated people than Delta. It is "milder". There's too many studies and clinical evidence showing that to deny it. I don't understand why anyone would either.
I think the distinction is between milder and mild.
Is Boris gonna lock us down again, in some form or other, at 5pm?
Quick vote?
My vote is No, he won't. But I'm worried
My guess is No. If we were going to do it it would have been at Christmas, it's too late to slow the spread.
My guess is tonight is to try and kick start the booster programme again, bit Omicron has been sold as mild (even though it won't be mild for everyone, and the reason it's mild in many is because of boosters) so he is going to have difficulty selling it.
Back again denying Omicron is milder again I see. Presumably South African's non-existant booster campaign made it milder there?
Don't be an arse. Covid has been mild for the vast 'majority' from original strain to Omicron, especially thanks to vaccines.
But it won't be mild for everyone like it is being sold by many right now. It also doesn't help when you are trying to get people to have boosters to protect the.most vulnerable, it's key we keep this programme going.
Jog on!
Just because you're a flibbertyjibbet rather than an anti-vaxxer doesn't give you carte blanche to talk absolute anti-scientific rubbish.
Omicron is 100% undeniably milder than Delta, and no amount of anecdotes about some people still getting ill stops it being milder.
I see we are approaching the peak "speaking in a personal capacity" part of the latest variant wave.
That’s bollocks. Either you talk to the government, or you talk to the media, same rules as departmental SpAds. If you choose to talk to the media, then you can be replaced on the panel advising the government.
Is Boris gonna lock us down again, in some form or other, at 5pm?
Quick vote?
My vote is No, he won't. But I'm worried
I think No. I hope No. I am not 100% convinced though. I think he might crumble.
Johnson is no doubt getting a load of pressure from medical professionals on one side and from Tory MPs on the other. Only one of those groups can remove him this week.
I vote No. He would be deposed within 48 hours I think if he announces lockdown tonight. The data just isn't there and the backbench have run out of patience with SAGE and modelling anyway.
I vote No. He would be deposed within 48 hours I think if he announces lockdown tonight. The data just isn't there and the backbench and the public have run out of patience with SAGE and modelling anyway.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 3h This is getting utterly ridiculous now. When this is over the membership and function of SAGE has to be comprehensively reviewed.
Really?
There was a long period on here where poster after poster would rush to defend SAGE or I-SAGE from any scrutiny whatsoever.
The mere suggestion of an agenda would invite a torrent of invective.
Really?
I think you've been reading a different forum to me then.
Is Boris gonna lock us down again, in some form or other, at 5pm?
Quick vote?
My vote is No, he won't. But I'm worried
My guess is No. If we were going to do it it would have been at Christmas, it's too late to slow the spread.
My guess is tonight is to try and kick start the booster programme again, bit Omicron has been sold as mild (even though it won't be mild for everyone, and the reason it's mild in many is because of boosters) so he is going to have difficulty selling it.
Back again denying Omicron is milder again I see. Presumably South African's non-existant booster campaign made it milder there?
Don't be an arse. Covid has been mild for the vast 'majority' from original strain to Omicron, especially thanks to vaccines.
But it won't be mild for everyone like it is being sold by many right now. It also doesn't help when you are trying to get people to have boosters to protect the.most vulnerable, it's key we keep this programme going.
Jog on!
Just because you're a flibbertyjibbet rather than an anti-vaxxer doesn't give you carte blanche to talk absolute anti-scientific rubbish.
Omicron is 100% undeniably milder than Delta, and no amount of anecdotes about some people still getting ill stops it being milder.
So it's catagorically, and undeniably mild for everyone? There is no threat at all and therefore people don't need to get boosted?
O/T - There have been a couple of articles about risks in 2022. None particularly great and worth linking. However they often point to similar themes - Inflation, Putin, Chinese aggression, Chinese collapse. My top two worries would be Putin and inflation.
With Putin nothing is likely to happen until the spring - insane to fight in winter. I don't think it's at all likely that anything will happen anyway.
Inflation - I know monetarism apparently conquered inflation, but the evidence since has been really unconvincing. I really don't think economists (or anyone else) understand economics, and inflation really can be bad in so many ways.
Would others here have similar worries and thoughts?
Disagree re Putin. I'm surprised he hasn't already gone in. Why? gas. By far his biggest lever over the West is restricting the gas supply to Europe and I've little doubt that he'd play that card if the Western response to an invasion was sufficiently severe. Surely that's why he's been keeping supplies tight these last months - to draw down Europe's stocks and make it all the more vulnerable to supply?
(Yes, Russia is doing very well out of the high gas price at the moment but it's a silly medium-term strategy as it just encourages customers to look to other suppliers and other fuels. As a policy, it only makes sense in the short term).
Once the temperatures start to pick up - or once Europe's stocks start to recover from other imports - Putin loses that leverage.
I agree re inflation being a serious risk in 2022. Turkey may well undergo some kind of revolution this year as it heads towards hyperinflation. I could easily see the US hitting double-digit growth in prices given the scale of monetary growth these last two years, combined with low interest rates and incredibly loose fiscal policy. The UK shouldn't go that high but even here, the govt and BoE are running very expansionary policies and Brexit adds a load of friction to heat the economy further.
Inflation is of course a blessing and a curse. Gets rid of government debt and kills the holders of bonds and generally is awful for companies.
Oldthink. 25%+ of govt debt is indexed these days, so no longer a free ride for them
No - you're dead right. Indexed-linked debt sounds like a good idea but could be a death trap. The problem as I said above is that economists don't understand economics, and nor do I.
'We can’t vaccinate the planet every six months', says JCVI chief Fourth Covid jabs should not be offered until there is more evidence, the head of Britain's vaccine body has said - as he warned that giving boosters to people every six months was “not sustainable”.
6 monthly jabs may or may not be the right thing, but his remit is not "THE PLANET". It's the UK. Once again heading outside their remit.
Unless we vaccinate the planet - collectively - then we aren't immune from the next mutation.
That's another covid myth apparently: Myth #1,765 in a regular series...
We should share Covid vaccines with the world, because it is the right thing to do, but not because it will limit of emergence of 'variants' - vaccines don't generate variants but they don't preclude their emergence either - it's all a bit unclear and complicated.
Not just people either, Covid is a general mammalian phenomenon
Nevertheless a world with Covid raging is more likely to throw up things which come and fuck us up than a world with Covid under control. And the quicker we vaccinate the world the quicker we get from that first situation to the second. It's as much a practical imperative as a moral one.
No it isn't necessarily a practical or moral one and probably not a scientific one either. All governments have their first responsibility to their own population. IMHO, the first priority of Western governments is to figure out how to defeat or contain the virus. The strategies that they use will then inform them how they support other governments to do the same.
The virus respects no borders. It's a global pandemic and the best response to it is global. The more inefficient and illogical is the vaccine rollout - eg 5 or 6 jabs in one country and zero in another - the longer the pandemic will last, and the longer it lasts the more the damage will be and the more likely it is that we will be impacted.
The question then is this - to what extent should the normal rules of national centric politics - which you outline - be flexed in order to facilitate the optimum globally efficient solution?
I say the answer to this is "to a very great extent" and I think this is the correct answer. After all, this is a once-a-century emergency with an awful lot at stake. If we can't get our (global) act together for this, at least better than we are atm, when will we ever be able to?
So I am going to ask a question. I don't claim it is a fair question or perhaps even valid but it is the question that any politician has to be able to answer if they wish to accept your view.
How many people should we allow to die in this country, who could otherwise be saved, so that we can save lives of people in Africa, India, Russia or Poland?
As I say I am not saying it is a fair question but it is the question that cannot be dodged by politicians choosing to follow the route of putting global well being ahead of national well being.
And I know the obvious answer to you and probably to me is that in the long term we might actually save more lives here. But that is not certain and you are asking people to accept deaths now for fewer deaths tomorrow. That is a hard, if not impossible, sell for any politician.
I'll avoid the obvious answer and instead acknowledge what you say - that it's hard for any national government not to be driven entirely by high viz short term national interest, eg (for here) what booster strategy gets us out of all restrictions asap this year, end of story.
So, in practice, I guess the best we can hope for is that the global case is pushed by the likes of the WHO and various leading scientists and that it gets at least some traction with decision makers. Ie I feel the dead opposite to those who see that case being made by such people and respond "They should shut up. Not in their brief". I think the more noise is made about this the better.
Imagine we reach end of 2023 and Covid is conquered (for now) in the developed world but still raging most everywhere else. That, given the early brilliance in developing vaccines and treatments, would be such a shame - and furthermore a depressing sign that for all our tech and intelligence and progress we can't meet the big challenges.
The issue is -
- The supply of vaccines is no longer the issue. We are looking at 24 billion doses manufactured by the middle of this year. There are about 8 Billion people on the planet. - So Harry Hair Shirting about not "hoarding" vaccinations doesn't actually make sense. Not doing boosters or vaccinating children in the UK will not materially effect vaccine availability world wide.
Is Boris gonna lock us down again, in some form or other, at 5pm?
Quick vote?
My vote is No, he won't. But I'm worried
I think No. I hope No. I am not 100% convinced though. I think he might crumble.
Johnson is no doubt getting a load of pressure from medical professionals on one side and from Tory MPs on the other. Only one of those groups can remove him this week.
I vote No. He would be deposed within 48 hours I think if he announces lockdown tonight. The data just isn't there and the backbench have run out of patience with SAGE and modelling anyway.
I vote No. He would be deposed within 48 hours I think if he announces lockdown tonight. The data just isn't there and the backbench and the public have run out of patience with SAGE and modelling anyway.
FTFY.
Yes, even with the incidentals it doesn't look like we'll reach anything like 3,000 hospitalisations per day which was the best case scenario for Omicron (not including incidentals).
Is Boris gonna lock us down again, in some form or other, at 5pm?
Quick vote?
My vote is No, he won't. But I'm worried
After his poll bounce from not locking down over Christmas and New Year I would guess not.
Nothing in it for him. Those who want a new lockdown or more restrictions are almost all Labour or SNP voters anyway
Are they? I thought they skewed predominantly old? The young and city dwellers seem to be the ones getting on with it.
If that was the case why has Boris got a bounce in the latest poll for the Tories after imposing not a single new restriction over Christmas and New Year almost entirely from anti restriction voters going back from RefUK and LDs to the Tories while the Labour vote is little changed?
Cos some people are very strongly motivated by this issue? I don't see how that justifies the claim that people who support a lockdown are Labour or SNP voters. Do you have any evidence for that.
Not sure I like the chances of daily testing for essential workers not just resulting in even more forced isolation for well people. Not a great track record to suggest this will successfully reduce spread enough to 'payback' and result in higher staff availability (as if these people only meet and catch it from colleagues anyway).
Not sure I like the chances of daily testing for essential workers not just resulting in even more forced isolation for well people. Not a great track record to suggest this will successfully reduce spread enough to 'payback' and result in higher staff availability (as if these people only meet and catch it from colleagues anyway).
Not sure I like the chances of daily testing for essential workers not just resulting in even more forced isolation for well people. Not a great track record to suggest this will successfully reduce spread enough to 'payback' and result in higher staff availability (as if these people only meet and catch it from colleagues anyway).
Not sure I like the chances of daily testing for essential workers not just resulting in even more forced isolation for well people. Not a great track record to suggest this will successfully reduce spread enough to 'payback' and result in higher staff availability (as if these people only meet and catch it from colleagues anyway).
Boris' brainwave to deal with isolation requirements causing mass staff absence is to ramp up testing even more. Someone should try to sell this idiot a bridge.
'We can’t vaccinate the planet every six months', says JCVI chief Fourth Covid jabs should not be offered until there is more evidence, the head of Britain's vaccine body has said - as he warned that giving boosters to people every six months was “not sustainable”.
6 monthly jabs may or may not be the right thing, but his remit is not "THE PLANET". It's the UK. Once again heading outside their remit.
Unless we vaccinate the planet - collectively - then we aren't immune from the next mutation.
That's another covid myth apparently: Myth #1,765 in a regular series...
We should share Covid vaccines with the world, because it is the right thing to do, but not because it will limit of emergence of 'variants' - vaccines don't generate variants but they don't preclude their emergence either - it's all a bit unclear and complicated.
Not just people either, Covid is a general mammalian phenomenon
Nevertheless a world with Covid raging is more likely to throw up things which come and fuck us up than a world with Covid under control. And the quicker we vaccinate the world the quicker we get from that first situation to the second. It's as much a practical imperative as a moral one.
No it isn't necessarily a practical or moral one and probably not a scientific one either. All governments have their first responsibility to their own population. IMHO, the first priority of Western governments is to figure out how to defeat or contain the virus. The strategies that they use will then inform them how they support other governments to do the same.
The virus respects no borders. It's a global pandemic and the best response to it is global. The more inefficient and illogical is the vaccine rollout - eg 5 or 6 jabs in one country and zero in another - the longer the pandemic will last, and the longer it lasts the more the damage will be and the more likely it is that we will be impacted.
The question then is this - to what extent should the normal rules of national centric politics - which you outline - be flexed in order to facilitate the optimum globally efficient solution?
I say the answer to this is "to a very great extent" and I think this is the correct answer. After all, this is a once-a-century emergency with an awful lot at stake. If we can't get our (global) act together for this, at least better than we are atm, when will we ever be able to?
So I am going to ask a question. I don't claim it is a fair question or perhaps even valid but it is the question that any politician has to be able to answer if they wish to accept your view.
How many people should we allow to die in this country, who could otherwise be saved, so that we can save lives of people in Africa, India, Russia or Poland?
As I say I am not saying it is a fair question but it is the question that cannot be dodged by politicians choosing to follow the route of putting global well being ahead of national well being.
And I know the obvious answer to you and probably to me is that in the long term we might actually save more lives here. But that is not certain and you are asking people to accept deaths now for fewer deaths tomorrow. That is a hard, if not impossible, sell for any politician.
I'll avoid the obvious answer and instead acknowledge what you say - that it's hard for any national government not to be driven entirely by high viz short term national interest, eg (for here) what booster strategy gets us out of all restrictions asap this year, end of story.
So, in practice, I guess the best we can hope for is that the global case is pushed by the likes of the WHO and various leading scientists and that it gets at least some traction with decision makers. Ie I feel the dead opposite to those who see that case being made by such people and respond "They should shut up. Not in their brief". I think the more noise is made about this the better.
Imagine we reach end of 2023 and Covid is conquered (for now) in the developed world but still raging most everywhere else. That, given the early brilliance in developing vaccines and treatments, would be such a shame - and furthermore a depressing sign that for all our tech and intelligence and progress we can't meet the big challenges.
Yep I would agree with all of that. Furthermore as has been said so many times before, whilst this still rages in other parts of the world there is every chance we might get a mutation that causes us further grief even though we are vaccinated. It is in our best interests to get this under control everywhere. That is nota zero covid ideal - I agree that is impractical - but to get it to the point where it is endemic around the world rather than still running away from us seems a sensible and moral aim.
For my two pennth, the best meal I have ever had was at a restaurant that doesn't even have a michelin star. It wasn't cheap, but it certainly isn't the most expensive meal I have had.
Most of my best meals have been at non-Michelin places
Random top ten (I could choose eighty more)
Eating at Marco Pierre White's very first place, in south London (forget where) - before he had a star, wow
A crab and asparagus dish in a restaurant made from a garage outside Chiang Mai, Thailand
A beef massaman curry on a beach in Ko Tao, also Thailand
Eating at the first Barrafina off the Strand
Osyters and foie gras and gingerbread in some brilliant old school brasserie in Nantes, France
Dinner by Heston (that has a star or two)
A steak at G W Bush's favourite steak restaurant in Austin Texas
Another steak at Cabana Las Lilas in Buenos Aires
Tiny gnocchi in a private restaurant on a private vineyard on the island of Pantelleria, Italy
Some sardines, recently, in a scruffy cafe above a fish market in Sagres, Portugal
How much of this is about company, location, mood, weather, post-coital bliss - rather than food? At least half of it
I am not sure where to even begin with best food, overall.
For steak, I do. The Tasting Room in Frederick MD does a filet mignon that is the best I have had anywhere, including the best that Buenos Aires or Texas has to offer.
For Indian food, sorry to say that my best experience has been neither in India nor in the UK, but in downtown Washington DC. Rasika (chef was in London prior to moving to the US). Their palak chaat is the most delicious single Indian dish I have ever eaten. For Northern Indian, Bukhara in New York used to be the place.
For the most inventive, surprising and incredible meal I've ever eaten, Contra in lower Manhattan wins: https://contra.nyc It has one star.
For the single ingredient of a dish, Brian Voltaggio at Volt (now sadly gone) outdid everything else I have ever experienced. He does molecular cuisine, which is not my favorite style. But he made 'caviar' out of virgin olive oil. It was the most intensely pleasurable tasting experience of my life to date.
I realize this is a very US-centric list. I have had many spectacular meals in France, Italy, the UK, and Switzerland. But none of them truly stand out from the rest.
I must be incredibly unlucky because 98% of my eating experiences in America are mediocre or worse. And I have been there a LOT, and all over, and in all kinds of joints, from top NYC starred places to innovative California pop-ups to famous BBQ shacks in the Deep South
The one exception is Louisiana especially New Orleans. The food there is consistently great, and they don't do the off-puttingly enormous servings you commonly get in the USA. How can such a rich country still believe "great food = tons of food"?
I think we forget how much better food in the UK has got. Because not many pubs can survive as shitty boozers and huge competition in the restaurant sector, "bog standard" offers across the board have got a hell of a lot better in the past 20-30 years. Sure we still have cheap and crap, but that £10 for a main range has got infinity better in lots of places, and many more people are willing to pay for really good stuff (I presume tv chefs lot has helped this).
Its not that long ago that the Olympic Breakfast at a Little Chef was what people did...now they queue for the overpriced but still better offering from the likes of the Breakfast Club.
The US its seems to be cheap and shit, middle price range, eat your weight in meat...then the small niche high end.
WE DEMAND JUBILEE PANCAKES.
(Which used to be 99p)
Used to be the one of the highlight of my family holidays to Cornwall as a kid....stopping off at a Little Chef for jubilee pancakes.
Now I imagine the kids of today in Cornwall are having organic fresh hand crafted crepes with matcha ice cream...
I'm not sure things have changed that much. When we go to Cornwall we usually have a few meals at the cafe on the cliff top above Treganhawke that does all day breakfasts. Plus a few cream teas, fish and chips and ice creams. The fanciest food is usually consumed at the Eden Project.
I go to Cornwall all the time and all my extended family live there. You're really not trying very hard. There is fine food in every major town. You can get excellent Indian and Thai everywhere, for a start
This wasn't intended as a criticism. I live in London so don't go to Cornwall for interesting world cuisine, but things like cream teas and fish and chips on the beach are things we can't get at home and are handy on walks or days on the beach which is what we tend to be doing. We usually go self catering and cook dinner at the chalet anyway, it's more relaxing than eating out with kids. And we don't really visit the major towns either - we always stay in the SE corner so the only close town is across the Tamar in Plymouth which is not especially nice (it is the city of many of my forebears, so I am well disposed to it but it is not an attractive place).
Fair enough
I know I am in a TINY minority here, but I love Plymouth. It is an extraordinary city. Extraordinarily hideous in places, but extraordinarily beautiful and historic in others. An amazing topography. Also some good places to eat!
I'll say this for Plymouth: arriving there by ferry is in my book the finest way to arrive in England.
I'm slightly surprised after Leon's comments on Wick! But I'll also sign up to it. Plymouth is a mess as Leon says - only partky thanks to Herren Heinkel and Goering - but lots of fascinating corners and a decent museum collection too. I want to explore it some more, and not just for the naval and fortification interest. The actual dockyard is not normally open unlike Pompey, but a lot can be seen from the river, and (for just one example) the Royal William Victualling Yard is a huge slaughterhouse for cattle-and-pigs-to-salt-meat-in-barrels turned hipster paradise. Superb Dartmoor granite buildings with carved oxheads just to make the point. And one can take a walk somewhere along the coast around the approaches.
100k sounds like a very tiny figure for "essential workers". As ever, the devil will be in the detail. Who exactly are they?
Unless they're all taken to forced labour camps and not allowed to mix with anyone else, the increased absense from extra cases caught by daily testing is going to significantly outweigh the reduced absense from cases avoided due to early detection.
They're just going to catch it at home or down the pub and then have a week stuck at home.
Is Boris gonna lock us down again, in some form or other, at 5pm?
Quick vote?
My vote is No, he won't. But I'm worried
I think No. I hope No. I am not 100% convinced though. I think he might crumble.
Johnson is no doubt getting a load of pressure from medical professionals on one side and from Tory MPs on the other. Only one of those groups can remove him this week.
I vote No. He would be deposed within 48 hours I think if he announces lockdown tonight. The data just isn't there and the backbench have run out of patience with SAGE and modelling anyway.
I vote No. He would be deposed within 48 hours I think if he announces lockdown tonight. The data just isn't there and the backbench and the public have run out of patience with SAGE and modelling anyway.
FTFY.
Yes, even with the incidentals it doesn't look like we'll reach anything like 3,000 hospitalisations per day which was the best case scenario for Omicron (not including incidentals).
Care to bet on that? I'm pretty confident we will exceed 3k hospitalizations per day as per coronavirus.data.gov £25 - winnings to pb.com?
Precise terms -> according to coronavirus.data.gov.uk, the UK will exceed 3k hospitalizations per day for at least one day before end of March.
Not sure I like the chances of daily testing for essential workers not just resulting in even more forced isolation for well people. Not a great track record to suggest this will successfully reduce spread enough to 'payback' and result in higher staff availability (as if these people only meet and catch it from colleagues anyway).
Boris' brainwave to deal with isolation requirements causing mass staff absence is to ramp up testing even more. Someone should try to sell this idiot a bridge.
So they no longer need abide by the seven-day isolation rule, this is instead of that? I don't grasp it – even having read the Spectator story you linked to...
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 3h This is getting utterly ridiculous now. When this is over the membership and function of SAGE has to be comprehensively reviewed.
Really?
There was a long period on here where poster after poster would rush to defend SAGE or I-SAGE from any scrutiny whatsoever.
The mere suggestion of an agenda would invite a torrent of invective.
Really?
I think you've been reading a different forum to me then.
Certainly not my recollection of this forum. I can't recall a good word ever been said about iSAGE.
Not sure I like the chances of daily testing for essential workers not just resulting in even more forced isolation for well people. Not a great track record to suggest this will successfully reduce spread enough to 'payback' and result in higher staff availability (as if these people only meet and catch it from colleagues anyway).
Sounds like more fuel on the fire.
With the shortage of lat flow tests available by post I expect some essential workers will have run out ? Best just to send them direct and skip the middle part of ordering
'We can’t vaccinate the planet every six months', says JCVI chief Fourth Covid jabs should not be offered until there is more evidence, the head of Britain's vaccine body has said - as he warned that giving boosters to people every six months was “not sustainable”.
6 monthly jabs may or may not be the right thing, but his remit is not "THE PLANET". It's the UK. Once again heading outside their remit.
Unless we vaccinate the planet - collectively - then we aren't immune from the next mutation.
That's another covid myth apparently: Myth #1,765 in a regular series...
We should share Covid vaccines with the world, because it is the right thing to do, but not because it will limit of emergence of 'variants' - vaccines don't generate variants but they don't preclude their emergence either - it's all a bit unclear and complicated.
Not just people either, Covid is a general mammalian phenomenon
Nevertheless a world with Covid raging is more likely to throw up things which come and fuck us up than a world with Covid under control. And the quicker we vaccinate the world the quicker we get from that first situation to the second. It's as much a practical imperative as a moral one.
No it isn't necessarily a practical or moral one and probably not a scientific one either. All governments have their first responsibility to their own population. IMHO, the first priority of Western governments is to figure out how to defeat or contain the virus. The strategies that they use will then inform them how they support other governments to do the same.
The virus respects no borders. It's a global pandemic and the best response to it is global. The more inefficient and illogical is the vaccine rollout - eg 5 or 6 jabs in one country and zero in another - the longer the pandemic will last, and the longer it lasts the more the damage will be and the more likely it is that we will be impacted.
The question then is this - to what extent should the normal rules of national centric politics - which you outline - be flexed in order to facilitate the optimum globally efficient solution?
I say the answer to this is "to a very great extent" and I think this is the correct answer. After all, this is a once-a-century emergency with an awful lot at stake. If we can't get our (global) act together for this, at least better than we are atm, when will we ever be able to?
So I am going to ask a question. I don't claim it is a fair question or perhaps even valid but it is the question that any politician has to be able to answer if they wish to accept your view.
How many people should we allow to die in this country, who could otherwise be saved, so that we can save lives of people in Africa, India, Russia or Poland?
As I say I am not saying it is a fair question but it is the question that cannot be dodged by politicians choosing to follow the route of putting global well being ahead of national well being.
And I know the obvious answer to you and probably to me is that in the long term we might actually save more lives here. But that is not certain and you are asking people to accept deaths now for fewer deaths tomorrow. That is a hard, if not impossible, sell for any politician.
It certainly was when vaccines were scarce. They no longer are though so the question is how much help are we going to give to facilitate their distribution? It should, without question, be our number 1 foreign aid objective at the moment.
Agreed. It's no longer a capacity constrained zero sum game. And even from a selfish economic point of view, it would be a sensible investment for the richer economies.
IMO that's the solution to vaccine inequity. We have to make it so poor countries have the capacity to manufacture vaccines themselves. Rich countries will always put their citizens first. It's not easy, but it can be done.
India is a global vaccines powerhouse. They have capacity to make 6-8bn doses of various vaccines annually. India is already manufacturing plenty of AZ doses to help the developing world, yet the issue is demand.
We need globally distributed manufacturing - because, for instance, India stopped exporting vaccines when their crisis hit. That said - you're right that this only addresses the inequity of access. Demand challenges need big investment in social campaigns, strengthening of health systems, reducing barriers in country (e.g. payments for doctor consultation before jab).
Is Boris gonna lock us down again, in some form or other, at 5pm?
Quick vote?
My vote is No, he won't. But I'm worried
I think No. I hope No. I am not 100% convinced though. I think he might crumble.
Johnson is no doubt getting a load of pressure from medical professionals on one side and from Tory MPs on the other. Only one of those groups can remove him this week.
I vote No. He would be deposed within 48 hours I think if he announces lockdown tonight. The data just isn't there and the backbench have run out of patience with SAGE and modelling anyway.
I vote No. He would be deposed within 48 hours I think if he announces lockdown tonight. The data just isn't there and the backbench and the public have run out of patience with SAGE and modelling anyway.
FTFY.
Yes, even with the incidentals it doesn't look like we'll reach anything like 3,000 hospitalisations per day which was the best case scenario for Omicron (not including incidentals).
Care to bet on that? I'm pretty confident we will exceed 3k hospitalizations per day as per coronavirus.data.gov £25 - winnings to pb.com?
Precise terms -> according to coronavirus.data.gov.uk, the UK will exceed 3k hospitalizations per day for at least one day before end of March.
100k sounds like a very tiny figure for "essential workers". As ever, the devil will be in the detail. Who exactly are they?
Unless they're all taken to forced labour camps and not allowed to mix with anyone else, the increased absense from extra cases caught by daily testing is going to significantly outweigh the reduced absense from cases avoided due to early detection.
They're just going to catch it at home or down the pub and then have a week stuck at home.
So it's on top of the Seven Day Rule? Is Boris clinically insane?
I've just watched another Downing St Broadcast on Channel 5. It's the last one I waste my time with them. We switched over to Chris Whitty and his graphs - the real information. The camera man concentrated on Whitty speaking without showing the graphs. When Whitty said ... "As you can see ..." we couldn't because he concentrated on Whitty's face instead. I nearly saw his tonsils, but nothing else.
When we then switched away to the journalists talking about poorly understood science before concentrating on emotions. The angst a single nurse coming off a night shift feels.
I don't mind politicans and journalists being morons, but why are they paid so much to be so. Surely they only need to be taught basic reading and writing. It's a waste of educational resources to teach wannabe journalists and politicans even basic science? It's too complicated for the spoilt darlings.
100k sounds like a very tiny figure for "essential workers". As ever, the devil will be in the detail. Who exactly are they?
Unless they're all taken to forced labour camps and not allowed to mix with anyone else, the increased absense from extra cases caught by daily testing is going to significantly outweigh the reduced absense from cases avoided due to early detection.
They're just going to catch it at home or down the pub and then have a week stuck at home.
Yes. My first instinct was that on the face of it it seems very peculiar. For the reasons you outline. Plus. There are way more than 100 000 essential workers. Even if you define essential very tightly. My instant take is this. He needed to announce something or it would be a waste of time. This is something. And, unusually for him, it isn't a stretch target, but can be done in a week.
Is Boris gonna lock us down again, in some form or other, at 5pm?
Quick vote?
My vote is No, he won't. But I'm worried
After his poll bounce from not locking down over Christmas and New Year I would guess not.
Nothing in it for him. Those who want a new lockdown or more restrictions are almost all Labour or SNP voters anyway
Are they? I thought they skewed predominantly old? The young and city dwellers seem to be the ones getting on with it.
If that was the case why has Boris got a bounce in the latest poll for the Tories after imposing not a single new restriction over Christmas and New Year almost entirely from anti restriction voters going back from RefUK and LDs to the Tories while the Labour vote is little changed?
Cos some people are very strongly motivated by this issue? I don't see how that justifies the claim that people who support a lockdown are Labour or SNP voters. Do you have any evidence for that.
Absolutely, 54% of Labour voters wanted a return to the rule of 6 indoors last month, 50% of Conservative voters were opposed.
78% of Conservative voters did not want to close pubs and restaurants again but only 63% of Labour voters did not want them closed.
55% of Conservative voters were opposed to preventing large sporting and entertainment events but 49% of Labour voters wanted to prevent them with just 41% wanting to keep them going.
'We can’t vaccinate the planet every six months', says JCVI chief Fourth Covid jabs should not be offered until there is more evidence, the head of Britain's vaccine body has said - as he warned that giving boosters to people every six months was “not sustainable”.
6 monthly jabs may or may not be the right thing, but his remit is not "THE PLANET". It's the UK. Once again heading outside their remit.
Unless we vaccinate the planet - collectively - then we aren't immune from the next mutation.
That's another covid myth apparently: Myth #1,765 in a regular series...
We should share Covid vaccines with the world, because it is the right thing to do, but not because it will limit of emergence of 'variants' - vaccines don't generate variants but they don't preclude their emergence either - it's all a bit unclear and complicated.
Not just people either, Covid is a general mammalian phenomenon
Nevertheless a world with Covid raging is more likely to throw up things which come and fuck us up than a world with Covid under control. And the quicker we vaccinate the world the quicker we get from that first situation to the second. It's as much a practical imperative as a moral one.
No it isn't necessarily a practical or moral one and probably not a scientific one either. All governments have their first responsibility to their own population. IMHO, the first priority of Western governments is to figure out how to defeat or contain the virus. The strategies that they use will then inform them how they support other governments to do the same.
The virus respects no borders. It's a global pandemic and the best response to it is global. The more inefficient and illogical is the vaccine rollout - eg 5 or 6 jabs in one country and zero in another - the longer the pandemic will last, and the longer it lasts the more the damage will be and the more likely it is that we will be impacted.
The question then is this - to what extent should the normal rules of national centric politics - which you outline - be flexed in order to facilitate the optimum globally efficient solution?
I say the answer to this is "to a very great extent" and I think this is the correct answer. After all, this is a once-a-century emergency with an awful lot at stake. If we can't get our (global) act together for this, at least better than we are atm, when will we ever be able to?
So I am going to ask a question. I don't claim it is a fair question or perhaps even valid but it is the question that any politician has to be able to answer if they wish to accept your view.
How many people should we allow to die in this country, who could otherwise be saved, so that we can save lives of people in Africa, India, Russia or Poland?
As I say I am not saying it is a fair question but it is the question that cannot be dodged by politicians choosing to follow the route of putting global well being ahead of national well being.
And I know the obvious answer to you and probably to me is that in the long term we might actually save more lives here. But that is not certain and you are asking people to accept deaths now for fewer deaths tomorrow. That is a hard, if not impossible, sell for any politician.
It certainly was when vaccines were scarce. They no longer are though so the question is how much help are we going to give to facilitate their distribution? It should, without question, be our number 1 foreign aid objective at the moment.
Agreed. It's no longer a capacity constrained zero sum game. And even from a selfish economic point of view, it would be a sensible investment for the richer economies.
IMO that's the solution to vaccine inequity. We have to make it so poor countries have the capacity to manufacture vaccines themselves. Rich countries will always put their citizens first. It's not easy, but it can be done.
India is a global vaccines powerhouse. They have capacity to make 6-8bn doses of various vaccines annually. India is already manufacturing plenty of AZ doses to help the developing world, yet the issue is demand.
We need globally distributed manufacturing - because, for instance, India stopped exporting vaccines when their crisis hit. That said - you're right that this only addresses the inequity of access. Demand challenges need big investment in social campaigns, strengthening of health systems, reducing barriers in country (e.g. payments for doctor consultation before jab).
None of which is helped by not doing boosters or child vaccinations.....
Sky reporting from the US saying things are not looking good for Andrew
Camilla Long in the Sunday Times was asking why all the other famous men have (apparently) gotten away with things whilst Prince Andrew is caught in the spotlights.
To me, it seems fairly obvious. Because Andrew is a very useful dead cat to throw on the table. There is enough there to occupy people ("He's the Queen's son!") but not so significant that his trial and conviction would lead to a serious undermining of powerful interests (yes, the Royal Family would get hit but it wouldn't cause its collapse).
Indeed, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Trump etc all met Epstein and Maxwell as did plenty of other wealthy and famous people. Some also went to his island but apparently only Prince Andrew ie a non American foreigner, is to face an action from the US legal system
Andrew faces a civil lawsuit from a particular woman who alleges that he slept with her when she was a minor. I would assume that were she to have similar allegations to make against anyone else where she thought there was a chance of meeting the required standard of proof, she would do so. It doesn't strike me as anything akin to an organised conspiracy against a non-American. What does strike me as odd is that in a case about allegations of powerful men abusing their positions of power, the only person in jail so far is a woman.
Lisa Bloom @LisaBloom Prince Andrew's attorney says Virginia's sexual allegations are too vague.
Judge: "involuntary sexual intercourse" is clear to me
Oh and the Judge than gave David Boies (Virginia's lawyer) the argument regarding the Florida agreement - so that isn't going to help Andrew.
Interesting to see that Mr Windsor's legal eagle tried to argue it was unfair of Ms Giuffre to place her case before the deadline set by law in NY ...
The argument was that it was before the deadline but they could have issued it earlier - and what miss all the evidence provided by Prince Andrew's TV appearance? You leave things as late as possible for reasons one of which is to catch anything interesting and useful that may appear before the deadline
The only way you can (possibly) stop Omicron is with the kind of lockdown China is doing in Xi'an
Stay home all the time. One person allowed out of the house once every three days. For food. Maybe. Build enormous quarantine camps and forcibly decamp thousands of people into them
A lockdown which produces (allegedly) scary videos like these:
But does that even work? Can China do this to the whole of China?
"After #Xian and #Ningbo, #Yuzhou goes into lockdown amid fresh #Covid_19 cases, no announcement yet on spectators for #WinterOlympics #Beijingolympics #Beijing2022"
Is Boris gonna lock us down again, in some form or other, at 5pm?
Quick vote?
My vote is No, he won't. But I'm worried
My guess is No. If we were going to do it it would have been at Christmas, it's too late to slow the spread.
My guess is tonight is to try and kick start the booster programme again, bit Omicron has been sold as mild (even though it won't be mild for everyone, and the reason it's mild in many is because of boosters) so he is going to have difficulty selling it.
Back again denying Omicron is milder again I see. Presumably South African's non-existant booster campaign made it milder there?
Don't be an arse. Covid has been mild for the vast 'majority' from original strain to Omicron, especially thanks to vaccines.
But it won't be mild for everyone like it is being sold by many right now. It also doesn't help when you are trying to get people to have boosters to protect the.most vulnerable, it's key we keep this programme going.
Jog on!
Omicron has a lower average case severity in unvaccinated people than Delta. It is "milder". There's too many studies and clinical evidence showing that to deny it. I don't understand why anyone would either.
I think the distinction is between milder and mild.
Anecdotal I know, but it was very mild for me. Quite a bad cough for 2 days, the rest was just a very mild cold.
'We can’t vaccinate the planet every six months', says JCVI chief Fourth Covid jabs should not be offered until there is more evidence, the head of Britain's vaccine body has said - as he warned that giving boosters to people every six months was “not sustainable”.
6 monthly jabs may or may not be the right thing, but his remit is not "THE PLANET". It's the UK. Once again heading outside their remit.
Unless we vaccinate the planet - collectively - then we aren't immune from the next mutation.
That's another covid myth apparently: Myth #1,765 in a regular series...
We should share Covid vaccines with the world, because it is the right thing to do, but not because it will limit of emergence of 'variants' - vaccines don't generate variants but they don't preclude their emergence either - it's all a bit unclear and complicated.
Not just people either, Covid is a general mammalian phenomenon
Nevertheless a world with Covid raging is more likely to throw up things which come and fuck us up than a world with Covid under control. And the quicker we vaccinate the world the quicker we get from that first situation to the second. It's as much a practical imperative as a moral one.
No it isn't necessarily a practical or moral one and probably not a scientific one either. All governments have their first responsibility to their own population. IMHO, the first priority of Western governments is to figure out how to defeat or contain the virus. The strategies that they use will then inform them how they support other governments to do the same.
The virus respects no borders. It's a global pandemic and the best response to it is global. The more inefficient and illogical is the vaccine rollout - eg 5 or 6 jabs in one country and zero in another - the longer the pandemic will last, and the longer it lasts the more the damage will be and the more likely it is that we will be impacted.
The question then is this - to what extent should the normal rules of national centric politics - which you outline - be flexed in order to facilitate the optimum globally efficient solution?
I say the answer to this is "to a very great extent" and I think this is the correct answer. After all, this is a once-a-century emergency with an awful lot at stake. If we can't get our (global) act together for this, at least better than we are atm, when will we ever be able to?
So I am going to ask a question. I don't claim it is a fair question or perhaps even valid but it is the question that any politician has to be able to answer if they wish to accept your view.
How many people should we allow to die in this country, who could otherwise be saved, so that we can save lives of people in Africa, India, Russia or Poland?
As I say I am not saying it is a fair question but it is the question that cannot be dodged by politicians choosing to follow the route of putting global well being ahead of national well being.
And I know the obvious answer to you and probably to me is that in the long term we might actually save more lives here. But that is not certain and you are asking people to accept deaths now for fewer deaths tomorrow. That is a hard, if not impossible, sell for any politician.
I'll avoid the obvious answer and instead acknowledge what you say - that it's hard for any national government not to be driven entirely by high viz short term national interest, eg (for here) what booster strategy gets us out of all restrictions asap this year, end of story.
So, in practice, I guess the best we can hope for is that the global case is pushed by the likes of the WHO and various leading scientists and that it gets at least some traction with decision makers. Ie I feel the dead opposite to those who see that case being made by such people and respond "They should shut up. Not in their brief". I think the more noise is made about this the better.
Imagine we reach end of 2023 and Covid is conquered (for now) in the developed world but still raging most everywhere else. That, given the early brilliance in developing vaccines and treatments, would be such a shame - and furthermore a depressing sign that for all our tech and intelligence and progress we can't meet the big challenges.
The issue is -
- The supply of vaccines is no longer the issue. We are looking at 24 billion doses manufactured by the middle of this year. There are about 8 Billion people on the planet. - So Harry Hair Shirting about not "hoarding" vaccinations doesn't actually make sense. Not doing boosters or vaccinating children in the UK will not materially effect vaccine availability world wide.
There's loads of issues. Affordable Supply + Logistics & Distribution + Population Demand = Vaccination Outcome. There are problems to fix with all the inputs there.
But my strong sense is that the assertion "the domestic vaccine strategy of rich countries and their interaction with the pharmaceutical giants has no impact on the vaccination outcome in the rest of the world" is a self-comforting falsehood.
No point having a PCR for 90 days because you'd probably still test positive even though no longer infectious. Questioner asked about LFTs (there's never been such advice for these).
100k sounds like a very tiny figure for "essential workers". As ever, the devil will be in the detail. Who exactly are they?
Unless they're all taken to forced labour camps and not allowed to mix with anyone else, the increased absense from extra cases caught by daily testing is going to significantly outweigh the reduced absense from cases avoided due to early detection.
They're just going to catch it at home or down the pub and then have a week stuck at home.
So it's on top of the Seven Day Rule? Is Boris clinically insane?
Clearly - although it's great for anyone workshy who wants a few extra days off.
Sky reporting from the US saying things are not looking good for Andrew
Camilla Long in the Sunday Times was asking why all the other famous men have (apparently) gotten away with things whilst Prince Andrew is caught in the spotlights.
To me, it seems fairly obvious. Because Andrew is a very useful dead cat to throw on the table. There is enough there to occupy people ("He's the Queen's son!") but not so significant that his trial and conviction would lead to a serious undermining of powerful interests (yes, the Royal Family would get hit but it wouldn't cause its collapse).
Indeed, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Trump etc all met Epstein and Maxwell as did plenty of other wealthy and famous people. Some also went to his island but apparently only Prince Andrew ie a non American foreigner, is to face an action from the US legal system
Andrew faces a civil lawsuit from a particular woman who alleges that he slept with her when she was a minor. I would assume that were she to have similar allegations to make against anyone else where she thought there was a chance of meeting the required standard of proof, she would do so. It doesn't strike me as anything akin to an organised conspiracy against a non-American. What does strike me as odd is that in a case about allegations of powerful men abusing their positions of power, the only person in jail so far is a woman.
Is Boris gonna lock us down again, in some form or other, at 5pm?
Quick vote?
My vote is No, he won't. But I'm worried
After his poll bounce from not locking down over Christmas and New Year I would guess not.
Nothing in it for him. Those who want a new lockdown or more restrictions are almost all Labour or SNP voters anyway
Are they? I thought they skewed predominantly old? The young and city dwellers seem to be the ones getting on with it.
If that was the case why has Boris got a bounce in the latest poll for the Tories after imposing not a single new restriction over Christmas and New Year almost entirely from anti restriction voters going back from RefUK and LDs to the Tories while the Labour vote is little changed?
Cos some people are very strongly motivated by this issue? I don't see how that justifies the claim that people who support a lockdown are Labour or SNP voters. Do you have any evidence for that.
Absolutely, 54% of Labour voters wanted a return to the rule of 6 indoors last month, 50% of Conservative voters were opposed.
78% of Conservative voters did not want to close pubs and restaurants again but only 63% of Labour voters did not want them closed.
55% of Conservative voters were opposed to preventing large sporting and entertainment events but 49% of Labour voters wanted to prevent them with just 41% wanting to keep them going.
100k sounds like a very tiny figure for "essential workers". As ever, the devil will be in the detail. Who exactly are they?
Unless they're all taken to forced labour camps and not allowed to mix with anyone else, the increased absense from extra cases caught by daily testing is going to significantly outweigh the reduced absense from cases avoided due to early detection.
They're just going to catch it at home or down the pub and then have a week stuck at home.
Yes. My first instinct was that on the face of it it seems very peculiar. For the reasons you outline. Plus. There are way more than 100 000 essential workers. Even if you define essential very tightly. My instant take is this. He needed to announce something or it would be a waste of time. This is something. And, unusually for him, it isn't a stretch target, but can be done in a week.
Can it? where are the LFT's as I couldn't find any yesterday.
Why are the Chinese disinfecting Xi'an with..... flamethrowers?
Songpinganq @songpinganq · 9h xi'an city What the hell? Chinese stormtroopers not only using fog sprayners but also flamethrowers to sanitize the entire city now! Ridiculous! Absurd! 2022/1/4
EDIT: one explanation seems to be that the gases used to disinfect sometimes catch light
Is Boris gonna lock us down again, in some form or other, at 5pm?
Quick vote?
My vote is No, he won't. But I'm worried
I think No. I hope No. I am not 100% convinced though. I think he might crumble.
Johnson is no doubt getting a load of pressure from medical professionals on one side and from Tory MPs on the other. Only one of those groups can remove him this week.
I vote No. He would be deposed within 48 hours I think if he announces lockdown tonight. The data just isn't there and the backbench have run out of patience with SAGE and modelling anyway.
I vote No. He would be deposed within 48 hours I think if he announces lockdown tonight. The data just isn't there and the backbench and the public have run out of patience with SAGE and modelling anyway.
FTFY.
Yes, even with the incidentals it doesn't look like we'll reach anything like 3,000 hospitalisations per day which was the best case scenario for Omicron (not including incidentals).
Care to bet on that? I'm pretty confident we will exceed 3k hospitalizations per day as per coronavirus.data.gov £25 - winnings to pb.com?
Precise terms -> according to coronavirus.data.gov.uk, the UK will exceed 3k hospitalizations per day for at least one day before end of March.
An interesting bet.....
Reporting day or day of?
Day of.
Edit - and the bet is open to you also if interested.
Keir needs to go with the slogan Make Brexit Work.
Yes but how
The UK holds all the cards so it'll be easy for Sir Keir.
To be honest it is a genuine question and needs asking
If Mr Johnson has had his go, though, it's about time someone else tried a different approach.
Before the electorate vote in Starmer the Conservatives can shoot Labours fox by installing a proper Primeminister and government.
Am I the only person on PB.com convinced Boris is about to get vonked? Boris can’t go a fortnight without being all over papers with some shameful scandal. It’s what he is, he can’t change. The chances of a Tory poll lead under him now are zilch.
Anyone think his knew haircut is an improvement? He is beginning to look really ugly old man without trademark hair to hide it.
Anyway, important Conservative Party news. My Dad reckons the Conservative party members he knows are United the party are about to replace Bozo now because they need to get proper economic policy’s and financial policy for all the economic and financial problems Boris won’t do anything about and doesn’t have a clue about.
That’s true isn’t it? Under Boris it’s not clear what the Conservative economic and financial policy is despite Boris set piece speeches to spell it out. And that’s the reason he is being got rid of next week.
*political betting post* I had a £50 bet on Javid because I thought Rishi Sunak had wasted too much money without looking after it properly, but I’m now 99 parcent convinced Sunak is taking over this month. Can I now bet on Sunak as well, bet against my own bet?
Today's YouGov on which party would be best at handling the economy
Conservative 31% - Labour 18%
How did the missing 51% answer?
AAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!
This Party has no economic policy nor has this one, which one gets your vote. Lol.
What Big G doesn’t realise, if the government goes through another 6 months without sane financial steering, they are going to be buried in a hole there’s no getting out of. But based on my soundings up here in Yorkshire, conservative supporters do appreciate this now.
I would predict the Conservative leadership campaigns in next couple of months is going to be very educational as the candidates, like Rishi, liz and Jav are going to spell out what Conservative socio economics mean to them with policies to achieve their values.
Labour have a problem here as by summer Conservatives are going to be in a fresh new popular place.
A conservative election win next spring is even possible once failure Boris is quickly dealt with this year.
No alternative Tory leader, including Sunak or Truss, saw the Tories do any better in the recent Opinium hypothetical Tory leader poll than the 3% Labour lead over the Boris led Tories in the latest poll. Why should changing the leader make any difference?
Because polling like that is complete fantasy land stuff. Why did you even mention it, you are embarrassing yourself because you know what’s needed, strong economic direction and policy to very real world problems and a leader who not only explains them very well but convinces people. You don’t have that. You don’t have either of those things. Stop playing fantasy politics.
No it isn't, the hypothetical polling in 2003 was right that replacing IDS with Howard would make little difference. It was also right in 2019 that replacing May with Boris midterm would give the Tories a lead again, as the Tory landslide later that year proved.
It was right in 1990 too that replacing Thatcher with Major or Heseltine would give the Tories a lead again over Kinnock Labour
I shall now go on record with a statement about the next general election.
farmin folk ain’t dum as you metropolitans think they are up here
Ignore polls. Ignore covid. This Conservative government need some economic direction, polices and a leader people will believe. Its a vibe that is a thing up here. I predict it’s going to get quite bad anyway with or without action on Boris problem, but sooner they deal with these problems the better for the party in the long run.
The only way you can (possibly) stop Omicron is with the kind of lockdown China is doing in Xi'an
Stay home all the time. One person allowed out of the house once every three days. For food. Maybe. Build enormous quarantine camps and forcibly decamp thousands of people into them
A lockdown which produces (allegedly) scary videos like these:
But does that even work? Can China do this to the whole of China?
"After #Xian and #Ningbo, #Yuzhou goes into lockdown amid fresh #Covid_19 cases, no announcement yet on spectators for #WinterOlympics #Beijingolympics #Beijing2022"
Here in Almeria we live in a small village - under 3k and we have a super restaurant 200 metres from the house and at least a dozen more [ several award winning] within 10 miles where you can eat superbly well for much less than €50 a head including wine. We are near a tourist area but popular with Spanish tourists and even at the height of summer the whole area has probably under 100k of locals and holiday makers. Nearly all of the eating options from tapas to totr offer great quality and value. Apart from the 320 sunny days and fantastic semi-desert terrai it is one of the joys of living here.
That explains it........ I couldn't understand how someone who enjoys the delights of Almeria could be such a fan of Boris and Brexit.......
.....It was the thought of hordes of Hartlipudlians piling into the restaurants and spraying vinegar over their tapas chips and peas.
18,000 cases in quarantined Holland, the highest since early December
A month of lockdown has done virtually nothing there. A near-pointless crippling of their economy
Lockdowns - even hard ones - don't stop Omicron
According to the case rate trend published on the Oxford Covid data tracker, cases in the Netherlands were still falling when they went into lockdown on December 19th, at which point Omicron accounted for about 10% of Covid cases. Cases kept going downwards gradually until December 28th, which is about the same date on which Omicron passed 50% and became dominant. Since then, and despite the continuation of lockdown and the holiday season, case rates have started going back up again.
The big return to work happens this week, and Dutch schools are going back next week. Then we have to assume that we'll see a much more rapid ramping up of case rate. We'll only know for sure later in the month, BUT it does look suspiciously like hard lockdown may have done nothing but shunt the Omicron wave about 2-3 weeks into the future.
100k sounds like a very tiny figure for "essential workers". As ever, the devil will be in the detail. Who exactly are they?
Unless they're all taken to forced labour camps and not allowed to mix with anyone else, the increased absense from extra cases caught by daily testing is going to significantly outweigh the reduced absense from cases avoided due to early detection.
They're just going to catch it at home or down the pub and then have a week stuck at home.
Yes. My first instinct was that on the face of it it seems very peculiar. For the reasons you outline. Plus. There are way more than 100 000 essential workers. Even if you define essential very tightly. My instant take is this. He needed to announce something or it would be a waste of time. This is something. And, unusually for him, it isn't a stretch target, but can be done in a week.
Can it? where are the LFT's as I couldn't find any yesterday.
'We can’t vaccinate the planet every six months', says JCVI chief Fourth Covid jabs should not be offered until there is more evidence, the head of Britain's vaccine body has said - as he warned that giving boosters to people every six months was “not sustainable”.
6 monthly jabs may or may not be the right thing, but his remit is not "THE PLANET". It's the UK. Once again heading outside their remit.
Unless we vaccinate the planet - collectively - then we aren't immune from the next mutation.
That's another covid myth apparently: Myth #1,765 in a regular series...
We should share Covid vaccines with the world, because it is the right thing to do, but not because it will limit of emergence of 'variants' - vaccines don't generate variants but they don't preclude their emergence either - it's all a bit unclear and complicated.
Not just people either, Covid is a general mammalian phenomenon
Nevertheless a world with Covid raging is more likely to throw up things which come and fuck us up than a world with Covid under control. And the quicker we vaccinate the world the quicker we get from that first situation to the second. It's as much a practical imperative as a moral one.
No it isn't necessarily a practical or moral one and probably not a scientific one either. All governments have their first responsibility to their own population. IMHO, the first priority of Western governments is to figure out how to defeat or contain the virus. The strategies that they use will then inform them how they support other governments to do the same.
The virus respects no borders. It's a global pandemic and the best response to it is global. The more inefficient and illogical is the vaccine rollout - eg 5 or 6 jabs in one country and zero in another - the longer the pandemic will last, and the longer it lasts the more the damage will be and the more likely it is that we will be impacted.
The question then is this - to what extent should the normal rules of national centric politics - which you outline - be flexed in order to facilitate the optimum globally efficient solution?
I say the answer to this is "to a very great extent" and I think this is the correct answer. After all, this is a once-a-century emergency with an awful lot at stake. If we can't get our (global) act together for this, at least better than we are atm, when will we ever be able to?
So I am going to ask a question. I don't claim it is a fair question or perhaps even valid but it is the question that any politician has to be able to answer if they wish to accept your view.
How many people should we allow to die in this country, who could otherwise be saved, so that we can save lives of people in Africa, India, Russia or Poland?
As I say I am not saying it is a fair question but it is the question that cannot be dodged by politicians choosing to follow the route of putting global well being ahead of national well being.
And I know the obvious answer to you and probably to me is that in the long term we might actually save more lives here. But that is not certain and you are asking people to accept deaths now for fewer deaths tomorrow. That is a hard, if not impossible, sell for any politician.
I'll avoid the obvious answer and instead acknowledge what you say - that it's hard for any national government not to be driven entirely by high viz short term national interest, eg (for here) what booster strategy gets us out of all restrictions asap this year, end of story.
So, in practice, I guess the best we can hope for is that the global case is pushed by the likes of the WHO and various leading scientists and that it gets at least some traction with decision makers. Ie I feel the dead opposite to those who see that case being made by such people and respond "They should shut up. Not in their brief". I think the more noise is made about this the better.
Imagine we reach end of 2023 and Covid is conquered (for now) in the developed world but still raging most everywhere else. That, given the early brilliance in developing vaccines and treatments, would be such a shame - and furthermore a depressing sign that for all our tech and intelligence and progress we can't meet the big challenges.
The issue is -
- The supply of vaccines is no longer the issue. We are looking at 24 billion doses manufactured by the middle of this year. There are about 8 Billion people on the planet. - So Harry Hair Shirting about not "hoarding" vaccinations doesn't actually make sense. Not doing boosters or vaccinating children in the UK will not materially effect vaccine availability world wide.
There's loads of issues. Affordable Supply + Logistics & Distribution + Population Demand = Vaccination Outcome. There are problems to fix with all the inputs there.
But my strong sense is that the assertion "the domestic vaccine strategy of rich countries and their interaction with the pharmaceutical giants has no impact on the vaccination outcome in the rest of the world" is a self-comforting falsehood.
Is that like a Spidey Sense?
The fact remains that vaccines are now being made faster than the take-up - to the point where makers are questioning what their strategy in the second half of 2022 will be.
I suppose we could build a nice, comforting mountain of out-of-date vaccine doses. That should make someone feel nice.
Sky reporting from the US saying things are not looking good for Andrew
Camilla Long in the Sunday Times was asking why all the other famous men have (apparently) gotten away with things whilst Prince Andrew is caught in the spotlights.
To me, it seems fairly obvious. Because Andrew is a very useful dead cat to throw on the table. There is enough there to occupy people ("He's the Queen's son!") but not so significant that his trial and conviction would lead to a serious undermining of powerful interests (yes, the Royal Family would get hit but it wouldn't cause its collapse).
Indeed, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Trump etc all met Epstein and Maxwell as did plenty of other wealthy and famous people. Some also went to his island but apparently only Prince Andrew ie a non American foreigner, is to face an action from the US legal system
Andrew faces a civil lawsuit from a particular woman who alleges that he slept with her when she was a minor. I would assume that were she to have similar allegations to make against anyone else where she thought there was a chance of meeting the required standard of proof, she would do so. It doesn't strike me as anything akin to an organised conspiracy against a non-American. What does strike me as odd is that in a case about allegations of powerful men abusing their positions of power, the only person in jail so far is a woman.
Funnily enough, that last bit is precisely how Maxwell's lawyer began their summing up. Something about women always getting the blame for the actions of men.
The amusing thing about identity politics is that occasionally you end up going into bat for some right scumbags, which is precisely what you just did.
The only way you can (possibly) stop Omicron is with the kind of lockdown China is doing in Xi'an
Stay home all the time. One person allowed out of the house once every three days. For food. Maybe. Build enormous quarantine camps and forcibly decamp thousands of people into them
A lockdown which produces (allegedly) scary videos like these:
But does that even work? Can China do this to the whole of China?
"After #Xian and #Ningbo, #Yuzhou goes into lockdown amid fresh #Covid_19 cases, no announcement yet on spectators for #WinterOlympics #Beijingolympics #Beijing2022"
it looks terrifying but Twitter is saying it's a malfunction of the foam sprayers. However there are multiple videos of these "flame thrower" incidents in Xi'an, so that's an awful lot of malfunctions that we have never seen before.
I still reckon it's Omicron but it is foolish to deny this looks a little ominous
The only way you can (possibly) stop Omicron is with the kind of lockdown China is doing in Xi'an
Stay home all the time. One person allowed out of the house once every three days. For food. Maybe. Build enormous quarantine camps and forcibly decamp thousands of people into them
A lockdown which produces (allegedly) scary videos like these:
But does that even work? Can China do this to the whole of China?
"After #Xian and #Ningbo, #Yuzhou goes into lockdown amid fresh #Covid_19 cases, no announcement yet on spectators for #WinterOlympics #Beijingolympics #Beijing2022"
Is Boris gonna lock us down again, in some form or other, at 5pm?
Quick vote?
My vote is No, he won't. But I'm worried
After his poll bounce from not locking down over Christmas and New Year I would guess not.
Nothing in it for him. Those who want a new lockdown or more restrictions are almost all Labour or SNP voters anyway
Are they? I thought they skewed predominantly old? The young and city dwellers seem to be the ones getting on with it.
If that was the case why has Boris got a bounce in the latest poll for the Tories after imposing not a single new restriction over Christmas and New Year almost entirely from anti restriction voters going back from RefUK and LDs to the Tories while the Labour vote is little changed?
Cos some people are very strongly motivated by this issue? I don't see how that justifies the claim that people who support a lockdown are Labour or SNP voters. Do you have any evidence for that.
Absolutely, 54% of Labour voters wanted a return to the rule of 6 indoors last month, 50% of Conservative voters were opposed.
78% of Conservative voters did not want to close pubs and restaurants again but only 63% of Labour voters did not want them closed.
55% of Conservative voters were opposed to preventing large sporting and entertainment events but 49% of Labour voters wanted to prevent them with just 41% wanting to keep them going.
Yes. But those aren't overwhelming differences. In fact they are pretty close. So those figures pretty much disprove your sweeping assertions.
Absolutely not. They confirm my position was completely correct and most Conservative voters do not support more restrictions like closing nightclubs and large sporting and entertainment events and bringing back the rule of 6 indoors while most Labour voters do.
Hence the Tories got a poll bounce after imposing no new restrictions over Christmas and New Year and hence Boris has introduced no new restrictions after today's post New Year press conference either
The only way you can (possibly) stop Omicron is with the kind of lockdown China is doing in Xi'an
Stay home all the time. One person allowed out of the house once every three days. For food. Maybe. Build enormous quarantine camps and forcibly decamp thousands of people into them
A lockdown which produces (allegedly) scary videos like these:
But does that even work? Can China do this to the whole of China?
"After #Xian and #Ningbo, #Yuzhou goes into lockdown amid fresh #Covid_19 cases, no announcement yet on spectators for #WinterOlympics #Beijingolympics #Beijing2022"
it looks terrifying but Twitter is saying it's a malfunction of the foam sprayers. However there are multiple videos of these "flame thrower" incidents in Xi'an, so that's an awful lot of malfunctions that we have never seen before.
I still reckon it's Omicron but it is foolish to deny this looks a little ominous
Well, it is probably effective at keeping people off the streets...
Sky reporting from the US saying things are not looking good for Andrew
Camilla Long in the Sunday Times was asking why all the other famous men have (apparently) gotten away with things whilst Prince Andrew is caught in the spotlights.
To me, it seems fairly obvious. Because Andrew is a very useful dead cat to throw on the table. There is enough there to occupy people ("He's the Queen's son!") but not so significant that his trial and conviction would lead to a serious undermining of powerful interests (yes, the Royal Family would get hit but it wouldn't cause its collapse).
Indeed, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Trump etc all met Epstein and Maxwell as did plenty of other wealthy and famous people. Some also went to his island but apparently only Prince Andrew ie a non American foreigner, is to face an action from the US legal system
Andrew faces a civil lawsuit from a particular woman who alleges that he slept with her when she was a minor. I would assume that were she to have similar allegations to make against anyone else where she thought there was a chance of meeting the required standard of proof, she would do so. It doesn't strike me as anything akin to an organised conspiracy against a non-American. What does strike me as odd is that in a case about allegations of powerful men abusing their positions of power, the only person in jail so far is a woman.
Funnily enough, that last bit is precisely how Maxwell's lawyer began their summing up. Something about women always getting the blame for the actions of men.
The amusing thing about identity politics is that occasionally you end up going into bat for some right scumbags, which is precisely what you just did.
Hardly. I'm very happy to see Maxwell in jail, I just think it's odd that nobody else is. Her lawyer has a point but it doesn't strike me as a valid defence.
Sky reporting from the US saying things are not looking good for Andrew
Camilla Long in the Sunday Times was asking why all the other famous men have (apparently) gotten away with things whilst Prince Andrew is caught in the spotlights.
To me, it seems fairly obvious. Because Andrew is a very useful dead cat to throw on the table. There is enough there to occupy people ("He's the Queen's son!") but not so significant that his trial and conviction would lead to a serious undermining of powerful interests (yes, the Royal Family would get hit but it wouldn't cause its collapse).
Indeed, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Trump etc all met Epstein and Maxwell as did plenty of other wealthy and famous people. Some also went to his island but apparently only Prince Andrew ie a non American foreigner, is to face an action from the US legal system
Andrew faces a civil lawsuit from a particular woman who alleges that he slept with her when she was a minor. I would assume that were she to have similar allegations to make against anyone else where she thought there was a chance of meeting the required standard of proof, she would do so. It doesn't strike me as anything akin to an organised conspiracy against a non-American. What does strike me as odd is that in a case about allegations of powerful men abusing their positions of power, the only person in jail so far is a woman.
Funnily enough, that last bit is precisely how Maxwell's lawyer began their summing up. Something about women always getting the blame for the actions of men.
The amusing thing about identity politics is that occasionally you end up going into bat for some right scumbags, which is precisely what you just did.
Hardly. I'm very happy to see Maxwell in jail, I just think it's odd that nobody else is. Her lawyer has a point but it doesn't strike me as a valid defence.
Was Maxwell convicted of offences relating to anyone but Epstein?
The only way you can (possibly) stop Omicron is with the kind of lockdown China is doing in Xi'an
Stay home all the time. One person allowed out of the house once every three days. For food. Maybe. Build enormous quarantine camps and forcibly decamp thousands of people into them
A lockdown which produces (allegedly) scary videos like these:
But does that even work? Can China do this to the whole of China?
"After #Xian and #Ningbo, #Yuzhou goes into lockdown amid fresh #Covid_19 cases, no announcement yet on spectators for #WinterOlympics #Beijingolympics #Beijing2022"
For my two pennth, the best meal I have ever had was at a restaurant that doesn't even have a michelin star. It wasn't cheap, but it certainly isn't the most expensive meal I have had.
Most of my best meals have been at non-Michelin places
Random top ten (I could choose eighty more)
Eating at Marco Pierre White's very first place, in south London (forget where) - before he had a star, wow
A crab and asparagus dish in a restaurant made from a garage outside Chiang Mai, Thailand
A beef massaman curry on a beach in Ko Tao, also Thailand
Eating at the first Barrafina off the Strand
Osyters and foie gras and gingerbread in some brilliant old school brasserie in Nantes, France
Dinner by Heston (that has a star or two)
A steak at G W Bush's favourite steak restaurant in Austin Texas
Another steak at Cabana Las Lilas in Buenos Aires
Tiny gnocchi in a private restaurant on a private vineyard on the island of Pantelleria, Italy
Some sardines, recently, in a scruffy cafe above a fish market in Sagres, Portugal
How much of this is about company, location, mood, weather, post-coital bliss - rather than food? At least half of it
I am not sure where to even begin with best food, overall.
For steak, I do. The Tasting Room in Frederick MD does a filet mignon that is the best I have had anywhere, including the best that Buenos Aires or Texas has to offer.
For Indian food, sorry to say that my best experience has been neither in India nor in the UK, but in downtown Washington DC. Rasika (chef was in London prior to moving to the US). Their palak chaat is the most delicious single Indian dish I have ever eaten. For Northern Indian, Bukhara in New York used to be the place.
For the most inventive, surprising and incredible meal I've ever eaten, Contra in lower Manhattan wins: https://contra.nyc It has one star.
For the single ingredient of a dish, Brian Voltaggio at Volt (now sadly gone) outdid everything else I have ever experienced. He does molecular cuisine, which is not my favorite style. But he made 'caviar' out of virgin olive oil. It was the most intensely pleasurable tasting experience of my life to date.
I realize this is a very US-centric list. I have had many spectacular meals in France, Italy, the UK, and Switzerland. But none of them truly stand out from the rest.
I must be incredibly unlucky because 98% of my eating experiences in America are mediocre or worse. And I have been there a LOT, and all over, and in all kinds of joints, from top NYC starred places to innovative California pop-ups to famous BBQ shacks in the Deep South
The one exception is Louisiana especially New Orleans. The food there is consistently great, and they don't do the off-puttingly enormous servings you commonly get in the USA. How can such a rich country still believe "great food = tons of food"?
I think we forget how much better food in the UK has got. Because not many pubs can survive as shitty boozers and huge competition in the restaurant sector, "bog standard" offers across the board have got a hell of a lot better in the past 20-30 years. Sure we still have cheap and crap, but that £10 for a main range has got infinity better in lots of places, and many more people are willing to pay for really good stuff (I presume tv chefs lot has helped this).
Its not that long ago that the Olympic Breakfast at a Little Chef was what people did...now they queue for the overpriced but still better offering from the likes of the Breakfast Club.
The US its seems to be cheap and shit, middle price range, eat your weight in meat...then the small niche high end.
WE DEMAND JUBILEE PANCAKES.
(Which used to be 99p)
Used to be the one of the highlight of my family holidays to Cornwall as a kid....stopping off at a Little Chef for jubilee pancakes.
Now I imagine the kids of today in Cornwall are having organic fresh hand crafted crepes with matcha ice cream...
I'm not sure things have changed that much. When we go to Cornwall we usually have a few meals at the cafe on the cliff top above Treganhawke that does all day breakfasts. Plus a few cream teas, fish and chips and ice creams. The fanciest food is usually consumed at the Eden Project.
I go to Cornwall all the time and all my extended family live there. You're really not trying very hard. There is fine food in every major town. You can get excellent Indian and Thai everywhere, for a start
This wasn't intended as a criticism. I live in London so don't go to Cornwall for interesting world cuisine, but things like cream teas and fish and chips on the beach are things we can't get at home and are handy on walks or days on the beach which is what we tend to be doing. We usually go self catering and cook dinner at the chalet anyway, it's more relaxing than eating out with kids. And we don't really visit the major towns either - we always stay in the SE corner so the only close town is across the Tamar in Plymouth which is not especially nice (it is the city of many of my forebears, so I am well disposed to it but it is not an attractive place).
Fair enough
I know I am in a TINY minority here, but I love Plymouth. It is an extraordinary city. Extraordinarily hideous in places, but extraordinarily beautiful and historic in others. An amazing topography. Also some good places to eat!
I'll say this for Plymouth: arriving there by ferry is in my book the finest way to arrive in England.
I'm slightly surprised after Leon's comments on Wick! But I'll also sign up to it. Plymouth is a mess as Leon says - only partky thanks to Herren Heinkel and Goering - but lots of fascinating corners and a decent museum collection too. I want to explore it some more, and not just for the naval and fortification interest. The actual dockyard is not normally open unlike Pompey, but a lot can be seen from the river, and (for just one example) the Royal William Victualling Yard is a huge slaughterhouse for cattle-and-pigs-to-salt-meat-in-barrels turned hipster paradise. Superb Dartmoor granite buildings with carved oxheads just to make the point. And one can take a walk somewhere along the coast around the approaches.
Edit: warning: not eaten there recently.
The RWVYards are outstanding and spectacular
And yes, you can eat well in Plymouth. It's not a gourmet paradise, it ain't San Sebastian, but there are plenty of nice options. And, as always in the UK, if you run out of options, there is nearly always a decent Indian or Thai
'We can’t vaccinate the planet every six months', says JCVI chief Fourth Covid jabs should not be offered until there is more evidence, the head of Britain's vaccine body has said - as he warned that giving boosters to people every six months was “not sustainable”.
6 monthly jabs may or may not be the right thing, but his remit is not "THE PLANET". It's the UK. Once again heading outside their remit.
Unless we vaccinate the planet - collectively - then we aren't immune from the next mutation.
That's another covid myth apparently: Myth #1,765 in a regular series...
We should share Covid vaccines with the world, because it is the right thing to do, but not because it will limit of emergence of 'variants' - vaccines don't generate variants but they don't preclude their emergence either - it's all a bit unclear and complicated.
Not just people either, Covid is a general mammalian phenomenon
Nevertheless a world with Covid raging is more likely to throw up things which come and fuck us up than a world with Covid under control. And the quicker we vaccinate the world the quicker we get from that first situation to the second. It's as much a practical imperative as a moral one.
No it isn't necessarily a practical or moral one and probably not a scientific one either. All governments have their first responsibility to their own population. IMHO, the first priority of Western governments is to figure out how to defeat or contain the virus. The strategies that they use will then inform them how they support other governments to do the same.
The virus respects no borders. It's a global pandemic and the best response to it is global. The more inefficient and illogical is the vaccine rollout - eg 5 or 6 jabs in one country and zero in another - the longer the pandemic will last, and the longer it lasts the more the damage will be and the more likely it is that we will be impacted.
The question then is this - to what extent should the normal rules of national centric politics - which you outline - be flexed in order to facilitate the optimum globally efficient solution?
I say the answer to this is "to a very great extent" and I think this is the correct answer. After all, this is a once-a-century emergency with an awful lot at stake. If we can't get our (global) act together for this, at least better than we are atm, when will we ever be able to?
So I am going to ask a question. I don't claim it is a fair question or perhaps even valid but it is the question that any politician has to be able to answer if they wish to accept your view.
How many people should we allow to die in this country, who could otherwise be saved, so that we can save lives of people in Africa, India, Russia or Poland?
As I say I am not saying it is a fair question but it is the question that cannot be dodged by politicians choosing to follow the route of putting global well being ahead of national well being.
And I know the obvious answer to you and probably to me is that in the long term we might actually save more lives here. But that is not certain and you are asking people to accept deaths now for fewer deaths tomorrow. That is a hard, if not impossible, sell for any politician.
I'll avoid the obvious answer and instead acknowledge what you say - that it's hard for any national government not to be driven entirely by high viz short term national interest, eg (for here) what booster strategy gets us out of all restrictions asap this year, end of story.
So, in practice, I guess the best we can hope for is that the global case is pushed by the likes of the WHO and various leading scientists and that it gets at least some traction with decision makers. Ie I feel the dead opposite to those who see that case being made by such people and respond "They should shut up. Not in their brief". I think the more noise is made about this the better.
Imagine we reach end of 2023 and Covid is conquered (for now) in the developed world but still raging most everywhere else. That, given the early brilliance in developing vaccines and treatments, would be such a shame - and furthermore a depressing sign that for all our tech and intelligence and progress we can't meet the big challenges.
The issue is -
- The supply of vaccines is no longer the issue. We are looking at 24 billion doses manufactured by the middle of this year. There are about 8 Billion people on the planet. - So Harry Hair Shirting about not "hoarding" vaccinations doesn't actually make sense. Not doing boosters or vaccinating children in the UK will not materially effect vaccine availability world wide.
There's loads of issues. Affordable Supply + Logistics & Distribution + Population Demand = Vaccination Outcome. There are problems to fix with all the inputs there.
But my strong sense is that the assertion "the domestic vaccine strategy of rich countries and their interaction with the pharmaceutical giants has no impact on the vaccination outcome in the rest of the world" is a self-comforting falsehood.
Sorry but it isn't. What you appear to be advocating is that we reduce our booster campaign even though that will not make any further supply available elsewhere. That is like saying: "there are children starving in the world. Until we can feed them we should starve ours too!"
Sky reporting from the US saying things are not looking good for Andrew
Camilla Long in the Sunday Times was asking why all the other famous men have (apparently) gotten away with things whilst Prince Andrew is caught in the spotlights.
To me, it seems fairly obvious. Because Andrew is a very useful dead cat to throw on the table. There is enough there to occupy people ("He's the Queen's son!") but not so significant that his trial and conviction would lead to a serious undermining of powerful interests (yes, the Royal Family would get hit but it wouldn't cause its collapse).
Indeed, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Trump etc all met Epstein and Maxwell as did plenty of other wealthy and famous people. Some also went to his island but apparently only Prince Andrew ie a non American foreigner, is to face an action from the US legal system
Andrew faces a civil lawsuit from a particular woman who alleges that he slept with her when she was a minor. I would assume that were she to have similar allegations to make against anyone else where she thought there was a chance of meeting the required standard of proof, she would do so. It doesn't strike me as anything akin to an organised conspiracy against a non-American. What does strike me as odd is that in a case about allegations of powerful men abusing their positions of power, the only person in jail so far is a woman.
Funnily enough, that last bit is precisely how Maxwell's lawyer began their summing up. Something about women always getting the blame for the actions of men.
The amusing thing about identity politics is that occasionally you end up going into bat for some right scumbags, which is precisely what you just did.
Hardly. I'm very happy to see Maxwell in jail, I just think it's odd that nobody else is. Her lawyer has a point but it doesn't strike me as a valid defence.
The chief perpetrator - Epstein - is dead. Which is one way of staying out of jail, I suppose.
Maxwell was his main accomplice, so it was quite logical to try her next.
O/T - There have been a couple of articles about risks in 2022. None particularly great and worth linking. However they often point to similar themes - Inflation, Putin, Chinese aggression, Chinese collapse. My top two worries would be Putin and inflation.
With Putin nothing is likely to happen until the spring - insane to fight in winter. I don't think it's at all likely that anything will happen anyway.
Inflation - I know monetarism apparently conquered inflation, but the evidence since has been really unconvincing. I really don't think economists (or anyone else) understand economics, and inflation really can be bad in so many ways.
Would others here have similar worries and thoughts?
Disagree re Putin. I'm surprised he hasn't already gone in. Why? gas. By far his biggest lever over the West is restricting the gas supply to Europe and I've little doubt that he'd play that card if the Western response to an invasion was sufficiently severe. Surely that's why he's been keeping supplies tight these last months - to draw down Europe's stocks and make it all the more vulnerable to supply?
(Yes, Russia is doing very well out of the high gas price at the moment but it's a silly medium-term strategy as it just encourages customers to look to other suppliers and other fuels. As a policy, it only makes sense in the short term).
Once the temperatures start to pick up - or once Europe's stocks start to recover from other imports - Putin loses that leverage.
The ground in the Ukraine also stops being so frozen..
The only way you can (possibly) stop Omicron is with the kind of lockdown China is doing in Xi'an
Stay home all the time. One person allowed out of the house once every three days. For food. Maybe. Build enormous quarantine camps and forcibly decamp thousands of people into them
A lockdown which produces (allegedly) scary videos like these:
But does that even work? Can China do this to the whole of China?
"After #Xian and #Ningbo, #Yuzhou goes into lockdown amid fresh #Covid_19 cases, no announcement yet on spectators for #WinterOlympics #Beijingolympics #Beijing2022"
Interesting that the BBC, having been so embarrassed about giving coverage sceptical of Giuffre for 2-3 minutes last week, has been giving us continuous coverage slanted the other way this teatime in my judgement.
(Has @Scott_xP stood up his claim of lies this morning by Liz Truss et al yet, or is he still down his rabbithole?)
I wonder how Keir Starmer, or someone like him with a sober prosecutorial style, would have done against Thatcher in that crucual election of 1983. Probably slightly better than Foot, I would imagine, but not as well as a Blair-type figure.
Is Boris gonna lock us down again, in some form or other, at 5pm?
Quick vote?
My vote is No, he won't. But I'm worried
I think No. I hope No. I am not 100% convinced though. I think he might crumble.
Johnson is no doubt getting a load of pressure from medical professionals on one side and from Tory MPs on the other. Only one of those groups can remove him this week.
I vote No. He would be deposed within 48 hours I think if he announces lockdown tonight. The data just isn't there and the backbench have run out of patience with SAGE and modelling anyway.
I vote No. He would be deposed within 48 hours I think if he announces lockdown tonight. The data just isn't there and the backbench and the public have run out of patience with SAGE and modelling anyway.
FTFY.
Yes, even with the incidentals it doesn't look like we'll reach anything like 3,000 hospitalisations per day which was the best case scenario for Omicron (not including incidentals).
Care to bet on that? I'm pretty confident we will exceed 3k hospitalizations per day as per coronavirus.data.gov £25 - winnings to pb.com?
Precise terms -> according to coronavirus.data.gov.uk, the UK will exceed 3k hospitalizations per day for at least one day before end of March.
I think Max PB was talking about England Hospitalisation.
Then staying under 3,000 sounds quite possible to me.
If you where prepared to limit it to England, use 7 day average and end date of End Of Feb, then I would take that £25 bet (donation to PB)
Xian seems to be on everyone's lips but Delta or Omicron they were hard locking the place down ages (weeks?) ago. Because the city is hosting the Winter Olympics so "just in case" China is blitzing it to get Covid cases down because they don't want the global spotlight to show any pox there.
The only way you can (possibly) stop Omicron is with the kind of lockdown China is doing in Xi'an
Stay home all the time. One person allowed out of the house once every three days. For food. Maybe. Build enormous quarantine camps and forcibly decamp thousands of people into them
A lockdown which produces (allegedly) scary videos like these:
But does that even work? Can China do this to the whole of China?
"After #Xian and #Ningbo, #Yuzhou goes into lockdown amid fresh #Covid_19 cases, no announcement yet on spectators for #WinterOlympics #Beijingolympics #Beijing2022"
it looks terrifying but Twitter is saying it's a malfunction of the foam sprayers. However there are multiple videos of these "flame thrower" incidents in Xi'an, so that's an awful lot of malfunctions that we have never seen before.
I still reckon it's Omicron but it is foolish to deny this looks a little ominous
Well, it is probably effective at keeping people off the streets...
Xian seems to be on everyone's lips but Delta or Omicron they were hard locking the place down ages (weeks?) ago. Because the city is hosting the Winter Olympics so "just in case" China is blitzing it to get Covid cases down because they don't want the global spotlight to show any pox there.
Can we draw any other lessons from it? Nope.
Their response is a significant order of magnitude than any other restrictions they have imposed, they are even stricter than Wuhan. And its been going on for ages now and they sent 1000s of extra medics, built massive isolation units etc.
Is Boris gonna lock us down again, in some form or other, at 5pm?
Quick vote?
My vote is No, he won't. But I'm worried
After his poll bounce from not locking down over Christmas and New Year I would guess not.
Nothing in it for him. Those who want a new lockdown or more restrictions are almost all Labour or SNP voters anyway
Are they? I thought they skewed predominantly old? The young and city dwellers seem to be the ones getting on with it.
If that was the case why has Boris got a bounce in the latest poll for the Tories after imposing not a single new restriction over Christmas and New Year almost entirely from anti restriction voters going back from RefUK and LDs to the Tories while the Labour vote is little changed?
Cos some people are very strongly motivated by this issue? I don't see how that justifies the claim that people who support a lockdown are Labour or SNP voters. Do you have any evidence for that.
Absolutely, 54% of Labour voters wanted a return to the rule of 6 indoors last month, 50% of Conservative voters were opposed.
78% of Conservative voters did not want to close pubs and restaurants again but only 63% of Labour voters did not want them closed.
55% of Conservative voters were opposed to preventing large sporting and entertainment events but 49% of Labour voters wanted to prevent them with just 41% wanting to keep them going.
Comments
Welcome back by the way.
The Nazis razed the best of it and the town planners did the rest. It was rebuilt in hideous cheap brick and concrete. Only the tiny corner around the (gorgeous) cathedral survives
One day we should rebuild Exeter just as it was. Ditto Coventry, and so many others
So, in practice, I guess the best we can hope for is that the global case is pushed by the likes of the WHO and various leading scientists and that it gets at least some traction with decision makers. Ie I feel the dead opposite to those who see that case being made by such people and respond "They should shut up. Not in their brief". I think the more noise is made about this the better.
Imagine we reach end of 2023 and Covid is conquered (for now) in the developed world but still raging most everywhere else. That, given the early brilliance in developing vaccines and treatments, would be such a shame - and furthermore a depressing sign that for all our tech and intelligence and progress we can't meet the big challenges.
Just looked it up: '84.
Omicron is 100% undeniably milder than Delta, and no amount of anecdotes about some people still getting ill stops it being milder.
Christmas break?
FTFY.
I think you've been reading a different forum to me then.
Is that your recommendation?
https://twitter.com/LisaBloom/status/1478388894391537671
Lisa Bloom
@LisaBloom
Prince Andrew's attorney says Virginia's sexual allegations are too vague.
Judge: "involuntary sexual intercourse" is clear to me
Oh and the Judge than gave David Boies (Virginia's lawyer) the argument regarding the Florida agreement - so that isn't going to help Andrew.
- The supply of vaccines is no longer the issue. We are looking at 24 billion doses manufactured by the middle of this year. There are about 8 Billion people on the planet.
- So Harry Hair Shirting about not "hoarding" vaccinations doesn't actually make sense. Not doing boosters or vaccinating children in the UK will not materially effect vaccine availability world wide.
I don't see how that justifies the claim that people who support a lockdown are Labour or SNP voters. Do you have any evidence for that.
Sounds like more fuel on the fire.
As ever, the devil will be in the detail. Who exactly are they?
It's tonight's announcement.
Boris' brainwave to deal with isolation requirements causing mass staff absence is to ramp up testing even more. Someone should try to sell this idiot a bridge.
A month of lockdown has done virtually nothing there. A near-pointless crippling of their economy
Lockdowns - even hard ones - don't stop Omicron
Edit: warning: not eaten there recently.
They're just going to catch it at home or down the pub and then have a week stuck at home.
£25 - winnings to pb.com?
Precise terms -> according to coronavirus.data.gov.uk, the UK will exceed 3k hospitalizations per day for at least one day before end of March.
Best just to send them direct and skip the middle part of ordering
Reporting day or day of?
So it's on top of the Seven Day Rule? Is Boris clinically insane?
When we then switched away to the journalists talking about poorly understood science before concentrating on emotions. The angst a single nurse coming off a night shift feels.
I don't mind politicans and journalists being morons, but why are they paid so much to be so. Surely they only need to be taught basic reading and writing. It's a waste of educational resources to teach wannabe journalists and politicans even basic science? It's too complicated for the spoilt darlings.
My instant take is this. He needed to announce something or it would be a waste of time. This is something. And, unusually for him, it isn't a stretch target, but can be done in a week.
78% of Conservative voters did not want to close pubs and restaurants again but only 63% of Labour voters did not want them closed.
55% of Conservative voters were opposed to preventing large sporting and entertainment events but 49% of Labour voters wanted to prevent them with just 41% wanting to keep them going.
54% of Labour voters wanted to close nightclubs too but only 47% of Conservative voters wanted to close nightclubs.
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/qg3daplz0l/YouGov - COVID restrictions in England Dec 2021.pdf
What does strike me as odd is that in a case about allegations of powerful men abusing their positions of power, the only person in jail so far is a woman.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59867046
Still, though: RIP
Stay home all the time. One person allowed out of the house once every three days. For food. Maybe. Build enormous quarantine camps and forcibly decamp thousands of people into them
A lockdown which produces (allegedly) scary videos like these:
https://twitter.com/ChinaStreetTalk/status/1478411906062901260?s=20
https://twitter.com/TuCaoFakeNews/status/1475767047866839041?s=20
https://twitter.com/Jackofthepol/status/1476646713263861760?s=20
But does that even work? Can China do this to the whole of China?
"After #Xian and #Ningbo, #Yuzhou goes into lockdown amid fresh #Covid_19 cases, no announcement yet on spectators for #WinterOlympics #Beijingolympics #Beijing2022"
https://twitter.com/PBSC_Beijing/status/1478386179997376522?s=20
But my strong sense is that the assertion "the domestic vaccine strategy of rich countries and their interaction with the pharmaceutical giants has no impact on the vaccination outcome in the rest of the world" is a self-comforting falsehood.
No point having a PCR for 90 days because you'd probably still test positive even though no longer infectious.
Questioner asked about LFTs (there's never been such advice for these).
One rather central male is now deceased.
What absolubte nonsense lol
Songpinganq
@songpinganq
· 9h
xi'an city
What the hell?
Chinese stormtroopers not only using fog sprayners but also flamethrowers to sanitize the entire city now!
Ridiculous! Absurd!
2022/1/4
EDIT: one explanation seems to be that the gases used to disinfect sometimes catch light
Hmm. But let's hope that is right
https://twitter.com/songpinganq/status/1478276645631193095?s=20
Edit - and the bet is open to you also if interested.
farmin folk ain’t dum as you metropolitans think they are up here
Ignore polls. Ignore covid. This Conservative government need some economic direction, polices and a leader people will believe. Its a vibe that is a thing up here. I predict it’s going to get quite bad anyway with or without action on Boris problem, but sooner they deal with these problems the better for the party in the long run.
Signed by Jade 4th January 2022. 🙂
That explains it........ I couldn't understand how someone who enjoys the delights of Almeria could be such a fan of Boris and Brexit.......
.....It was the thought of hordes of Hartlipudlians piling into the restaurants and spraying vinegar over their tapas chips and peas.
The big return to work happens this week, and Dutch schools are going back next week. Then we have to assume that we'll see a much more rapid ramping up of case rate. We'll only know for sure later in the month, BUT it does look suspiciously like hard lockdown may have done nothing but shunt the Omicron wave about 2-3 weeks into the future.
The fact remains that vaccines are now being made faster than the take-up - to the point where makers are questioning what their strategy in the second half of 2022 will be.
I suppose we could build a nice, comforting mountain of out-of-date vaccine doses. That should make someone feel nice.
https://twitter.com/Chri5tianGoebel/status/1478412075005362176?t=SBpcs0yr_8D5Ee8E9KzwMg&s=19
Now that's the kind of talk he ought to have been engaging in long before.
The amusing thing about identity politics is that occasionally you end up going into bat for some right scumbags, which is precisely what you just did.
I still reckon it's Omicron but it is foolish to deny this looks a little ominous
Hence the Tories got a poll bounce after imposing no new restrictions over Christmas and New Year and hence Boris has introduced no new restrictions after today's post New Year press conference either
https://twitter.com/maskaus/status/1478280622640668672?t=Ze87QH9ZBQrUr4bwKrzS9g&s=1
https://twitter.com/davegreenidge57/status/1478375677275615235?t=ipKfcu7fpzRqxqpQp9k3ww&s=19
Remember its only a few 100 cases....
https://twitter.com/i/status/1478356993400311826
They would be better off focusing on boosters
And yes, you can eat well in Plymouth. It's not a gourmet paradise, it ain't San Sebastian, but there are plenty of nice options. And, as always in the UK, if you run out of options, there is nearly always a decent Indian or Thai
Maxwell was his main accomplice, so it was quite logical to try her next.
Equally logical to move onto others involved....
(Has @Scott_xP stood up his claim of lies this morning by Liz Truss et al yet, or is he still down his rabbithole?)
Then staying under 3,000 sounds quite possible to me.
If you where prepared to limit it to England, use 7 day average and end date of End Of Feb, then I would take that £25 bet (donation to PB)
Apparently it is only Remainers who want to abolish the 5% VAT on energy bills.
Can we draw any other lessons from it? Nope.
The first huge style mistake of 2022.