LOL how the mighty have fallen. He can’t even put his camera the right way round.
Now, Cameo was a funny pandemic-era way to get an out-of-work actor or comedian to say happy birthday to your friend, but surely this sort of stunt raises all sorts of questions about advertising regulations?
It's amusing as I've said before I think we pay our politicians too much and it'd be better if their pay was more closely linked to citizens pay in general. I believe in the 90s an MP typically got two times average income and now it's three times and I don't think that's healthy.
Others have said they think MPs are underpaid compared to the private sector.
While a tiny, tiny minority of the private sector may be worth more than MPs that's far from the case for all MPs as the likes of Bercow etc whoring themselves post politics helps demonstrate. As does the desperation in many MPs to do anything to stay loyal to the Party and keep their seat, because if they lose their seat they lose their job and there £84k+ salary they'd never achieve in the real world.
Above average intelligence, middle class background at least, graduate from good uni, driven and ambitious, energetic, robust and thick skinned, gift of the gab, alert to opportunities to get ahead.
The above being the typical profile of an MP, there's little doubt in my mind that most of them would have been able to earn more if they'd choosen a career in the private sector.
I am actually quite surprised the average is that high after 5 years.
I do wonder whether the base stats are on all degrees, including Masters (and MBAs) and PhDs etc. That would boost the numbers up a bit. Depending on data too, if it's survey based (how else?) then likely to be a differential response with lower earners less responsive? Don't account for that and you get high numbers.
Five years after first graduating I was doing a PhD on a £15k stipend, so I'm happy to believe those numbers are high
So 22 years after PhD I'm just touching 50K, but thats a middle ranking academic salary. Just shows that I do it for love and not for the cash...
Sounds familiar. I got my Ph.D. in 1973 and when I retired in 2001 as a progressed PL I had just reached 40K.
Glad I didn't go the PhD route, then.
But you do miss out on people sneering that you are not a real doctor as its not medicine...
LOL. I get called Doctor all the time, to the point of giving up on correcting people
Took my wife and I some time to make our elderly neighbours understand we weren't those kind of doctors. The people we bought the house from had apparently seen our titles on the paperwork and told them that they'd have a couple of MDs moving in next door.
LOL how the mighty have fallen. He can’t even put his camera the right way round.
Now, Cameo was a funny pandemic-era way to get an out-of-work actor or comedian to say happy birthday to your friend, but surely this sort of stunt raises all sorts of questions about advertising regulations?
It's amusing as I've said before I think we pay our politicians too much and it'd be better if their pay was more closely linked to citizens pay in general. I believe in the 90s an MP typically got two times average income and now it's three times and I don't think that's healthy.
Others have said they think MPs are underpaid compared to the private sector.
While a tiny, tiny minority of the private sector may be worth more than MPs that's far from the case for all MPs as the likes of Bercow etc whoring themselves post politics helps demonstrate. As does the desperation in many MPs to do anything to stay loyal to the Party and keep their seat, because if they lose their seat they lose their job and there £84k+ salary they'd never achieve in the real world.
Above average intelligence, middle class background at least, graduate from good uni, driven and ambitious, energetic, robust and thick skinned, gift of the gab, alert to opportunities to get ahead.
The above being the typical profile of an MP, there's little doubt in my mind that most of them would have been able to earn more if they'd choosen a career in the private sector.
I am actually quite surprised the average is that high after 5 years.
I do wonder whether the base stats are on all degrees, including Masters (and MBAs) and PhDs etc. That would boost the numbers up a bit. Depending on data too, if it's survey based (how else?) then likely to be a differential response with lower earners less responsive? Don't account for that and you get high numbers.
Five years after first graduating I was doing a PhD on a £15k stipend, so I'm happy to believe those numbers are high
So 22 years after PhD I'm just touching 50K, but thats a middle ranking academic salary. Just shows that I do it for love and not for the cash...
Sounds familiar. I got my Ph.D. in 1973 and when I retired in 2001 as a progressed PL I had just reached 40K.
Glad I didn't go the PhD route, then.
I've said this before, but I know a fair few people who have PhDs. The vast majority of them either regret doing it, or think it has had no, or even negative, effect on their salary over those with ordinary degrees.
PhDs are important if you want to be an academic, helpful if you want to teach in a top private school or grammar, of little benefit otherwise unless in a specific area in demand in the commercial field
On the last point I said before and I still think that there was a huge element of the South Africans being treated as "primitive spear chuckers" by our scientific establishment. They couldn't fathom that a nation like SA could be get the data right so chose to not believe them, essentially because it's an African nation. I found the whole thing extremely unedifying and it showed how institutionally racist the British establishment still is, which was quite disheartening.
I think that's a bit unfair. I think the skepticism was mostly driven by the fear that the data was too good to be true and that if they called it wrong — "yes, SA data is directly applicable to the UK" — a hell of a lot of people might die. I don't think anyone queried the South African testing and sequencing, it was the data about hospitalisation and development of disease that people were skeptical about. It was believed that our different demographics and different pre-existing immunity from vaccinations and prior infections might lead to different outcomes. It didn't, thank God, but how many people would want to take that risk? I would have certainly been very cautious if I had to make such a decision.
LOL how the mighty have fallen. He can’t even put his camera the right way round.
Now, Cameo was a funny pandemic-era way to get an out-of-work actor or comedian to say happy birthday to your friend, but surely this sort of stunt raises all sorts of questions about advertising regulations?
It's amusing as I've said before I think we pay our politicians too much and it'd be better if their pay was more closely linked to citizens pay in general. I believe in the 90s an MP typically got two times average income and now it's three times and I don't think that's healthy.
Others have said they think MPs are underpaid compared to the private sector.
While a tiny, tiny minority of the private sector may be worth more than MPs that's far from the case for all MPs as the likes of Bercow etc whoring themselves post politics helps demonstrate. As does the desperation in many MPs to do anything to stay loyal to the Party and keep their seat, because if they lose their seat they lose their job and there £84k+ salary they'd never achieve in the real world.
Above average intelligence, middle class background at least, graduate from good uni, driven and ambitious, energetic, robust and thick skinned, gift of the gab, alert to opportunities to get ahead.
The above being the typical profile of an MP, there's little doubt in my mind that most of them would have been able to earn more if they'd choosen a career in the private sector.
I am actually quite surprised the average is that high after 5 years.
I do wonder whether the base stats are on all degrees, including Masters (and MBAs) and PhDs etc. That would boost the numbers up a bit. Depending on data too, if it's survey based (how else?) then likely to be a differential response with lower earners less responsive? Don't account for that and you get high numbers.
Five years after first graduating I was doing a PhD on a £15k stipend, so I'm happy to believe those numbers are high
So 22 years after PhD I'm just touching 50K, but thats a middle ranking academic salary. Just shows that I do it for love and not for the cash...
Sounds familiar. I got my Ph.D. in 1973 and when I retired in 2001 as a progressed PL I had just reached 40K.
Glad I didn't go the PhD route, then.
But you do miss out on people sneering that you are not a real doctor as its not medicine...
Unless one is a surgeon in which case it is Mr/Mrs/Ms etc. Friend of mine became a surgeon and I used to razz him that he wasn't a real doctor, until he got his MD ...
LOL how the mighty have fallen. He can’t even put his camera the right way round.
Now, Cameo was a funny pandemic-era way to get an out-of-work actor or comedian to say happy birthday to your friend, but surely this sort of stunt raises all sorts of questions about advertising regulations?
It's amusing as I've said before I think we pay our politicians too much and it'd be better if their pay was more closely linked to citizens pay in general. I believe in the 90s an MP typically got two times average income and now it's three times and I don't think that's healthy.
Others have said they think MPs are underpaid compared to the private sector.
While a tiny, tiny minority of the private sector may be worth more than MPs that's far from the case for all MPs as the likes of Bercow etc whoring themselves post politics helps demonstrate. As does the desperation in many MPs to do anything to stay loyal to the Party and keep their seat, because if they lose their seat they lose their job and there £84k+ salary they'd never achieve in the real world.
Above average intelligence, middle class background at least, graduate from good uni, driven and ambitious, energetic, robust and thick skinned, gift of the gab, alert to opportunities to get ahead.
The above being the typical profile of an MP, there's little doubt in my mind that most of them would have been able to earn more if they'd choosen a career in the private sector.
I am actually quite surprised the average is that high after 5 years.
I do wonder whether the base stats are on all degrees, including Masters (and MBAs) and PhDs etc. That would boost the numbers up a bit. Depending on data too, if it's survey based (how else?) then likely to be a differential response with lower earners less responsive? Don't account for that and you get high numbers.
Five years after first graduating I was doing a PhD on a £15k stipend, so I'm happy to believe those numbers are high
So 22 years after PhD I'm just touching 50K, but thats a middle ranking academic salary. Just shows that I do it for love and not for the cash...
Sounds familiar. I got my Ph.D. in 1973 and when I retired in 2001 as a progressed PL I had just reached 40K.
Glad I didn't go the PhD route, then.
I've said this before, but I know a fair few people who have PhDs. The vast majority of them either regret doing it, or think it has had no, or even negative, effect on their salary over those with ordinary degrees.
PhDs are important if you want to be an academic, helpful if you want to teach in a top private school or grammar, of little benefit otherwise unless in a specific area in demand in the commercial field
That's a rather British attitude.
Indeed. A close relative did a PhD. When he applied for management positions, just after he left academia, he would find himself being interviewed for jobs in research which paid peanuts.
In happier news. My 100% record of having mildly disappointing food (on my one previous Sri Lankan trip) has been easily shattered. It’s all good so far. Black Pork Curry lunch here was absolutely excellent
Colombo is a strange city. Poor, scruffy, yet in places intensely civilised. And stunned by the sun and heat into an amiable complacency
Are there still lots of stray dogs lining the streets? Was when I was there. Plagued with them - a bit off-putting.
Not one that I’ve seen. Not cats. In fact a decided absence by “3rd World” standards (are we still allowed to say 3rd World? What’s the replacement?)
The Global South. Not to be confused with the pop group of that name.
The Global South is surely far more insulting than “3rd World” (which is an antique Cold War term, I readily confess)
For a start there are plenty of once-developing countries in the “Global South” which would really resent that characterization;. Chileans are quite haughty about being compared to Argentina, let alone Sudan. Indonesia is equally proud, likewise Costa Rica, the Maldives, Mauritius, what even is “the Global South”?
You asked what the term now is and I told you - The Global South. But please note it doesn't mean below the equator. It's pretty much a straight replacement for 3rd World. It's a development measure not a geographic one. Insulting? No, the whole point is that 3rd World was, but this isn't. Everyone is happy and onboard with it.
"Everyone is happy and onboard with it."
Not true....its far from settled issue.
‘Global South’, a term frequently used on websites and in papers related to academic and ‘predatory’ publishing, may represent a form of unscholarly discrimination. Arguments are put forward as to why the current use of this term is geographically meaningless, since it implies countries in the southern hemisphere, whereas many of the entities in publishing that are referred to as being part of the Global South are in fact either on the equator or in the northern hemisphere. Therefore, academics, in writing about academic publishing, should cease using this broad, culturally insensitive, and geographically inaccurate term.
Erondu says she's embarrassed if she inadvertently uses the term during a workshop in one of the countries in Africa where she works on health care issues. Why? "Because people in Nigeria don't refer to themselves as the 'global south.' It's something someone named them."
I could go on and on. Third world is a no no, describing in terms of income is problematic and global south many don't like either.
I see. So what's a better term then? What gets your stamp of approval? Or let's put it this way. What term do YOU use when needing one for referring to the relatively impoverished parts of the world?
Eg, complete this sentence - The pandemic will soon be over in the rich nations of the West but will rage on for a long time in ????????? unless vaccines are rolled out there as a matter of priority.
I still use third world. This isn't me being deliberately old-fashioned or deliberately refusing to use the woke term. It would never occur to me that third world was unwoke. Actually, I might use developing world. Which itself is a polite euphemism which replaced the earlier and more pejorative 'undeveloped world' despite it being glaringly apparently that many parts of the undeveloped world were not developing. I suppose - if it occurred to me, because it's not a phrase that ever really does occur to me - you could use 'global south' to include countries like Chile whereas third world brings to mind more countries like Benin.
I can't think of a single context in which it is useful to lump Chile in with the Global South.
LOL how the mighty have fallen. He can’t even put his camera the right way round.
Now, Cameo was a funny pandemic-era way to get an out-of-work actor or comedian to say happy birthday to your friend, but surely this sort of stunt raises all sorts of questions about advertising regulations?
It's amusing as I've said before I think we pay our politicians too much and it'd be better if their pay was more closely linked to citizens pay in general. I believe in the 90s an MP typically got two times average income and now it's three times and I don't think that's healthy.
Others have said they think MPs are underpaid compared to the private sector.
While a tiny, tiny minority of the private sector may be worth more than MPs that's far from the case for all MPs as the likes of Bercow etc whoring themselves post politics helps demonstrate. As does the desperation in many MPs to do anything to stay loyal to the Party and keep their seat, because if they lose their seat they lose their job and there £84k+ salary they'd never achieve in the real world.
Above average intelligence, middle class background at least, graduate from good uni, driven and ambitious, energetic, robust and thick skinned, gift of the gab, alert to opportunities to get ahead.
The above being the typical profile of an MP, there's little doubt in my mind that most of them would have been able to earn more if they'd choosen a career in the private sector.
I am actually quite surprised the average is that high after 5 years.
I do wonder whether the base stats are on all degrees, including Masters (and MBAs) and PhDs etc. That would boost the numbers up a bit. Depending on data too, if it's survey based (how else?) then likely to be a differential response with lower earners less responsive? Don't account for that and you get high numbers.
Five years after first graduating I was doing a PhD on a £15k stipend, so I'm happy to believe those numbers are high
So 22 years after PhD I'm just touching 50K, but thats a middle ranking academic salary. Just shows that I do it for love and not for the cash...
Sounds familiar. I got my Ph.D. in 1973 and when I retired in 2001 as a progressed PL I had just reached 40K.
Glad I didn't go the PhD route, then.
I've said this before, but I know a fair few people who have PhDs. The vast majority of them either regret doing it, or think it has had no, or even negative, effect on their salary over those with ordinary degrees.
I met my wife while doing my PhD. In all honesty, that was the main benefit. No regrets
LOL how the mighty have fallen. He can’t even put his camera the right way round.
Now, Cameo was a funny pandemic-era way to get an out-of-work actor or comedian to say happy birthday to your friend, but surely this sort of stunt raises all sorts of questions about advertising regulations?
It's amusing as I've said before I think we pay our politicians too much and it'd be better if their pay was more closely linked to citizens pay in general. I believe in the 90s an MP typically got two times average income and now it's three times and I don't think that's healthy.
Others have said they think MPs are underpaid compared to the private sector.
While a tiny, tiny minority of the private sector may be worth more than MPs that's far from the case for all MPs as the likes of Bercow etc whoring themselves post politics helps demonstrate. As does the desperation in many MPs to do anything to stay loyal to the Party and keep their seat, because if they lose their seat they lose their job and there £84k+ salary they'd never achieve in the real world.
Above average intelligence, middle class background at least, graduate from good uni, driven and ambitious, energetic, robust and thick skinned, gift of the gab, alert to opportunities to get ahead.
The above being the typical profile of an MP, there's little doubt in my mind that most of them would have been able to earn more if they'd choosen a career in the private sector.
I am actually quite surprised the average is that high after 5 years.
I do wonder whether the base stats are on all degrees, including Masters (and MBAs) and PhDs etc. That would boost the numbers up a bit. Depending on data too, if it's survey based (how else?) then likely to be a differential response with lower earners less responsive? Don't account for that and you get high numbers.
Five years after first graduating I was doing a PhD on a £15k stipend, so I'm happy to believe those numbers are high
So 22 years after PhD I'm just touching 50K, but thats a middle ranking academic salary. Just shows that I do it for love and not for the cash...
Sounds familiar. I got my Ph.D. in 1973 and when I retired in 2001 as a progressed PL I had just reached 40K.
Glad I didn't go the PhD route, then.
I've said this before, but I know a fair few people who have PhDs. The vast majority of them either regret doing it, or think it has had no, or even negative, effect on their salary over those with ordinary degrees.
PhDs are important if you want to be an academic, helpful if you want to teach in a top private school or grammar, of little benefit otherwise unless in a specific area in demand in the commercial field
That's a rather British attitude.
Indeed. A close relative did a PhD. When he applied for management positions, just after he left academia, he would find himself being interviewed for jobs in research which paid peanuts.
I didn't suffer it so much when I did mine, but Mrs U certainly did. Very much the attitude of what's the point of doing that.
"Later the two gatherings merged in the garden." So never mind breaking the rules with the two separate parties they then doubled down and merged them together.
I assume Dom is awaiting publication of the Grey report before leaking the photo of the FLSOJ having a wazz into a pot plant with the staff cheering him on.
For the 1000th time, Boris wasn't anywhere near these parties.
If he had been caught going totally mad, absolutely legless or having it away with an intern at one of the other events, I am pretty sure we would have heard about it by now.
On the last point I said before and I still think that there was a huge element of the South Africans being treated as "primitive spear chuckers" by our scientific establishment. They couldn't fathom that a nation like SA could be get the data right so chose to not believe them, essentially because it's an African nation. I found the whole thing extremely unedifying and it showed how institutionally racist the British establishment still is, which was quite disheartening.
I think that's a bit unfair. I think the skepticism was mostly driven by the fear that the data was too good to be true and that if they called it wrong — "yes, SA data is directly applicable to the UK" — a hell of a lot of people might die. I don't think anyone queried the South African testing and sequencing, it was the data about hospitalisation and development of disease that people were skeptical about. It was believed that our different demographics and different pre-existing immunity from vaccinations and prior infections might lead to different outcomes. It didn't, thank God, but how many people would want to take that risk? I would have certainly been very cautious if I had to make such a decision.
The issue was they were simply dismissive of the SA data rather than presenting a scenario where the SA data was correct as maybe a best case, they just ignored it and used their modelled data which turned out to be wildly inaccurate. There's no reason to do that unless they really believed the SA data was simply incorrect and they'd made basic mistakes in recording it because they're too primitive/stupid to do it properly.
Professor Karol Sikora @ProfKarolSikora · 6h I hope all of those going back into the offices will make a special effort to support small businesses in the cities which have been decimated by plan B.
Go and grab a coffee from a local cafe or a pint from your favourite pub.
In happier news. My 100% record of having mildly disappointing food (on my one previous Sri Lankan trip) has been easily shattered. It’s all good so far. Black Pork Curry lunch here was absolutely excellent
Colombo is a strange city. Poor, scruffy, yet in places intensely civilised. And stunned by the sun and heat into an amiable complacency
Are there still lots of stray dogs lining the streets? Was when I was there. Plagued with them - a bit off-putting.
Not one that I’ve seen. Not cats. In fact a decided absence by “3rd World” standards (are we still allowed to say 3rd World? What’s the replacement?)
The Global South. Not to be confused with the pop group of that name.
The Global South is surely far more insulting than “3rd World” (which is an antique Cold War term, I readily confess)
For a start there are plenty of once-developing countries in the “Global South” which would really resent that characterization;. Chileans are quite haughty about being compared to Argentina, let alone Sudan. Indonesia is equally proud, likewise Costa Rica, the Maldives, Mauritius, what even is “the Global South”?
You asked what the term now is and I told you - The Global South. But please note it doesn't mean below the equator. It's pretty much a straight replacement for 3rd World. It's a development measure not a geographic one. Insulting? No, the whole point is that 3rd World was, but this isn't. Everyone is happy and onboard with it.
"Everyone is happy and onboard with it."
Not true....its far from settled issue.
‘Global South’, a term frequently used on websites and in papers related to academic and ‘predatory’ publishing, may represent a form of unscholarly discrimination. Arguments are put forward as to why the current use of this term is geographically meaningless, since it implies countries in the southern hemisphere, whereas many of the entities in publishing that are referred to as being part of the Global South are in fact either on the equator or in the northern hemisphere. Therefore, academics, in writing about academic publishing, should cease using this broad, culturally insensitive, and geographically inaccurate term.
Erondu says she's embarrassed if she inadvertently uses the term during a workshop in one of the countries in Africa where she works on health care issues. Why? "Because people in Nigeria don't refer to themselves as the 'global south.' It's something someone named them."
I could go on and on. Third world is a no no, describing in terms of income is problematic and global south many don't like either.
I see. So what's a better term then? What gets your stamp of approval? Or let's put it this way. What term do YOU use when needing one for referring to the relatively impoverished parts of the world?
Eg, complete this sentence - The pandemic will soon be over in the rich nations of the West but will rage on for a long time in ????????? unless vaccines are rolled out there as a matter of priority.
I still use third world. This isn't me being deliberately old-fashioned or deliberately refusing to use the woke term. It would never occur to me that third world was unwoke. Actually, I might use developing world. Which itself is a polite euphemism which replaced the earlier and more pejorative 'undeveloped world' despite it being glaringly apparently that many parts of the undeveloped world were not developing. I suppose - if it occurred to me, because it's not a phrase that ever really does occur to me - you could use 'global south' to include countries like Chile whereas third world brings to mind more countries like Benin.
I can't think of a single context in which it is useful to lump Chile in with the Global South.
Geography?
Nope. Already established that the Global South includes Northern Hemisphere countries, such as Bangladesh, Nepal etc...
LOL how the mighty have fallen. He can’t even put his camera the right way round.
Now, Cameo was a funny pandemic-era way to get an out-of-work actor or comedian to say happy birthday to your friend, but surely this sort of stunt raises all sorts of questions about advertising regulations?
It's amusing as I've said before I think we pay our politicians too much and it'd be better if their pay was more closely linked to citizens pay in general. I believe in the 90s an MP typically got two times average income and now it's three times and I don't think that's healthy.
Others have said they think MPs are underpaid compared to the private sector.
While a tiny, tiny minority of the private sector may be worth more than MPs that's far from the case for all MPs as the likes of Bercow etc whoring themselves post politics helps demonstrate. As does the desperation in many MPs to do anything to stay loyal to the Party and keep their seat, because if they lose their seat they lose their job and there £84k+ salary they'd never achieve in the real world.
Above average intelligence, middle class background at least, graduate from good uni, driven and ambitious, energetic, robust and thick skinned, gift of the gab, alert to opportunities to get ahead.
The above being the typical profile of an MP, there's little doubt in my mind that most of them would have been able to earn more if they'd choosen a career in the private sector.
I am actually quite surprised the average is that high after 5 years.
I do wonder whether the base stats are on all degrees, including Masters (and MBAs) and PhDs etc. That would boost the numbers up a bit. Depending on data too, if it's survey based (how else?) then likely to be a differential response with lower earners less responsive? Don't account for that and you get high numbers.
Five years after first graduating I was doing a PhD on a £15k stipend, so I'm happy to believe those numbers are high
So 22 years after PhD I'm just touching 50K, but thats a middle ranking academic salary. Just shows that I do it for love and not for the cash...
Sounds familiar. I got my Ph.D. in 1973 and when I retired in 2001 as a progressed PL I had just reached 40K.
Glad I didn't go the PhD route, then.
I've said this before, but I know a fair few people who have PhDs. The vast majority of them either regret doing it, or think it has had no, or even negative, effect on their salary over those with ordinary degrees.
PhDs are important if you want to be an academic, helpful if you want to teach in a top private school or grammar, of little benefit otherwise unless in a specific area in demand in the commercial field
That's a rather British attitude.
Indeed. A close relative did a PhD. When he applied for management positions, just after he left academia, he would find himself being interviewed for jobs in research which paid peanuts.
If you want to go into business management an MBA would be far more useful than a PhD
I've said this before, but I know a fair few people who have PhDs. The vast majority of them either regret doing it, or think it has had no, or even negative, effect on their salary over those with ordinary degrees.
I think it's been mildly useful in getting a respectful hearing (whether otherwise earned or not), and I'm sure it helped get my first job, which was paid £50K back in 1977, because the Swiss really rate academic success. It still helps a bit, though objectively it's nuts that a work of minor mathematics that I'm certain nobody has ever used, written 40 years ago, has any effect whatever.
The thing that gets too much attention is school grades. They are a passport to a degree, but once you've got to uni, nobody cares what you did in school.
In happier news. My 100% record of having mildly disappointing food (on my one previous Sri Lankan trip) has been easily shattered. It’s all good so far. Black Pork Curry lunch here was absolutely excellent
Colombo is a strange city. Poor, scruffy, yet in places intensely civilised. And stunned by the sun and heat into an amiable complacency
Are there still lots of stray dogs lining the streets? Was when I was there. Plagued with them - a bit off-putting.
Not one that I’ve seen. Not cats. In fact a decided absence by “3rd World” standards (are we still allowed to say 3rd World? What’s the replacement?)
The Global South. Not to be confused with the pop group of that name.
The Global South is surely far more insulting than “3rd World” (which is an antique Cold War term, I readily confess)
For a start there are plenty of once-developing countries in the “Global South” which would really resent that characterization;. Chileans are quite haughty about being compared to Argentina, let alone Sudan. Indonesia is equally proud, likewise Costa Rica, the Maldives, Mauritius, what even is “the Global South”?
You asked what the term now is and I told you - The Global South. But please note it doesn't mean below the equator. It's pretty much a straight replacement for 3rd World. It's a development measure not a geographic one. Insulting? No, the whole point is that 3rd World was, but this isn't. Everyone is happy and onboard with it.
Third World originates in the division between the Communist block and the capitalist democracies, hence Third World. S such it is obsolete for the fall of the Soviet Union.
Quite. I don’t think @kinabalu grasps the basic etymology of “3rd World”
Of course I grasp. Obsolete, as I said, and the term now is Global South. Although Francis Urquhart informs us there has been a further evolution. If so, fine. Language lives, it doesn't atrophy. One of its many charms. Surf it, don't fight it. Surprised I have to tell a pro writer this.
But this is exactly the same issue as with all the synonyms for non-white. It's the concept behind the description that people don't like, not the latest iteration.
Well sometimes you need a general description for something, don't you? Avoid sloppy generalizations, yes, but sometimes a term is needed.
TBH, the people on here who get hung up about this stuff are not the ones agonizing over the "correct" term to use. Hardly anybody does that. I certainly don't. No, the ones for whom this is a matter of great concern are those forever keen to eye-roll about how "difficult" and "illogical" it all is.
It's just virtue signalling, where the virtue being signalled is "Ooo I'm a free-thinking, intellectually muscular type, me."
"Later the two gatherings merged in the garden." So never mind breaking the rules with the two separate parties they then doubled down and merged them together.
I assume Dom is awaiting publication of the Grey report before leaking the photo of the FLSOJ having a wazz into a pot plant with the staff cheering him on.
For the 1000th time, Boris wasn't anywhere near these parties.
If he had been caught going totally mad, absolutely legless or having it away with an intern at one of the other events, I am pretty sure we would have heard about it by now.
Didn't say the wazz incident was at these parties. But we know there were a lot of parties and Jizz has been to them. Even the "only 25 minutes" claim of his attendance at the garden party isn't backed up by anyone other than Jizz. And we can't believe anything he says at face value as he lies so much.
They will have a photo. As I keep pointing out they are holding stuff back for release when it does him the maximum damage.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h On the South Africa debate. People can try and re-write history as much as they like. Chris Whitty said "there are several things we don't know, but all the things that we do know, are bad". That statement simply wasn't accurate.
That's Dec 15. Depending how high a bar you have for 'know' it's defensible. We knew it had some vaccine escape and was more easily transmitted. There was some evidence on lower severity (probably, by then?) but I'm not sure I'd have said we 'knew' that at that point.
SA Doctors were saying about the significant lower severity 3 weeks before his statement.
Quite possibly (by which I mean I don't remember the timings, but assuming you do and I believe you). But 'know' in science has a quite specific meaning. Even knowing it was less severe in South Africa wouldn't mean it knowing (hoping, suspecting, expecting even, perhaps, but not knowing) was less severe here for a few reasons: - Different age profiles - Different profiles of past infection to different variants - Different comorbidities (partly due to differences in age) - Different profile of vaccines used (I don't know this to be the case, but good chance we have a different mix?)
Even at this point, do we know that Omicron is intrinsically milder than Delta? As opposed to effectively milder due to increased past exposure and increased vaccination giving us more protection? I haven't seen convincing studies on that - you'd need comparisons among unvaccinated and unexposed populations. If we still don't know the intrinsic severity then we didn't know it was going to be milder in a population with different past exposure, vaccination and comorbidity characterstics.
Whitty’s statement was still factually incorrect. And crucially and desperately incorrect and stated to the world as fact - at a time when UK hospitality was desperate for a good Xmas season
It was irresponsible, which is kinda ironic for a man who comes across as the epitome of decorously judged English reserve and judiciousness
It was not incorrect, for the reasons I have stated. We had some evidence it was milder. But what we knew was that it had some vaccine escape and spread faster.
I think, while this is correct, you can argue about the tone. There was a lot of evidence coming from SA that was treated with incredible skepticism by our, and other, governments/scientists. Frankly I can see why some thought it was racist or otherwise prejudiced. That's perhaps not was anyone intended, but its certainly the perception.
On the last point I said before and I still think that there was a huge element of the South Africans being treated as "primitive spear chuckers" by our scientific establishment. They couldn't fathom that a nation like SA could be get the data right so chose to not believe them, essentially because it's an African nation. I found the whole thing extremely unedifying and it showed how institutionally racist the British establishment still is, which was quite disheartening.
I don’t believe it was “racism” per se
For a start most of the doctors and profs reporting the mildness of Omicron were white
It was more a kind of lingering, snobbish western-eurocentrism. We might have reacted with equal skepticism to data coming out of Bulgaria, or the Phillipines, or the Falklands, or Macau, or Iceland, or even the Trumpier states of the USA
The sense was “we need a big important sensible country to back up these numbers - Western Europe, bits of Eastern Europe, developed east Asia, eg Japan or korea, MOST of the USA, the wider Anglosphere”
I admit this is a slender difference, but it is a difference. Either way it hindered our understanding of Omicron. And I am still sure Whitty told untruths at that presser. We did not KNOW anything. We had some bad intimations (justified) and some good (justified)
Aye, right. What is interesting is how poorly Mr Gove does - his levelling up has not yet been very successful by the look of it.
Actually if you study the poll it concludes that while Rishi is slightly ahead it does indicate Boris can redeem himself and GE24 will largely be due to policies
He also outperforms Starmer by some distance in dealing with covid
Now before anyone attacks me for commenting on this detailed poll, I still want Rishi as PM
But you are right though. Aside of Cummings and Norman hollowing him out with parties, and getting him into a tangle in commons and interviews, the voters who put him there still rate the fundamentals of job he is doing. No one on here here can say to what extent he can or can’t come back from this media storm. No one knows. The pollsters don’t.
I agree and in some ways these poll findings are not as negative as may have been expected
I was assuming WILF had a different context in that headline. Much tamer than I anticipated.
The fact they showed no respect to anyone and even a child's slide must mean each and everyone gets a P45
That approach won't get anywhere in real life. Management-approved invitation to staff. Trade Union rep would rip hell out of any HR person trying to discipline someone for answering that positively. Cue big payoffs, cue more right wing whining.
In happier news. My 100% record of having mildly disappointing food (on my one previous Sri Lankan trip) has been easily shattered. It’s all good so far. Black Pork Curry lunch here was absolutely excellent
Colombo is a strange city. Poor, scruffy, yet in places intensely civilised. And stunned by the sun and heat into an amiable complacency
Are there still lots of stray dogs lining the streets? Was when I was there. Plagued with them - a bit off-putting.
Not one that I’ve seen. Not cats. In fact a decided absence by “3rd World” standards (are we still allowed to say 3rd World? What’s the replacement?)
The Global South. Not to be confused with the pop group of that name.
The Global South is surely far more insulting than “3rd World” (which is an antique Cold War term, I readily confess)
For a start there are plenty of once-developing countries in the “Global South” which would really resent that characterization;. Chileans are quite haughty about being compared to Argentina, let alone Sudan. Indonesia is equally proud, likewise Costa Rica, the Maldives, Mauritius, what even is “the Global South”?
You asked what the term now is and I told you - The Global South. But please note it doesn't mean below the equator. It's pretty much a straight replacement for 3rd World. It's a development measure not a geographic one. Insulting? No, the whole point is that 3rd World was, but this isn't. Everyone is happy and onboard with it.
Third World originates in the division between the Communist block and the capitalist democracies, hence Third World. S such it is obsolete for the fall of the Soviet Union.
Quite. I don’t think @kinabalu grasps the basic etymology of “3rd World”
Of course I grasp. Obsolete, as I said, and the term now is Global South. Although Francis Urquhart informs us there has been a further evolution. If so, fine. Language lives, it doesn't atrophy. One of its many charms. Surf it, don't fight it. Surprised I have to tell a pro writer this.
But this is exactly the same issue as with all the synonyms for non-white. It's the concept behind the description that people don't like, not the latest iteration.
Well sometimes you need a general description for something, don't you? Avoid sloppy generalizations, yes, but sometimes a term is needed.
TBH, the people on here who get hung up about this stuff are not the ones agonizing over the "correct" term to use. Hardly anybody does that. I certainly don't. No, the ones for whom this is a matter of great interest and concern are those forever keen to eye-roll about how "difficult" and "illogical" it all is.
It's just virtue signalling, where the virtue being signalled is "Ooo I'm a free thinking intellectually muscular type, me."
It's boring.
You're living up to exactly the example of why liberal racism is inherently worse than the racist in the street.
In happier news. My 100% record of having mildly disappointing food (on my one previous Sri Lankan trip) has been easily shattered. It’s all good so far. Black Pork Curry lunch here was absolutely excellent
Colombo is a strange city. Poor, scruffy, yet in places intensely civilised. And stunned by the sun and heat into an amiable complacency
Are there still lots of stray dogs lining the streets? Was when I was there. Plagued with them - a bit off-putting.
Not one that I’ve seen. Not cats. In fact a decided absence by “3rd World” standards (are we still allowed to say 3rd World? What’s the replacement?)
The Global South. Not to be confused with the pop group of that name.
The Global South is surely far more insulting than “3rd World” (which is an antique Cold War term, I readily confess)
For a start there are plenty of once-developing countries in the “Global South” which would really resent that characterization;. Chileans are quite haughty about being compared to Argentina, let alone Sudan. Indonesia is equally proud, likewise Costa Rica, the Maldives, Mauritius, what even is “the Global South”?
You asked what the term now is and I told you - The Global South. But please note it doesn't mean below the equator. It's pretty much a straight replacement for 3rd World. It's a development measure not a geographic one. Insulting? No, the whole point is that 3rd World was, but this isn't. Everyone is happy and onboard with it.
"Everyone is happy and onboard with it."
Not true....its far from settled issue.
‘Global South’, a term frequently used on websites and in papers related to academic and ‘predatory’ publishing, may represent a form of unscholarly discrimination. Arguments are put forward as to why the current use of this term is geographically meaningless, since it implies countries in the southern hemisphere, whereas many of the entities in publishing that are referred to as being part of the Global South are in fact either on the equator or in the northern hemisphere. Therefore, academics, in writing about academic publishing, should cease using this broad, culturally insensitive, and geographically inaccurate term.
Erondu says she's embarrassed if she inadvertently uses the term during a workshop in one of the countries in Africa where she works on health care issues. Why? "Because people in Nigeria don't refer to themselves as the 'global south.' It's something someone named them."
I could go on and on. Third world is a no no, describing in terms of income is problematic and global south many don't like either.
I see. So what's a better term then? What gets your stamp of approval? Or let's put it this way. What term do YOU use when needing one for referring to the relatively impoverished parts of the world?
Eg, complete this sentence - The pandemic will soon be over in the rich nations of the West but will rage on for a long time in ????????? unless vaccines are rolled out there as a matter of priority.
The problem is that the assumption that the same group of countries can be consistently grouped together when ranking by various economic, health, educational stats is at best hopelessly out of date if it was ever true.
There will be rich Western countries, including much of the US for example, far worse positioned re covid than some poorer ex Third World countries. Other poorer countries might have so many other problems that covid is not an especially big one for them anyway.
We want a single descriptor because we are all too lazy to explicitly rank 200 countries accurately each time, with the inevitable result that often we get it wrong, and then people get offended by being in an incorrect categorisation.
The pandemic will soon be over in most highly vaccinated countries but will rage on for a long time in others with low levels of vaccination unless vaccines are rolled out there as a matter of priority.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h On the South Africa debate. People can try and re-write history as much as they like. Chris Whitty said "there are several things we don't know, but all the things that we do know, are bad". That statement simply wasn't accurate.
That's Dec 15. Depending how high a bar you have for 'know' it's defensible. We knew it had some vaccine escape and was more easily transmitted. There was some evidence on lower severity (probably, by then?) but I'm not sure I'd have said we 'knew' that at that point.
SA Doctors were saying about the significant lower severity 3 weeks before his statement.
Quite possibly (by which I mean I don't remember the timings, but assuming you do and I believe you). But 'know' in science has a quite specific meaning. Even knowing it was less severe in South Africa wouldn't mean it knowing (hoping, suspecting, expecting even, perhaps, but not knowing) was less severe here for a few reasons: - Different age profiles - Different profiles of past infection to different variants - Different comorbidities (partly due to differences in age) - Different profile of vaccines used (I don't know this to be the case, but good chance we have a different mix?)
Even at this point, do we know that Omicron is intrinsically milder than Delta? As opposed to effectively milder due to increased past exposure and increased vaccination giving us more protection? I haven't seen convincing studies on that - you'd need comparisons among unvaccinated and unexposed populations. If we still don't know the intrinsic severity then we didn't know it was going to be milder in a population with different past exposure, vaccination and comorbidity characterstics.
Whitty’s statement was still factually incorrect. And crucially and desperately incorrect and stated to the world as fact - at a time when UK hospitality was desperate for a good Xmas season
It was irresponsible, which is kinda ironic for a man who comes across as the epitome of decorously judged English reserve and judiciousness
It was not incorrect, for the reasons I have stated. We had some evidence it was milder. But what we knew was that it had some vaccine escape and spread faster.
I think, while this is correct, you can argue about the tone. There was a lot of evidence coming from SA that was treated with incredible skepticism by our, and other, governments/scientists. Frankly I can see why some thought it was racist or otherwise prejudiced. That's perhaps not was anyone intended, but its certainly the perception.
On the last point I said before and I still think that there was a huge element of the South Africans being treated as "primitive spear chuckers" by our scientific establishment. They couldn't fathom that a nation like SA could be get the data right so chose to not believe them, essentially because it's an African nation. I found the whole thing extremely unedifying and it showed how institutionally racist the British establishment still is, which was quite disheartening.
I don’t believe it was “racism” per se
For a start most of the doctors and profs reporting the mildness of Omicron were white
It was more a kind of lingering, snobbish western-eurocentrism. We might have reacted with equal skepticism to data coming out of Bulgaria, or the Phillipines, or the Falklands, or Macau, or Iceland, or even the Trumpier states of the USA
The sense was “we need a big important sensible country to back up these numbers - Western Europe, bits of Eastern Europe, developed east Asia, eg Japan or korea, MOST of the USA, the wider Anglosphere”
I admit this is a slender difference, but it is a difference. Either way it hindered our understanding of Omicron. And I am still sure Whitty told untruths at that presser. We did not KNOW anything. We had some bad intimations (justified) and some good (justified)
I think you are onto something there, Leon. Big Pharma is overwhelmingly based and funded in North America and Western Europe. It does science for and creates medicines optimized for caucasian (until recently, male) populations of northern european origins. Thus when science originates from outside of that bubble, it questions whether it is relevant to that demographic and waits upon confirmatory evidence from within its own machinery.
We had the announcement of the battery factory funding. I missed this,
Wayve, a London-based startup creating autonomous driving technology based on computer vision and machine learning, has raised a $200m Series B funding round to help get self-driving cars onto the road faster.
Waymo has had $5.5bn and still can't solve the problems. Remember the issue isn't that driving is a 95% issue (and people can live with the 5%) it's a 99.9995% issue and until you've uncovered all the issues a self-driving car won't be allowed on the road.
If i had $200m to invest, it would be going into the battery factory rather than yet another SD car startup.
Unless someone builds a new town specifically around them, self-driving cars are coming a few years after personal flying cars powered by nuclear fusion.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h On the South Africa debate. People can try and re-write history as much as they like. Chris Whitty said "there are several things we don't know, but all the things that we do know, are bad". That statement simply wasn't accurate.
That's Dec 15. Depending how high a bar you have for 'know' it's defensible. We knew it had some vaccine escape and was more easily transmitted. There was some evidence on lower severity (probably, by then?) but I'm not sure I'd have said we 'knew' that at that point.
SA Doctors were saying about the significant lower severity 3 weeks before his statement.
Quite possibly (by which I mean I don't remember the timings, but assuming you do and I believe you). But 'know' in science has a quite specific meaning. Even knowing it was less severe in South Africa wouldn't mean it knowing (hoping, suspecting, expecting even, perhaps, but not knowing) was less severe here for a few reasons: - Different age profiles - Different profiles of past infection to different variants - Different comorbidities (partly due to differences in age) - Different profile of vaccines used (I don't know this to be the case, but good chance we have a different mix?)
Even at this point, do we know that Omicron is intrinsically milder than Delta? As opposed to effectively milder due to increased past exposure and increased vaccination giving us more protection? I haven't seen convincing studies on that - you'd need comparisons among unvaccinated and unexposed populations. If we still don't know the intrinsic severity then we didn't know it was going to be milder in a population with different past exposure, vaccination and comorbidity characterstics.
Whitty’s statement was still factually incorrect. And crucially and desperately incorrect and stated to the world as fact - at a time when UK hospitality was desperate for a good Xmas season
It was irresponsible, which is kinda ironic for a man who comes across as the epitome of decorously judged English reserve and judiciousness
It was not incorrect, for the reasons I have stated. We had some evidence it was milder. But what we knew was that it had some vaccine escape and spread faster.
I think, while this is correct, you can argue about the tone. There was a lot of evidence coming from SA that was treated with incredible skepticism by our, and other, governments/scientists. Frankly I can see why some thought it was racist or otherwise prejudiced. That's perhaps not was anyone intended, but its certainly the perception.
On the last point I said before and I still think that there was a huge element of the South Africans being treated as "primitive spear chuckers" by our scientific establishment. They couldn't fathom that a nation like SA could be get the data right so chose to not believe them, essentially because it's an African nation. I found the whole thing extremely unedifying and it showed how institutionally racist the British establishment still is, which was quite disheartening.
I don’t believe it was “racism” per se
For a start most of the doctors and profs reporting the mildness of Omicron were white
It was more a kind of lingering, snobbish western-eurocentrism. We might have reacted with equal skepticism to data coming out of Bulgaria, or the Phillipines, or the Falklands, or Macau, or Iceland, or even the Trumpier states of the USA
The sense was “we need a big important sensible country to back up these numbers - Western Europe, bits of Eastern Europe, developed east Asia, eg Japan or korea, MOST of the USA, the wider Anglosphere”
I admit this is a slender difference, but it is a difference. Either way it hindered our understanding of Omicron. And I am still sure Whitty told untruths at that presser. We did not KNOW anything. We had some bad intimations (justified) and some good (justified)
Small difference indeed, not racist just prejudiced against lower income countries.
And yes, his sentence of "we don't know very much but what do know is bad" was clearly bullshit. What we knew about Omicron was mixed and some of it pretty favourable.
🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Downing Street staff partied until 1am in a seven-hour drinking session the night before Prince Philip’s funeral, The Telegraph can reveal
LOL how the mighty have fallen. He can’t even put his camera the right way round.
Now, Cameo was a funny pandemic-era way to get an out-of-work actor or comedian to say happy birthday to your friend, but surely this sort of stunt raises all sorts of questions about advertising regulations?
It's amusing as I've said before I think we pay our politicians too much and it'd be better if their pay was more closely linked to citizens pay in general. I believe in the 90s an MP typically got two times average income and now it's three times and I don't think that's healthy.
Others have said they think MPs are underpaid compared to the private sector.
While a tiny, tiny minority of the private sector may be worth more than MPs that's far from the case for all MPs as the likes of Bercow etc whoring themselves post politics helps demonstrate. As does the desperation in many MPs to do anything to stay loyal to the Party and keep their seat, because if they lose their seat they lose their job and there £84k+ salary they'd never achieve in the real world.
Above average intelligence, middle class background at least, graduate from good uni, driven and ambitious, energetic, robust and thick skinned, gift of the gab, alert to opportunities to get ahead.
The above being the typical profile of an MP, there's little doubt in my mind that most of them would have been able to earn more if they'd choosen a career in the private sector.
I am actually quite surprised the average is that high after 5 years.
I do wonder whether the base stats are on all degrees, including Masters (and MBAs) and PhDs etc. That would boost the numbers up a bit. Depending on data too, if it's survey based (how else?) then likely to be a differential response with lower earners less responsive? Don't account for that and you get high numbers.
Five years after first graduating I was doing a PhD on a £15k stipend, so I'm happy to believe those numbers are high
So 22 years after PhD I'm just touching 50K, but thats a middle ranking academic salary. Just shows that I do it for love and not for the cash...
Sounds familiar. I got my Ph.D. in 1973 and when I retired in 2001 as a progressed PL I had just reached 40K.
Glad I didn't go the PhD route, then.
I've said this before, but I know a fair few people who have PhDs. The vast majority of them either regret doing it, or think it has had no, or even negative, effect on their salary over those with ordinary degrees.
PhDs are important if you want to be an academic, helpful if you want to teach in a top private school or grammar, of little benefit otherwise unless in a specific area in demand in the commercial field
That's a rather British attitude.
Indeed. A close relative did a PhD. When he applied for management positions, just after he left academia, he would find himself being interviewed for jobs in research which paid peanuts.
If you want to go into business management an MBA would be far more useful than a PhD
The famous Master of Bugger-All.
See those three letters after somebody's name, and you know that you'll be facing an avalanche of bullshit, buzzwords and inanity.
We had the announcement of the battery factory funding. I missed this,
Wayve, a London-based startup creating autonomous driving technology based on computer vision and machine learning, has raised a $200m Series B funding round to help get self-driving cars onto the road faster.
Waymo has had $5.5bn and still can't solve the problems. Remember the issue isn't that driving is a 95% issue (and people can live with the 5%) it's a 99.9995% issue and until you've uncovered all the issues a self-driving car won't be allowed on the road.
If i had $200m to invest, it would be going into the battery factory rather than yet another SD car startup.
Unless someone builds a new town specifically around them, self-driving cars are coming a few years after personal flying cars powered by nuclear fusion.
Indeed, if the government was serious about levelling up it would announce a £30bn fund for electrification of our vehicle manufacturing industry, subsidies available to companies who will manufacture batteries, mine lithium, make the EVs, roll out charging stations and a few extras.
They seem to think that a few hundred million here and there will make a difference, it won't. Forget the cries from the left about "giving away billions to Elon Musk", just get on with it.
LOL how the mighty have fallen. He can’t even put his camera the right way round.
Now, Cameo was a funny pandemic-era way to get an out-of-work actor or comedian to say happy birthday to your friend, but surely this sort of stunt raises all sorts of questions about advertising regulations?
It's amusing as I've said before I think we pay our politicians too much and it'd be better if their pay was more closely linked to citizens pay in general. I believe in the 90s an MP typically got two times average income and now it's three times and I don't think that's healthy.
Others have said they think MPs are underpaid compared to the private sector.
While a tiny, tiny minority of the private sector may be worth more than MPs that's far from the case for all MPs as the likes of Bercow etc whoring themselves post politics helps demonstrate. As does the desperation in many MPs to do anything to stay loyal to the Party and keep their seat, because if they lose their seat they lose their job and there £84k+ salary they'd never achieve in the real world.
Above average intelligence, middle class background at least, graduate from good uni, driven and ambitious, energetic, robust and thick skinned, gift of the gab, alert to opportunities to get ahead.
The above being the typical profile of an MP, there's little doubt in my mind that most of them would have been able to earn more if they'd choosen a career in the private sector.
I am actually quite surprised the average is that high after 5 years.
I do wonder whether the base stats are on all degrees, including Masters (and MBAs) and PhDs etc. That would boost the numbers up a bit. Depending on data too, if it's survey based (how else?) then likely to be a differential response with lower earners less responsive? Don't account for that and you get high numbers.
Five years after first graduating I was doing a PhD on a £15k stipend, so I'm happy to believe those numbers are high
So 22 years after PhD I'm just touching 50K, but thats a middle ranking academic salary. Just shows that I do it for love and not for the cash...
Sounds familiar. I got my Ph.D. in 1973 and when I retired in 2001 as a progressed PL I had just reached 40K.
Glad I didn't go the PhD route, then.
I've said this before, but I know a fair few people who have PhDs. The vast majority of them either regret doing it, or think it has had no, or even negative, effect on their salary over those with ordinary degrees.
That happens. OTOH, I have a relative being sponsored by the company he works for to do a PHD in an area directly related to their business.
I was assuming WILF had a different context in that headline. Much tamer than I anticipated.
The fact they showed no respect to anyone and even a child's slide must mean each and everyone gets a P45
That approach won't get anywhere in real life. Management-approved invitation to staff. Trade Union rep would rip hell out of any HR person trying to discipline someone for answering that positively. Cue big payoffs, cue more right wing whining.
They were breaking the law and are responsible for there own rule breaking
In happier news. My 100% record of having mildly disappointing food (on my one previous Sri Lankan trip) has been easily shattered. It’s all good so far. Black Pork Curry lunch here was absolutely excellent
Colombo is a strange city. Poor, scruffy, yet in places intensely civilised. And stunned by the sun and heat into an amiable complacency
Are there still lots of stray dogs lining the streets? Was when I was there. Plagued with them - a bit off-putting.
In other Sri Lankan news I have discovered that my hotel - which is very nice, and ridiculously cheap at about £40 a night (thankyou, Covid) has, along with its enormous rooftop infinity poo,
I really don't care Sean.
You must be a very sad man indeed to feel the need to show off about your international holidays on a UK political betting site.
My infinity poo, just for you
X
Have you been to the infinity pool at the top of the new(ish) 5 star hotel in Singapore.
The Marina Sands? There used to be a very cool night club (Ku de Te?) up there.
In happier news. My 100% record of having mildly disappointing food (on my one previous Sri Lankan trip) has been easily shattered. It’s all good so far. Black Pork Curry lunch here was absolutely excellent
Colombo is a strange city. Poor, scruffy, yet in places intensely civilised. And stunned by the sun and heat into an amiable complacency
Are there still lots of stray dogs lining the streets? Was when I was there. Plagued with them - a bit off-putting.
Not one that I’ve seen. Not cats. In fact a decided absence by “3rd World” standards (are we still allowed to say 3rd World? What’s the replacement?)
The Global South. Not to be confused with the pop group of that name.
The Global South is surely far more insulting than “3rd World” (which is an antique Cold War term, I readily confess)
For a start there are plenty of once-developing countries in the “Global South” which would really resent that characterization;. Chileans are quite haughty about being compared to Argentina, let alone Sudan. Indonesia is equally proud, likewise Costa Rica, the Maldives, Mauritius, what even is “the Global South”?
You asked what the term now is and I told you - The Global South. But please note it doesn't mean below the equator. It's pretty much a straight replacement for 3rd World. It's a development measure not a geographic one. Insulting? No, the whole point is that 3rd World was, but this isn't. Everyone is happy and onboard with it.
Third World originates in the division between the Communist block and the capitalist democracies, hence Third World. S such it is obsolete for the fall of the Soviet Union.
Quite. I don’t think @kinabalu grasps the basic etymology of “3rd World”
Of course I grasp. Obsolete, as I said, and the term now is Global South. Although Francis Urquhart informs us there has been a further evolution. If so, fine. Language lives, it doesn't atrophy. One of its many charms. Surf it, don't fight it. Surprised I have to tell a pro writer this.
But this is exactly the same issue as with all the synonyms for non-white. It's the concept behind the description that people don't like, not the latest iteration.
Well sometimes you need a general description for something, don't you? Avoid sloppy generalizations, yes, but sometimes a term is needed.
TBH, the people on here who get hung up about this stuff are not the ones agonizing over the "correct" term to use. Hardly anybody does that. I certainly don't. No, the ones for whom this is a matter of great concern are those forever keen to eye-roll about how "difficult" and "illogical" it all is.
It's just virtue signalling, where the virtue being signalled is "Ooo I'm a free-thinking, intellectually muscular type, me."
You need to use a specific term for the countries you want to refer to, otherwise it's just an example of lazy thinking and othering.
So for vaccines you can specifically refer to countries that don't have domestic vaccine production capacity, or the cash to pay for vaccines manufactured elsewhere. Because this will be a different group of countries, not involving India for example, than if you want to talk about countries where a large proportion of the country still lacks basic sanitation or electricity (which does include a lot of rural India still).
Your approach is a hangover from Colonialism. It betrays a Colonialist mindset. It divides the world between those countries that are strong enough to colonize others and those that would be better off if they were still colonised. You need to free yourself from that paradigm of thinking.
Aye, right. What is interesting is how poorly Mr Gove does - his levelling up has not yet been very successful by the look of it.
Actually if you study the poll it concludes that while Rishi is slightly ahead it does indicate Boris can redeem himself and GE24 will largely be due to policies
He also outperforms Starmer by some distance in dealing with covid
Now before anyone attacks me for commenting on this detailed poll, I still want Rishi as PM
But you are right though. Aside of Cummings and Norman hollowing him out with parties, and getting him into a tangle in commons and interviews, the voters who put him there still rate the fundamentals of job he is doing. No one on here here can say to what extent he can or can’t come back from this media storm. No one knows. The pollsters don’t.
I agree and in some ways these poll findings are not as negative as may have been expected
Because you sense the fundamentals are there, little different than when this media storm blew up.
Maybe one downside of this kind of polling though, when it’s gets granular, and we believe it rather than take it with a pinch of salt, is it bundling together the first time Tory voters with lifelong Tory voters? Of which even red wall must have had significant numbers of them. You are only interested in a small amount of potential switch backers, but their motives and intentions wrapped up alongside inside lifelong Tory voters? So it’s not clear what the subset of first time Tory voters for Boris really think.
Also we don’t really know with that key subset how they feel about losing Boris and who will run the country when he is gone because it’s just hypotheticals. There might only be a short lived poll bounce with new leader because it was something about Boris they really liked. I think that is what the `Tory press are thinking, who remain solidly behind Boris, but you would think not keen on a Labour government.
LOL how the mighty have fallen. He can’t even put his camera the right way round.
Now, Cameo was a funny pandemic-era way to get an out-of-work actor or comedian to say happy birthday to your friend, but surely this sort of stunt raises all sorts of questions about advertising regulations?
It's amusing as I've said before I think we pay our politicians too much and it'd be better if their pay was more closely linked to citizens pay in general. I believe in the 90s an MP typically got two times average income and now it's three times and I don't think that's healthy.
Others have said they think MPs are underpaid compared to the private sector.
While a tiny, tiny minority of the private sector may be worth more than MPs that's far from the case for all MPs as the likes of Bercow etc whoring themselves post politics helps demonstrate. As does the desperation in many MPs to do anything to stay loyal to the Party and keep their seat, because if they lose their seat they lose their job and there £84k+ salary they'd never achieve in the real world.
Above average intelligence, middle class background at least, graduate from good uni, driven and ambitious, energetic, robust and thick skinned, gift of the gab, alert to opportunities to get ahead.
The above being the typical profile of an MP, there's little doubt in my mind that most of them would have been able to earn more if they'd choosen a career in the private sector.
I am actually quite surprised the average is that high after 5 years.
I do wonder whether the base stats are on all degrees, including Masters (and MBAs) and PhDs etc. That would boost the numbers up a bit. Depending on data too, if it's survey based (how else?) then likely to be a differential response with lower earners less responsive? Don't account for that and you get high numbers.
Five years after first graduating I was doing a PhD on a £15k stipend, so I'm happy to believe those numbers are high
So 22 years after PhD I'm just touching 50K, but thats a middle ranking academic salary. Just shows that I do it for love and not for the cash...
Sounds familiar. I got my Ph.D. in 1973 and when I retired in 2001 as a progressed PL I had just reached 40K.
Glad I didn't go the PhD route, then.
I've said this before, but I know a fair few people who have PhDs. The vast majority of them either regret doing it, or think it has had no, or even negative, effect on their salary over those with ordinary degrees.
PhDs are important if you want to be an academic, helpful if you want to teach in a top private school or grammar, of little benefit otherwise unless in a specific area in demand in the commercial field
That's a rather British attitude.
Indeed. A close relative did a PhD. When he applied for management positions, just after he left academia, he would find himself being interviewed for jobs in research which paid peanuts.
If you want to go into business management an MBA would be far more useful than a PhD
The famous Master of Bugger-All.
See those three letters after somebody's name, and you know that you'll be facing an avalanche of bullshit, buzzwords and inanity.
I enjoyed the investor note from Terry Smith about Alan Jope fucking the dog at Unilever. One of the specific lines he got annoyed by was "we will move with speed, agility and nimbleness" from Jope. It's such a load of meaningless waffle.
LOL how the mighty have fallen. He can’t even put his camera the right way round.
Now, Cameo was a funny pandemic-era way to get an out-of-work actor or comedian to say happy birthday to your friend, but surely this sort of stunt raises all sorts of questions about advertising regulations?
It's amusing as I've said before I think we pay our politicians too much and it'd be better if their pay was more closely linked to citizens pay in general. I believe in the 90s an MP typically got two times average income and now it's three times and I don't think that's healthy.
Others have said they think MPs are underpaid compared to the private sector.
While a tiny, tiny minority of the private sector may be worth more than MPs that's far from the case for all MPs as the likes of Bercow etc whoring themselves post politics helps demonstrate. As does the desperation in many MPs to do anything to stay loyal to the Party and keep their seat, because if they lose their seat they lose their job and there £84k+ salary they'd never achieve in the real world.
Above average intelligence, middle class background at least, graduate from good uni, driven and ambitious, energetic, robust and thick skinned, gift of the gab, alert to opportunities to get ahead.
The above being the typical profile of an MP, there's little doubt in my mind that most of them would have been able to earn more if they'd choosen a career in the private sector.
I am actually quite surprised the average is that high after 5 years.
I do wonder whether the base stats are on all degrees, including Masters (and MBAs) and PhDs etc. That would boost the numbers up a bit. Depending on data too, if it's survey based (how else?) then likely to be a differential response with lower earners less responsive? Don't account for that and you get high numbers.
Five years after first graduating I was doing a PhD on a £15k stipend, so I'm happy to believe those numbers are high
So 22 years after PhD I'm just touching 50K, but thats a middle ranking academic salary. Just shows that I do it for love and not for the cash...
Sounds familiar. I got my Ph.D. in 1973 and when I retired in 2001 as a progressed PL I had just reached 40K.
Glad I didn't go the PhD route, then.
I've said this before, but I know a fair few people who have PhDs. The vast majority of them either regret doing it, or think it has had no, or even negative, effect on their salary over those with ordinary degrees.
PhDs are important if you want to be an academic, helpful if you want to teach in a top private school or grammar, of little benefit otherwise unless in a specific area in demand in the commercial field
That's a rather British attitude.
Indeed. A close relative did a PhD. When he applied for management positions, just after he left academia, he would find himself being interviewed for jobs in research which paid peanuts.
If you want to go into business management an MBA would be far more useful than a PhD
The famous Master of Bugger-All.
See those three letters after somebody's name, and you know that you'll be facing an avalanche of bullshit, buzzwords and inanity.
That's why I don't use them behind mine. Besides which, I was a master bullshitter beforehand.
In happier news. My 100% record of having mildly disappointing food (on my one previous Sri Lankan trip) has been easily shattered. It’s all good so far. Black Pork Curry lunch here was absolutely excellent
Colombo is a strange city. Poor, scruffy, yet in places intensely civilised. And stunned by the sun and heat into an amiable complacency
Are there still lots of stray dogs lining the streets? Was when I was there. Plagued with them - a bit off-putting.
Not one that I’ve seen. Not cats. In fact a decided absence by “3rd World” standards (are we still allowed to say 3rd World? What’s the replacement?)
The Global South. Not to be confused with the pop group of that name.
The Global South is surely far more insulting than “3rd World” (which is an antique Cold War term, I readily confess)
For a start there are plenty of once-developing countries in the “Global South” which would really resent that characterization;. Chileans are quite haughty about being compared to Argentina, let alone Sudan. Indonesia is equally proud, likewise Costa Rica, the Maldives, Mauritius, what even is “the Global South”?
You asked what the term now is and I told you - The Global South. But please note it doesn't mean below the equator. It's pretty much a straight replacement for 3rd World. It's a development measure not a geographic one. Insulting? No, the whole point is that 3rd World was, but this isn't. Everyone is happy and onboard with it.
Third World originates in the division between the Communist block and the capitalist democracies, hence Third World. S such it is obsolete for the fall of the Soviet Union.
Quite. I don’t think @kinabalu grasps the basic etymology of “3rd World”
Of course I grasp. Obsolete, as I said, and the term now is Global South. Although Francis Urquhart informs us there has been a further evolution. If so, fine. Language lives, it doesn't atrophy. One of its many charms. Surf it, don't fight it. Surprised I have to tell a pro writer this.
But this is exactly the same issue as with all the synonyms for non-white. It's the concept behind the description that people don't like, not the latest iteration.
Well sometimes you need a general description for something, don't you? Avoid sloppy generalizations, yes, but sometimes a term is needed.
TBH, the people on here who get hung up about this stuff are not the ones agonizing over the "correct" term to use. Hardly anybody does that. I certainly don't. No, the ones for whom this is a matter of great interest and concern are those forever keen to eye-roll about how "difficult" and "illogical" it all is.
It's just virtue signalling, where the virtue being signalled is "Ooo I'm a free thinking intellectually muscular type, me."
It's boring.
You're living up to exactly the example of why liberal racism is inherently worse than the racist in the street.
And you're living down to somebody engaging with what you imagine I'm saying rather than what I've said.
Because what I've actually said is completely beige.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h On the South Africa debate. People can try and re-write history as much as they like. Chris Whitty said "there are several things we don't know, but all the things that we do know, are bad". That statement simply wasn't accurate.
That's Dec 15. Depending how high a bar you have for 'know' it's defensible. We knew it had some vaccine escape and was more easily transmitted. There was some evidence on lower severity (probably, by then?) but I'm not sure I'd have said we 'knew' that at that point.
SA Doctors were saying about the significant lower severity 3 weeks before his statement.
Quite possibly (by which I mean I don't remember the timings, but assuming you do and I believe you). But 'know' in science has a quite specific meaning. Even knowing it was less severe in South Africa wouldn't mean it knowing (hoping, suspecting, expecting even, perhaps, but not knowing) was less severe here for a few reasons: - Different age profiles - Different profiles of past infection to different variants - Different comorbidities (partly due to differences in age) - Different profile of vaccines used (I don't know this to be the case, but good chance we have a different mix?)
Even at this point, do we know that Omicron is intrinsically milder than Delta? As opposed to effectively milder due to increased past exposure and increased vaccination giving us more protection? I haven't seen convincing studies on that - you'd need comparisons among unvaccinated and unexposed populations. If we still don't know the intrinsic severity then we didn't know it was going to be milder in a population with different past exposure, vaccination and comorbidity characterstics.
Whitty’s statement was still factually incorrect. And crucially and desperately incorrect and stated to the world as fact - at a time when UK hospitality was desperate for a good Xmas season
It was irresponsible, which is kinda ironic for a man who comes across as the epitome of decorously judged English reserve and judiciousness
It was not incorrect, for the reasons I have stated. We had some evidence it was milder. But what we knew was that it had some vaccine escape and spread faster.
I think, while this is correct, you can argue about the tone. There was a lot of evidence coming from SA that was treated with incredible skepticism by our, and other, governments/scientists. Frankly I can see why some thought it was racist or otherwise prejudiced. That's perhaps not was anyone intended, but its certainly the perception.
On the last point I said before and I still think that there was a huge element of the South Africans being treated as "primitive spear chuckers" by our scientific establishment. They couldn't fathom that a nation like SA could be get the data right so chose to not believe them, essentially because it's an African nation. I found the whole thing extremely unedifying and it showed how institutionally racist the British establishment still is, which was quite disheartening.
I don’t believe it was “racism” per se
For a start most of the doctors and profs reporting the mildness of Omicron were white
It was more a kind of lingering, snobbish western-eurocentrism. We might have reacted with equal skepticism to data coming out of Bulgaria, or the Phillipines, or the Falklands, or Macau, or Iceland, or even the Trumpier states of the USA
The sense was “we need a big important sensible country to back up these numbers - Western Europe, bits of Eastern Europe, developed east Asia, eg Japan or korea, MOST of the USA, the wider Anglosphere”
I admit this is a slender difference, but it is a difference. Either way it hindered our understanding of Omicron. And I am still sure Whitty told untruths at that presser. We did not KNOW anything. We had some bad intimations (justified) and some good (justified)
I think you are onto something there, Leon. Big Pharma is overwhelmingly based and funded in North America and Western Europe. It does science for and creates medicines optimized for caucasian (until recently, male) populations of northern european origins. Thus when science originates from outside of that bubble, it questions whether it is relevant to that demographic and waits upon confirmatory evidence from within its own machinery.
Lots of countries (think SE Asia, Eastern Europe) largely escaped the first wave of covid for reasons we are yet to understand. There was nothing wrong with waiting a couple of weeks, for that is what it was, to corroborate SA data with some of our own.
LOL how the mighty have fallen. He can’t even put his camera the right way round.
Now, Cameo was a funny pandemic-era way to get an out-of-work actor or comedian to say happy birthday to your friend, but surely this sort of stunt raises all sorts of questions about advertising regulations?
It's amusing as I've said before I think we pay our politicians too much and it'd be better if their pay was more closely linked to citizens pay in general. I believe in the 90s an MP typically got two times average income and now it's three times and I don't think that's healthy.
Others have said they think MPs are underpaid compared to the private sector.
While a tiny, tiny minority of the private sector may be worth more than MPs that's far from the case for all MPs as the likes of Bercow etc whoring themselves post politics helps demonstrate. As does the desperation in many MPs to do anything to stay loyal to the Party and keep their seat, because if they lose their seat they lose their job and there £84k+ salary they'd never achieve in the real world.
Above average intelligence, middle class background at least, graduate from good uni, driven and ambitious, energetic, robust and thick skinned, gift of the gab, alert to opportunities to get ahead.
The above being the typical profile of an MP, there's little doubt in my mind that most of them would have been able to earn more if they'd choosen a career in the private sector.
I am actually quite surprised the average is that high after 5 years.
I do wonder whether the base stats are on all degrees, including Masters (and MBAs) and PhDs etc. That would boost the numbers up a bit. Depending on data too, if it's survey based (how else?) then likely to be a differential response with lower earners less responsive? Don't account for that and you get high numbers.
Five years after first graduating I was doing a PhD on a £15k stipend, so I'm happy to believe those numbers are high
So 22 years after PhD I'm just touching 50K, but thats a middle ranking academic salary. Just shows that I do it for love and not for the cash...
Sounds familiar. I got my Ph.D. in 1973 and when I retired in 2001 as a progressed PL I had just reached 40K.
Glad I didn't go the PhD route, then.
I've said this before, but I know a fair few people who have PhDs. The vast majority of them either regret doing it, or think it has had no, or even negative, effect on their salary over those with ordinary degrees.
PhDs are important if you want to be an academic, helpful if you want to teach in a top private school or grammar, of little benefit otherwise unless in a specific area in demand in the commercial field
That's a rather British attitude.
Indeed. A close relative did a PhD. When he applied for management positions, just after he left academia, he would find himself being interviewed for jobs in research which paid peanuts.
If you want to go into business management an MBA would be far more useful than a PhD
The famous Master of Bugger-All.
See those three letters after somebody's name, and you know that you'll be facing an avalanche of bullshit, buzzwords and inanity.
I enjoyed the investor note from Terry Smith about Alan Jope fucking the dog at Unilever. One of the specific lines he got annoyed by was "we will move with speed, agility and nimbleness" from Jope. It's such a load of meaningless waffle.
Had to ponder there a while to come up with a useful distinction between nimble and agile.
We had the announcement of the battery factory funding. I missed this,
Wayve, a London-based startup creating autonomous driving technology based on computer vision and machine learning, has raised a $200m Series B funding round to help get self-driving cars onto the road faster.
Waymo has had $5.5bn and still can't solve the problems. Remember the issue isn't that driving is a 95% issue (and people can live with the 5%) it's a 99.9995% issue and until you've uncovered all the issues a self-driving car won't be allowed on the road.
If i had $200m to invest, it would be going into the battery factory rather than yet another SD car startup.
Unless someone builds a new town specifically around them, self-driving cars are coming a few years after personal flying cars powered by nuclear fusion.
Indeed, if the government was serious about levelling up it would announce a £30bn fund for electrification of our vehicle manufacturing industry, subsidies available to companies who will manufacture batteries, mine lithium, make the EVs, roll out charging stations and a few extras.
They seem to think that a few hundred million here and there will make a difference, it won't. Forget the cries from the left about "giving away billions to Elon Musk", just get on with it.
Agreed. Though I'd note Musk would have built his first European plant here, in all likelihood, had we not Brexited. Which probably makes you suggestion more, not less sensible.
South Korea (a similar sized country) is going to be one of the big global players in the battery market, and without a massive amount of government assistance. But we're five years behind.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h On the South Africa debate. People can try and re-write history as much as they like. Chris Whitty said "there are several things we don't know, but all the things that we do know, are bad". That statement simply wasn't accurate.
That's Dec 15. Depending how high a bar you have for 'know' it's defensible. We knew it had some vaccine escape and was more easily transmitted. There was some evidence on lower severity (probably, by then?) but I'm not sure I'd have said we 'knew' that at that point.
SA Doctors were saying about the significant lower severity 3 weeks before his statement.
Quite possibly (by which I mean I don't remember the timings, but assuming you do and I believe you). But 'know' in science has a quite specific meaning. Even knowing it was less severe in South Africa wouldn't mean it knowing (hoping, suspecting, expecting even, perhaps, but not knowing) was less severe here for a few reasons: - Different age profiles - Different profiles of past infection to different variants - Different comorbidities (partly due to differences in age) - Different profile of vaccines used (I don't know this to be the case, but good chance we have a different mix?)
Even at this point, do we know that Omicron is intrinsically milder than Delta? As opposed to effectively milder due to increased past exposure and increased vaccination giving us more protection? I haven't seen convincing studies on that - you'd need comparisons among unvaccinated and unexposed populations. If we still don't know the intrinsic severity then we didn't know it was going to be milder in a population with different past exposure, vaccination and comorbidity characterstics.
Whitty’s statement was still factually incorrect. And crucially and desperately incorrect and stated to the world as fact - at a time when UK hospitality was desperate for a good Xmas season
It was irresponsible, which is kinda ironic for a man who comes across as the epitome of decorously judged English reserve and judiciousness
It was not incorrect, for the reasons I have stated. We had some evidence it was milder. But what we knew was that it had some vaccine escape and spread faster.
I think, while this is correct, you can argue about the tone. There was a lot of evidence coming from SA that was treated with incredible skepticism by our, and other, governments/scientists. Frankly I can see why some thought it was racist or otherwise prejudiced. That's perhaps not was anyone intended, but its certainly the perception.
On the last point I said before and I still think that there was a huge element of the South Africans being treated as "primitive spear chuckers" by our scientific establishment. They couldn't fathom that a nation like SA could be get the data right so chose to not believe them, essentially because it's an African nation. I found the whole thing extremely unedifying and it showed how institutionally racist the British establishment still is, which was quite disheartening.
I don’t believe it was “racism” per se
For a start most of the doctors and profs reporting the mildness of Omicron were white
It was more a kind of lingering, snobbish western-eurocentrism. We might have reacted with equal skepticism to data coming out of Bulgaria, or the Phillipines, or the Falklands, or Macau, or Iceland, or even the Trumpier states of the USA
The sense was “we need a big important sensible country to back up these numbers - Western Europe, bits of Eastern Europe, developed east Asia, eg Japan or korea, MOST of the USA, the wider Anglosphere”
I admit this is a slender difference, but it is a difference. Either way it hindered our understanding of Omicron. And I am still sure Whitty told untruths at that presser. We did not KNOW anything. We had some bad intimations (justified) and some good (justified)
I think you are onto something there, Leon. Big Pharma is overwhelmingly based and funded in North America and Western Europe. It does science for and creates medicines optimized for caucasian (until recently, male) populations of northern european origins. Thus when science originates from outside of that bubble, it questions whether it is relevant to that demographic and waits upon confirmatory evidence from within its own machinery.
Lots of countries (think SE Asia, Eastern Europe) largely escaped the first wave of covid for reasons we are yet to understand. There was nothing wrong with waiting a couple of weeks, for that is what it was, to corroborate SA data with some of our own.
Wasn't passing judgment on that. Just trying to state my observations of how it works.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h On the South Africa debate. People can try and re-write history as much as they like. Chris Whitty said "there are several things we don't know, but all the things that we do know, are bad". That statement simply wasn't accurate.
That's Dec 15. Depending how high a bar you have for 'know' it's defensible. We knew it had some vaccine escape and was more easily transmitted. There was some evidence on lower severity (probably, by then?) but I'm not sure I'd have said we 'knew' that at that point.
SA Doctors were saying about the significant lower severity 3 weeks before his statement.
Quite possibly (by which I mean I don't remember the timings, but assuming you do and I believe you). But 'know' in science has a quite specific meaning. Even knowing it was less severe in South Africa wouldn't mean it knowing (hoping, suspecting, expecting even, perhaps, but not knowing) was less severe here for a few reasons: - Different age profiles - Different profiles of past infection to different variants - Different comorbidities (partly due to differences in age) - Different profile of vaccines used (I don't know this to be the case, but good chance we have a different mix?)
Even at this point, do we know that Omicron is intrinsically milder than Delta? As opposed to effectively milder due to increased past exposure and increased vaccination giving us more protection? I haven't seen convincing studies on that - you'd need comparisons among unvaccinated and unexposed populations. If we still don't know the intrinsic severity then we didn't know it was going to be milder in a population with different past exposure, vaccination and comorbidity characterstics.
Whitty’s statement was still factually incorrect. And crucially and desperately incorrect and stated to the world as fact - at a time when UK hospitality was desperate for a good Xmas season
It was irresponsible, which is kinda ironic for a man who comes across as the epitome of decorously judged English reserve and judiciousness
It was not incorrect, for the reasons I have stated. We had some evidence it was milder. But what we knew was that it had some vaccine escape and spread faster.
I think, while this is correct, you can argue about the tone. There was a lot of evidence coming from SA that was treated with incredible skepticism by our, and other, governments/scientists. Frankly I can see why some thought it was racist or otherwise prejudiced. That's perhaps not was anyone intended, but its certainly the perception.
On the last point I said before and I still think that there was a huge element of the South Africans being treated as "primitive spear chuckers" by our scientific establishment. They couldn't fathom that a nation like SA could be get the data right so chose to not believe them, essentially because it's an African nation. I found the whole thing extremely unedifying and it showed how institutionally racist the British establishment still is, which was quite disheartening.
I don’t believe it was “racism” per se
For a start most of the doctors and profs reporting the mildness of Omicron were white
It was more a kind of lingering, snobbish western-eurocentrism. We might have reacted with equal skepticism to data coming out of Bulgaria, or the Phillipines, or the Falklands, or Macau, or Iceland, or even the Trumpier states of the USA
The sense was “we need a big important sensible country to back up these numbers - Western Europe, bits of Eastern Europe, developed east Asia, eg Japan or korea, MOST of the USA, the wider Anglosphere”
I admit this is a slender difference, but it is a difference. Either way it hindered our understanding of Omicron. And I am still sure Whitty told untruths at that presser. We did not KNOW anything. We had some bad intimations (justified) and some good (justified)
I think you are onto something there, Leon. Big Pharma is overwhelmingly based and funded in North America and Western Europe. It does science for and creates medicines optimized for caucasian (until recently, male) populations of northern european origins. Thus when science originates from outside of that bubble, it questions whether it is relevant to that demographic and waits upon confirmatory evidence from within its own machinery.
Yes I agree with this, although I expect Iceland would have been the exception in that list. Like it or not I think the political and scientific establishments have an unwritten hierarchy in their subconscious when it comes to how relevant stories from other countries are, driven by a mixture of proximity and familiarity:
- France, Ireland, Netherlands, Germany - Nordics, Belgium, Switzerland, ANZ, US East coast and Canada - Italy and Spain - Central & Eastern Europe, plus Portugal and Greece - Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and Korea - Everywhere else
Not dissimilar from the way the media reports political or natural events too.
I hope they havn’t got libdems bouncing up just because I bullied them 😠
I'd not worry too much about the headline Liberal number... my guess is that tactical voting will be back in a BIG way next time...
Yes, I agree, but there are dangers in being too far down. Labour now leads LibDems in the south (outside Lodon) by a large margin, and while there are places where that absolutely makes sense in tactical terms (along the coast and in parts of the West Country), there are others where it really doesn't, and real maturity will be needed by both parties for Labour to hold back where it makes tactical sense and the LibDems not to gloat about it.
LOL how the mighty have fallen. He can’t even put his camera the right way round.
Now, Cameo was a funny pandemic-era way to get an out-of-work actor or comedian to say happy birthday to your friend, but surely this sort of stunt raises all sorts of questions about advertising regulations?
It's amusing as I've said before I think we pay our politicians too much and it'd be better if their pay was more closely linked to citizens pay in general. I believe in the 90s an MP typically got two times average income and now it's three times and I don't think that's healthy.
Others have said they think MPs are underpaid compared to the private sector.
While a tiny, tiny minority of the private sector may be worth more than MPs that's far from the case for all MPs as the likes of Bercow etc whoring themselves post politics helps demonstrate. As does the desperation in many MPs to do anything to stay loyal to the Party and keep their seat, because if they lose their seat they lose their job and there £84k+ salary they'd never achieve in the real world.
Above average intelligence, middle class background at least, graduate from good uni, driven and ambitious, energetic, robust and thick skinned, gift of the gab, alert to opportunities to get ahead.
The above being the typical profile of an MP, there's little doubt in my mind that most of them would have been able to earn more if they'd choosen a career in the private sector.
I am actually quite surprised the average is that high after 5 years.
I do wonder whether the base stats are on all degrees, including Masters (and MBAs) and PhDs etc. That would boost the numbers up a bit. Depending on data too, if it's survey based (how else?) then likely to be a differential response with lower earners less responsive? Don't account for that and you get high numbers.
Five years after first graduating I was doing a PhD on a £15k stipend, so I'm happy to believe those numbers are high
So 22 years after PhD I'm just touching 50K, but thats a middle ranking academic salary. Just shows that I do it for love and not for the cash...
Sounds familiar. I got my Ph.D. in 1973 and when I retired in 2001 as a progressed PL I had just reached 40K.
Glad I didn't go the PhD route, then.
But you do miss out on people sneering that you are not a real doctor as its not medicine...
LOL. I get called Doctor all the time, to the point of giving up on correcting people
Took my wife and I some time to make our elderly neighbours understand we weren't those kind of doctors. The people we bought the house from had apparently seen our titles on the paperwork and told them that they'd have a couple of MDs moving in next door.
Posted before, but it used to be a problem for pharmacists with PhD's who ran their own pharmacies. And there were some.
Covid cases again flat compared to last week. All other stats are down. (Edit: Deaths up a tad)
Covid anecdote. I have heard today of several people who now have Covid having also had it in the second half of last year. First time I am personally aware of reinfections. All are fine.
I know of several of my friends who have had it twice now, where as I seem to be the one of the very few I know that have never knowingly had Covid.
Are MBAs still a thing?
I had a colleague who did one and said “all I got was “older””
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h On the South Africa debate. People can try and re-write history as much as they like. Chris Whitty said "there are several things we don't know, but all the things that we do know, are bad". That statement simply wasn't accurate.
That's Dec 15. Depending how high a bar you have for 'know' it's defensible. We knew it had some vaccine escape and was more easily transmitted. There was some evidence on lower severity (probably, by then?) but I'm not sure I'd have said we 'knew' that at that point.
SA Doctors were saying about the significant lower severity 3 weeks before his statement.
Quite possibly (by which I mean I don't remember the timings, but assuming you do and I believe you). But 'know' in science has a quite specific meaning. Even knowing it was less severe in South Africa wouldn't mean it knowing (hoping, suspecting, expecting even, perhaps, but not knowing) was less severe here for a few reasons: - Different age profiles - Different profiles of past infection to different variants - Different comorbidities (partly due to differences in age) - Different profile of vaccines used (I don't know this to be the case, but good chance we have a different mix?)
Even at this point, do we know that Omicron is intrinsically milder than Delta? As opposed to effectively milder due to increased past exposure and increased vaccination giving us more protection? I haven't seen convincing studies on that - you'd need comparisons among unvaccinated and unexposed populations. If we still don't know the intrinsic severity then we didn't know it was going to be milder in a population with different past exposure, vaccination and comorbidity characterstics.
Whitty’s statement was still factually incorrect. And crucially and desperately incorrect and stated to the world as fact - at a time when UK hospitality was desperate for a good Xmas season
It was irresponsible, which is kinda ironic for a man who comes across as the epitome of decorously judged English reserve and judiciousness
It was not incorrect, for the reasons I have stated. We had some evidence it was milder. But what we knew was that it had some vaccine escape and spread faster.
I think, while this is correct, you can argue about the tone. There was a lot of evidence coming from SA that was treated with incredible skepticism by our, and other, governments/scientists. Frankly I can see why some thought it was racist or otherwise prejudiced. That's perhaps not was anyone intended, but its certainly the perception.
On the last point I said before and I still think that there was a huge element of the South Africans being treated as "primitive spear chuckers" by our scientific establishment. They couldn't fathom that a nation like SA could be get the data right so chose to not believe them, essentially because it's an African nation. I found the whole thing extremely unedifying and it showed how institutionally racist the British establishment still is, which was quite disheartening.
I don’t believe it was “racism” per se
For a start most of the doctors and profs reporting the mildness of Omicron were white
It was more a kind of lingering, snobbish western-eurocentrism. We might have reacted with equal skepticism to data coming out of Bulgaria, or the Phillipines, or the Falklands, or Macau, or Iceland, or even the Trumpier states of the USA
The sense was “we need a big important sensible country to back up these numbers - Western Europe, bits of Eastern Europe, developed east Asia, eg Japan or korea, MOST of the USA, the wider Anglosphere”
I admit this is a slender difference, but it is a difference. Either way it hindered our understanding of Omicron. And I am still sure Whitty told untruths at that presser. We did not KNOW anything. We had some bad intimations (justified) and some good (justified)
I think you are onto something there, Leon. Big Pharma is overwhelmingly based and funded in North America and Western Europe. It does science for and creates medicines optimized for caucasian (until recently, male) populations of northern european origins. Thus when science originates from outside of that bubble, it questions whether it is relevant to that demographic and waits upon confirmatory evidence from within its own machinery.
Lots of countries (think SE Asia, Eastern Europe) largely escaped the first wave of covid for reasons we are yet to understand. There was nothing wrong with waiting a couple of weeks, for that is what it was, to corroborate SA data with some of our own.
Wasn't passing judgment on that. Just trying to state my observations of how it works.
There is an element to what you say, but personally I think it was a minor part of the actual UK decision making.
I hope they havn’t got libdems bouncing up just because I bullied them 😠
I'd not worry too much about the headline Liberal number... my guess is that tactical voting will be back in a BIG way next time...
Yes, I agree, but there are dangers in being too far down. Labour now leads LibDems in the south (outside Lodon) by a large margin, and while there are places where that absolutely makes sense in tactical terms (along the coast and in parts of the West Country), there are others where it really doesn't, and real maturity will be needed by both parties for Labour to hold back where it makes tactical sense and the LibDems not to gloat about it.
Some truth in that.
Labour has never won a seat in Surrey for example, even in 1997. However the LDs won Guildford in 2001 and were a close second to the Tories in seats like Esher and Walton, Woking and Surrey South West in 2019
LOL how the mighty have fallen. He can’t even put his camera the right way round.
Now, Cameo was a funny pandemic-era way to get an out-of-work actor or comedian to say happy birthday to your friend, but surely this sort of stunt raises all sorts of questions about advertising regulations?
It's amusing as I've said before I think we pay our politicians too much and it'd be better if their pay was more closely linked to citizens pay in general. I believe in the 90s an MP typically got two times average income and now it's three times and I don't think that's healthy.
Others have said they think MPs are underpaid compared to the private sector.
While a tiny, tiny minority of the private sector may be worth more than MPs that's far from the case for all MPs as the likes of Bercow etc whoring themselves post politics helps demonstrate. As does the desperation in many MPs to do anything to stay loyal to the Party and keep their seat, because if they lose their seat they lose their job and there £84k+ salary they'd never achieve in the real world.
Above average intelligence, middle class background at least, graduate from good uni, driven and ambitious, energetic, robust and thick skinned, gift of the gab, alert to opportunities to get ahead.
The above being the typical profile of an MP, there's little doubt in my mind that most of them would have been able to earn more if they'd choosen a career in the private sector.
I am actually quite surprised the average is that high after 5 years.
I do wonder whether the base stats are on all degrees, including Masters (and MBAs) and PhDs etc. That would boost the numbers up a bit. Depending on data too, if it's survey based (how else?) then likely to be a differential response with lower earners less responsive? Don't account for that and you get high numbers.
Five years after first graduating I was doing a PhD on a £15k stipend, so I'm happy to believe those numbers are high
So 22 years after PhD I'm just touching 50K, but thats a middle ranking academic salary. Just shows that I do it for love and not for the cash...
Sounds familiar. I got my Ph.D. in 1973 and when I retired in 2001 as a progressed PL I had just reached 40K.
Glad I didn't go the PhD route, then.
I've said this before, but I know a fair few people who have PhDs. The vast majority of them either regret doing it, or think it has had no, or even negative, effect on their salary over those with ordinary degrees.
PhDs are important if you want to be an academic, helpful if you want to teach in a top private school or grammar, of little benefit otherwise unless in a specific area in demand in the commercial field
That's a rather British attitude.
Indeed. A close relative did a PhD. When he applied for management positions, just after he left academia, he would find himself being interviewed for jobs in research which paid peanuts.
If you want to go into business management an MBA would be far more useful than a PhD
The famous Master of Bugger-All.
See those three letters after somebody's name, and you know that you'll be facing an avalanche of bullshit, buzzwords and inanity.
So still infuriatingly successful as a result then, given the popularity of bullshit, buzzwords and inanity?
Covid cases again flat compared to last week. All other stats are down. (Edit: Deaths up a tad)
Covid anecdote. I have heard today of several people who now have Covid having also had it in the second half of last year. First time I am personally aware of reinfections. All are fine.
I know of several of my friends who have had it twice now, where as I seem to be the one of the very few I know that have never knowingly had Covid.
Are MBAs still a thing?
I had a colleague who did one and said “all I got was “older””
Yep, I’m doing one at the moment. Sponsored by employer, so can’t really complain, although I’d rather be doing infosec courses and certs instead.
We had the announcement of the battery factory funding. I missed this,
Wayve, a London-based startup creating autonomous driving technology based on computer vision and machine learning, has raised a $200m Series B funding round to help get self-driving cars onto the road faster.
Waymo has had $5.5bn and still can't solve the problems. Remember the issue isn't that driving is a 95% issue (and people can live with the 5%) it's a 99.9995% issue and until you've uncovered all the issues a self-driving car won't be allowed on the road.
If i had $200m to invest, it would be going into the battery factory rather than yet another SD car startup.
Unless someone builds a new town specifically around them, self-driving cars are coming a few years after personal flying cars powered by nuclear fusion.
Indeed, if the government was serious about levelling up it would announce a £30bn fund for electrification of our vehicle manufacturing industry, subsidies available to companies who will manufacture batteries, mine lithium, make the EVs, roll out charging stations and a few extras.
They seem to think that a few hundred million here and there will make a difference, it won't. Forget the cries from the left about "giving away billions to Elon Musk", just get on with it.
Agreed. Though I'd note Musk would have built his first European plant here, in all likelihood, had we not Brexited. Which probably makes you suggestion more, not less sensible.
South Korea (a similar sized country) is going to be one of the big global players in the battery market, and without a massive amount of government assistance. But we're five years behind.
What's really worrying for me is that the UK may end up becoming a net exporter of unrefined lithium, we'll miss out on the whole value chain other than exporting the cheapest bit of it. I don't understand why alarm bells aren't ringing at BEIS all day everyday about this. It's a £500bn per year market that we will have a vanishingly small role in unless we get moving now. A huge chunk of viable export industry just disappears because the Treasury decided to count coppers.
Covid cases again flat compared to last week. All other stats are down. (Edit: Deaths up a tad)
Covid anecdote. I have heard today of several people who now have Covid having also had it in the second half of last year. First time I am personally aware of reinfections. All are fine.
I know of several of my friends who have had it twice now, where as I seem to be the one of the very few I know that have never knowingly had Covid.
Are MBAs still a thing?
I had a colleague who did one and said “all I got was “older””
Yep, I’m doing one at the moment. Sponsored by employer, so can’t really complain, although I’d rather be doing infosec courses and certs instead.
In happier news. My 100% record of having mildly disappointing food (on my one previous Sri Lankan trip) has been easily shattered. It’s all good so far. Black Pork Curry lunch here was absolutely excellent
Colombo is a strange city. Poor, scruffy, yet in places intensely civilised. And stunned by the sun and heat into an amiable complacency
Are there still lots of stray dogs lining the streets? Was when I was there. Plagued with them - a bit off-putting.
Not one that I’ve seen. Not cats. In fact a decided absence by “3rd World” standards (are we still allowed to say 3rd World? What’s the replacement?)
The Global South. Not to be confused with the pop group of that name.
The Global South is surely far more insulting than “3rd World” (which is an antique Cold War term, I readily confess)
For a start there are plenty of once-developing countries in the “Global South” which would really resent that characterization;. Chileans are quite haughty about being compared to Argentina, let alone Sudan. Indonesia is equally proud, likewise Costa Rica, the Maldives, Mauritius, what even is “the Global South”?
You asked what the term now is and I told you - The Global South. But please note it doesn't mean below the equator. It's pretty much a straight replacement for 3rd World. It's a development measure not a geographic one. Insulting? No, the whole point is that 3rd World was, but this isn't. Everyone is happy and onboard with it.
"Everyone is happy and onboard with it."
Not true....its far from settled issue.
‘Global South’, a term frequently used on websites and in papers related to academic and ‘predatory’ publishing, may represent a form of unscholarly discrimination. Arguments are put forward as to why the current use of this term is geographically meaningless, since it implies countries in the southern hemisphere, whereas many of the entities in publishing that are referred to as being part of the Global South are in fact either on the equator or in the northern hemisphere. Therefore, academics, in writing about academic publishing, should cease using this broad, culturally insensitive, and geographically inaccurate term.
Erondu says she's embarrassed if she inadvertently uses the term during a workshop in one of the countries in Africa where she works on health care issues. Why? "Because people in Nigeria don't refer to themselves as the 'global south.' It's something someone named them."
I could go on and on. Third world is a no no, describing in terms of income is problematic and global south many don't like either.
I see. So what's a better term then? What gets your stamp of approval? Or let's put it this way. What term do YOU use when needing one for referring to the relatively impoverished parts of the world?
Eg, complete this sentence - The pandemic will soon be over in the rich nations of the West but will rage on for a long time in ????????? unless vaccines are rolled out there as a matter of priority.
I still use third world. This isn't me being deliberately old-fashioned or deliberately refusing to use the woke term. It would never occur to me that third world was unwoke. Actually, I might use developing world. Which itself is a polite euphemism which replaced the earlier and more pejorative 'undeveloped world' despite it being glaringly apparently that many parts of the undeveloped world were not developing. I suppose - if it occurred to me, because it's not a phrase that ever really does occur to me - you could use 'global south' to include countries like Chile whereas third world brings to mind more countries like Benin.
And I tend to say "poorer countries". Whatever, I don't find it a big deal. All that happened here was @Leon asked what was the modern term for 3rd World and I replied to him - being the helpful sort - with what I believe is the answer, Global South.
From this we get to him - Leon - telling me I'm hung up about "woke" and that I act like some sort of language policema ... person, and now we have @MaxPB crashing in and saying I'm worse than a racist!
Utterly bizarrio. And on a day that Meat Loaf died too. Chilean Red and Bag of Nuts time cannot come too soon for me today, I tell you.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h On the South Africa debate. People can try and re-write history as much as they like. Chris Whitty said "there are several things we don't know, but all the things that we do know, are bad". That statement simply wasn't accurate.
That's Dec 15. Depending how high a bar you have for 'know' it's defensible. We knew it had some vaccine escape and was more easily transmitted. There was some evidence on lower severity (probably, by then?) but I'm not sure I'd have said we 'knew' that at that point.
SA Doctors were saying about the significant lower severity 3 weeks before his statement.
Quite possibly (by which I mean I don't remember the timings, but assuming you do and I believe you). But 'know' in science has a quite specific meaning. Even knowing it was less severe in South Africa wouldn't mean it knowing (hoping, suspecting, expecting even, perhaps, but not knowing) was less severe here for a few reasons: - Different age profiles - Different profiles of past infection to different variants - Different comorbidities (partly due to differences in age) - Different profile of vaccines used (I don't know this to be the case, but good chance we have a different mix?)
Even at this point, do we know that Omicron is intrinsically milder than Delta? As opposed to effectively milder due to increased past exposure and increased vaccination giving us more protection? I haven't seen convincing studies on that - you'd need comparisons among unvaccinated and unexposed populations. If we still don't know the intrinsic severity then we didn't know it was going to be milder in a population with different past exposure, vaccination and comorbidity characterstics.
Whitty’s statement was still factually incorrect. And crucially and desperately incorrect and stated to the world as fact - at a time when UK hospitality was desperate for a good Xmas season
It was irresponsible, which is kinda ironic for a man who comes across as the epitome of decorously judged English reserve and judiciousness
It was not incorrect, for the reasons I have stated. We had some evidence it was milder. But what we knew was that it had some vaccine escape and spread faster.
I think, while this is correct, you can argue about the tone. There was a lot of evidence coming from SA that was treated with incredible skepticism by our, and other, governments/scientists. Frankly I can see why some thought it was racist or otherwise prejudiced. That's perhaps not was anyone intended, but its certainly the perception.
On the last point I said before and I still think that there was a huge element of the South Africans being treated as "primitive spear chuckers" by our scientific establishment. They couldn't fathom that a nation like SA could be get the data right so chose to not believe them, essentially because it's an African nation. I found the whole thing extremely unedifying and it showed how institutionally racist the British establishment still is, which was quite disheartening.
Indeed the South African medics themselves have this week accused ours of outright racism, see the BBC story I posted up thread.
I hope they havn’t got libdems bouncing up just because I bullied them 😠
I'd not worry too much about the headline Liberal number... my guess is that tactical voting will be back in a BIG way next time...
Yes, I agree, but there are dangers in being too far down. Labour now leads LibDems in the south (outside Lodon) by a large margin, and while there are places where that absolutely makes sense in tactical terms (along the coast and in parts of the West Country), there are others where it really doesn't, and real maturity will be needed by both parties for Labour to hold back where it makes tactical sense and the LibDems not to gloat about it.
I think tactical voting will always be imperfect and there are some constituencies where we just don't know which party is best placed. Hopefully the Greens will also concentrate efforts in a small number of seats. The biggest issue is going to be those many constituencies where Labour did better than the Lib Dems in the 2019 election but Lib Dems have more seats on the council.
Simplest solution surely is for the LDs only to target those seats where they were second last time (and Labour to avoid those altogether), plus seats where the Tories are so far ahead that it's fair game to try to get into second place long term.
On the last point I said before and I still think that there was a huge element of the South Africans being treated as "primitive spear chuckers" by our scientific establishment. They couldn't fathom that a nation like SA could be get the data right so chose to not believe them, essentially because it's an African nation. I found the whole thing extremely unedifying and it showed how institutionally racist the British establishment still is, which was quite disheartening.
I think that's a bit unfair. I think the skepticism was mostly driven by the fear that the data was too good to be true and that if they called it wrong — "yes, SA data is directly applicable to the UK" — a hell of a lot of people might die. I don't think anyone queried the South African testing and sequencing, it was the data about hospitalisation and development of disease that people were skeptical about. It was believed that our different demographics and different pre-existing immunity from vaccinations and prior infections might lead to different outcomes. It didn't, thank God, but how many people would want to take that risk? I would have certainly been very cautious if I had to make such a decision.
No. Whitty stood up in front of the UK public and said “all we know about omicron is bad”.
In happier news. My 100% record of having mildly disappointing food (on my one previous Sri Lankan trip) has been easily shattered. It’s all good so far. Black Pork Curry lunch here was absolutely excellent
Colombo is a strange city. Poor, scruffy, yet in places intensely civilised. And stunned by the sun and heat into an amiable complacency
Are there still lots of stray dogs lining the streets? Was when I was there. Plagued with them - a bit off-putting.
Not one that I’ve seen. Not cats. In fact a decided absence by “3rd World” standards (are we still allowed to say 3rd World? What’s the replacement?)
The Global South. Not to be confused with the pop group of that name.
The Global South is surely far more insulting than “3rd World” (which is an antique Cold War term, I readily confess)
For a start there are plenty of once-developing countries in the “Global South” which would really resent that characterization;. Chileans are quite haughty about being compared to Argentina, let alone Sudan. Indonesia is equally proud, likewise Costa Rica, the Maldives, Mauritius, what even is “the Global South”?
You asked what the term now is and I told you - The Global South. But please note it doesn't mean below the equator. It's pretty much a straight replacement for 3rd World. It's a development measure not a geographic one. Insulting? No, the whole point is that 3rd World was, but this isn't. Everyone is happy and onboard with it.
"Everyone is happy and onboard with it."
Not true....its far from settled issue.
‘Global South’, a term frequently used on websites and in papers related to academic and ‘predatory’ publishing, may represent a form of unscholarly discrimination. Arguments are put forward as to why the current use of this term is geographically meaningless, since it implies countries in the southern hemisphere, whereas many of the entities in publishing that are referred to as being part of the Global South are in fact either on the equator or in the northern hemisphere. Therefore, academics, in writing about academic publishing, should cease using this broad, culturally insensitive, and geographically inaccurate term.
Erondu says she's embarrassed if she inadvertently uses the term during a workshop in one of the countries in Africa where she works on health care issues. Why? "Because people in Nigeria don't refer to themselves as the 'global south.' It's something someone named them."
I could go on and on. Third world is a no no, describing in terms of income is problematic and global south many don't like either.
I see. So what's a better term then? What gets your stamp of approval? Or let's put it this way. What term do YOU use when needing one for referring to the relatively impoverished parts of the world?
Eg, complete this sentence - The pandemic will soon be over in the rich nations of the West but will rage on for a long time in ????????? unless vaccines are rolled out there as a matter of priority.
I still use third world. This isn't me being deliberately old-fashioned or deliberately refusing to use the woke term. It would never occur to me that third world was unwoke. Actually, I might use developing world. Which itself is a polite euphemism which replaced the earlier and more pejorative 'undeveloped world' despite it being glaringly apparently that many parts of the undeveloped world were not developing. I suppose - if it occurred to me, because it's not a phrase that ever really does occur to me - you could use 'global south' to include countries like Chile whereas third world brings to mind more countries like Benin.
And I tend to say "poorer countries". Whatever, I don't find it a big deal. All that happened here was @Leon asked what was the modern term for 3rd World and I replied to him - being the helpful sort - with what I believe is the answer, Global South.
From this we get to him - Leon - telling me I'm hung up about "woke" and that I act like some sort of language policema ... person, and now we have @MaxPB crashing in and saying I'm worse than a racist!
Utterly bizarrio. And on a day that Meat Loaf died too. Chilean Red and Bag of Nuts time cannot come too soon for me today, I tell you.
Your mistake is in taking people like Leon and MaxPB seriously.
I was assuming WILF had a different context in that headline. Much tamer than I anticipated.
The fact they showed no respect to anyone and even a child's slide must mean each and everyone gets a P45
That approach won't get anywhere in real life. Management-approved invitation to staff. Trade Union rep would rip hell out of any HR person trying to discipline someone for answering that positively. Cue big payoffs, cue more right wing whining.
They were breaking the law and are responsible for there own rule breaking
That's true, if proven (bearing in mind the arguments about such things as whether law even applies there cos it's a royal peculiar or stuff like that, I forget the term). Trouble is that if you prove that about them, it also applies to the top dog as well, and perhaps the less top dogs as well aka Cabinet ministers and journos etc. So politically very sticky.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h On the South Africa debate. People can try and re-write history as much as they like. Chris Whitty said "there are several things we don't know, but all the things that we do know, are bad". That statement simply wasn't accurate.
That's Dec 15. Depending how high a bar you have for 'know' it's defensible. We knew it had some vaccine escape and was more easily transmitted. There was some evidence on lower severity (probably, by then?) but I'm not sure I'd have said we 'knew' that at that point.
SA Doctors were saying about the significant lower severity 3 weeks before his statement.
Quite possibly (by which I mean I don't remember the timings, but assuming you do and I believe you). But 'know' in science has a quite specific meaning. Even knowing it was less severe in South Africa wouldn't mean it knowing (hoping, suspecting, expecting even, perhaps, but not knowing) was less severe here for a few reasons: - Different age profiles - Different profiles of past infection to different variants - Different comorbidities (partly due to differences in age) - Different profile of vaccines used (I don't know this to be the case, but good chance we have a different mix?)
Even at this point, do we know that Omicron is intrinsically milder than Delta? As opposed to effectively milder due to increased past exposure and increased vaccination giving us more protection? I haven't seen convincing studies on that - you'd need comparisons among unvaccinated and unexposed populations. If we still don't know the intrinsic severity then we didn't know it was going to be milder in a population with different past exposure, vaccination and comorbidity characterstics.
Whitty’s statement was still factually incorrect. And crucially and desperately incorrect and stated to the world as fact - at a time when UK hospitality was desperate for a good Xmas season
It was irresponsible, which is kinda ironic for a man who comes across as the epitome of decorously judged English reserve and judiciousness
It was not incorrect, for the reasons I have stated. We had some evidence it was milder. But what we knew was that it had some vaccine escape and spread faster.
I think, while this is correct, you can argue about the tone. There was a lot of evidence coming from SA that was treated with incredible skepticism by our, and other, governments/scientists. Frankly I can see why some thought it was racist or otherwise prejudiced. That's perhaps not was anyone intended, but its certainly the perception.
On the last point I said before and I still think that there was a huge element of the South Africans being treated as "primitive spear chuckers" by our scientific establishment. They couldn't fathom that a nation like SA could be get the data right so chose to not believe them, essentially because it's an African nation. I found the whole thing extremely unedifying and it showed how institutionally racist the British establishment still is, which was quite disheartening.
Indeed the South African medics themselves have this week accused ours of outright racism, see the BBC story I posted up thread.
Not just African but Afrikaners as well.
If you REALLY want to find reasons to be superior!
In happier news. My 100% record of having mildly disappointing food (on my one previous Sri Lankan trip) has been easily shattered. It’s all good so far. Black Pork Curry lunch here was absolutely excellent
Colombo is a strange city. Poor, scruffy, yet in places intensely civilised. And stunned by the sun and heat into an amiable complacency
Are there still lots of stray dogs lining the streets? Was when I was there. Plagued with them - a bit off-putting.
Not one that I’ve seen. Not cats. In fact a decided absence by “3rd World” standards (are we still allowed to say 3rd World? What’s the replacement?)
The Global South. Not to be confused with the pop group of that name.
The Global South is surely far more insulting than “3rd World” (which is an antique Cold War term, I readily confess)
For a start there are plenty of once-developing countries in the “Global South” which would really resent that characterization;. Chileans are quite haughty about being compared to Argentina, let alone Sudan. Indonesia is equally proud, likewise Costa Rica, the Maldives, Mauritius, what even is “the Global South”?
You asked what the term now is and I told you - The Global South. But please note it doesn't mean below the equator. It's pretty much a straight replacement for 3rd World. It's a development measure not a geographic one. Insulting? No, the whole point is that 3rd World was, but this isn't. Everyone is happy and onboard with it.
"Everyone is happy and onboard with it."
Not true....its far from settled issue.
‘Global South’, a term frequently used on websites and in papers related to academic and ‘predatory’ publishing, may represent a form of unscholarly discrimination. Arguments are put forward as to why the current use of this term is geographically meaningless, since it implies countries in the southern hemisphere, whereas many of the entities in publishing that are referred to as being part of the Global South are in fact either on the equator or in the northern hemisphere. Therefore, academics, in writing about academic publishing, should cease using this broad, culturally insensitive, and geographically inaccurate term.
Erondu says she's embarrassed if she inadvertently uses the term during a workshop in one of the countries in Africa where she works on health care issues. Why? "Because people in Nigeria don't refer to themselves as the 'global south.' It's something someone named them."
I could go on and on. Third world is a no no, describing in terms of income is problematic and global south many don't like either.
I see. So what's a better term then? What gets your stamp of approval? Or let's put it this way. What term do YOU use when needing one for referring to the relatively impoverished parts of the world?
Eg, complete this sentence - The pandemic will soon be over in the rich nations of the West but will rage on for a long time in ????????? unless vaccines are rolled out there as a matter of priority.
I still use third world. This isn't me being deliberately old-fashioned or deliberately refusing to use the woke term. It would never occur to me that third world was unwoke. Actually, I might use developing world. Which itself is a polite euphemism which replaced the earlier and more pejorative 'undeveloped world' despite it being glaringly apparently that many parts of the undeveloped world were not developing. I suppose - if it occurred to me, because it's not a phrase that ever really does occur to me - you could use 'global south' to include countries like Chile whereas third world brings to mind more countries like Benin.
And I tend to say "poorer countries". Whatever, I don't find it a big deal. All that happened here was @Leon asked what was the modern term for 3rd World and I replied to him - being the helpful sort - with what I believe is the answer, Global South.
From this we get to him - Leon - telling me I'm hung up about "woke" and that I act like some sort of language policema ... person, and now we have @MaxPB crashing in and saying I'm worse than a racist!
Utterly bizarrio. And on a day that Meat Loaf died too. Chilean Red and Bag of Nuts time cannot come too soon for me today, I tell you.
The sun is over the yardarm already. Or it would be if it werent' dark outside.
In happier news. My 100% record of having mildly disappointing food (on my one previous Sri Lankan trip) has been easily shattered. It’s all good so far. Black Pork Curry lunch here was absolutely excellent
Colombo is a strange city. Poor, scruffy, yet in places intensely civilised. And stunned by the sun and heat into an amiable complacency
Are there still lots of stray dogs lining the streets? Was when I was there. Plagued with them - a bit off-putting.
Not one that I’ve seen. Not cats. In fact a decided absence by “3rd World” standards (are we still allowed to say 3rd World? What’s the replacement?)
The Global South. Not to be confused with the pop group of that name.
The Global South is surely far more insulting than “3rd World” (which is an antique Cold War term, I readily confess)
For a start there are plenty of once-developing countries in the “Global South” which would really resent that characterization;. Chileans are quite haughty about being compared to Argentina, let alone Sudan. Indonesia is equally proud, likewise Costa Rica, the Maldives, Mauritius, what even is “the Global South”?
You asked what the term now is and I told you - The Global South. But please note it doesn't mean below the equator. It's pretty much a straight replacement for 3rd World. It's a development measure not a geographic one. Insulting? No, the whole point is that 3rd World was, but this isn't. Everyone is happy and onboard with it.
"Everyone is happy and onboard with it."
Not true....its far from settled issue.
‘Global South’, a term frequently used on websites and in papers related to academic and ‘predatory’ publishing, may represent a form of unscholarly discrimination. Arguments are put forward as to why the current use of this term is geographically meaningless, since it implies countries in the southern hemisphere, whereas many of the entities in publishing that are referred to as being part of the Global South are in fact either on the equator or in the northern hemisphere. Therefore, academics, in writing about academic publishing, should cease using this broad, culturally insensitive, and geographically inaccurate term.
Erondu says she's embarrassed if she inadvertently uses the term during a workshop in one of the countries in Africa where she works on health care issues. Why? "Because people in Nigeria don't refer to themselves as the 'global south.' It's something someone named them."
I could go on and on. Third world is a no no, describing in terms of income is problematic and global south many don't like either.
I see. So what's a better term then? What gets your stamp of approval? Or let's put it this way. What term do YOU use when needing one for referring to the relatively impoverished parts of the world?
Eg, complete this sentence - The pandemic will soon be over in the rich nations of the West but will rage on for a long time in ????????? unless vaccines are rolled out there as a matter of priority.
I still use third world. This isn't me being deliberately old-fashioned or deliberately refusing to use the woke term. It would never occur to me that third world was unwoke. Actually, I might use developing world. Which itself is a polite euphemism which replaced the earlier and more pejorative 'undeveloped world' despite it being glaringly apparently that many parts of the undeveloped world were not developing. I suppose - if it occurred to me, because it's not a phrase that ever really does occur to me - you could use 'global south' to include countries like Chile whereas third world brings to mind more countries like Benin.
And I tend to say "poorer countries". Whatever, I don't find it a big deal. All that happened here was @Leon asked what was the modern term for 3rd World and I replied to him - being the helpful sort - with what I believe is the answer, Global South.
From this we get to him - Leon - telling me I'm hung up about "woke" and that I act like some sort of language policema ... person, and now we have @MaxPB crashing in and saying I'm worse than a racist!
Utterly bizarrio. And on a day that Meat Loaf died too. Chilean Red and Bag of Nuts time cannot come too soon for me today, I tell you.
It's the same reason that SA Omicron data was dismissed. You and liberal racists have othered them with some new term that makes them different to us because they're poor, not white or both. The "global south" is stupid term.
We had the announcement of the battery factory funding. I missed this,
Wayve, a London-based startup creating autonomous driving technology based on computer vision and machine learning, has raised a $200m Series B funding round to help get self-driving cars onto the road faster.
Waymo has had $5.5bn and still can't solve the problems. Remember the issue isn't that driving is a 95% issue (and people can live with the 5%) it's a 99.9995% issue and until you've uncovered all the issues a self-driving car won't be allowed on the road.
If i had $200m to invest, it would be going into the battery factory rather than yet another SD car startup.
Unless someone builds a new town specifically around them, self-driving cars are coming a few years after personal flying cars powered by nuclear fusion.
Indeed, if the government was serious about levelling up it would announce a £30bn fund for electrification of our vehicle manufacturing industry, subsidies available to companies who will manufacture batteries, mine lithium, make the EVs, roll out charging stations and a few extras.
They seem to think that a few hundred million here and there will make a difference, it won't. Forget the cries from the left about "giving away billions to Elon Musk", just get on with it.
Agreed. Though I'd note Musk would have built his first European plant here, in all likelihood, had we not Brexited. Which probably makes you suggestion more, not less sensible.
South Korea (a similar sized country) is going to be one of the big global players in the battery market, and without a massive amount of government assistance. But we're five years behind.
What's really worrying for me is that the UK may end up becoming a net exporter of unrefined lithium, we'll miss out on the whole value chain other than exporting the cheapest bit of it. I don't understand why alarm bells aren't ringing at BEIS all day everyday about this. It's a £500bn per year market that we will have a vanishingly small role in unless we get moving now. A huge chunk of viable export industry just disappears because the Treasury decided to count coppers.
That's the Treasury for you - it seems the general rule at the moment is because of the money spent on Covid the answer is No...
Everything has to be justified which again means the default answer is (you've guessed it) No
I've said this before, but I know a fair few people who have PhDs. The vast majority of them either regret doing it, or think it has had no, or even negative, effect on their salary over those with ordinary degrees.
I think it's been mildly useful in getting a respectful hearing (whether otherwise earned or not), and I'm sure it helped get my first job, which was paid £50K back in 1977, because the Swiss really rate academic success. It still helps a bit, though objectively it's nuts that a work of minor mathematics that I'm certain nobody has ever used, written 40 years ago, has any effect whatever.
The thing that gets too much attention is school grades. They are a passport to a degree, but once you've got to uni, nobody cares what you did in school.
A PhD has been a stepping stone to a well paid career for me. I don't regret doing it although I was glad when it was over and keen to get the hell out of academia once I had finished it. I don't usually use the Dr title although there are occasions when I think it might be useful.
LOL how the mighty have fallen. He can’t even put his camera the right way round.
Now, Cameo was a funny pandemic-era way to get an out-of-work actor or comedian to say happy birthday to your friend, but surely this sort of stunt raises all sorts of questions about advertising regulations?
It's amusing as I've said before I think we pay our politicians too much and it'd be better if their pay was more closely linked to citizens pay in general. I believe in the 90s an MP typically got two times average income and now it's three times and I don't think that's healthy.
Others have said they think MPs are underpaid compared to the private sector.
While a tiny, tiny minority of the private sector may be worth more than MPs that's far from the case for all MPs as the likes of Bercow etc whoring themselves post politics helps demonstrate. As does the desperation in many MPs to do anything to stay loyal to the Party and keep their seat, because if they lose their seat they lose their job and there £84k+ salary they'd never achieve in the real world.
Above average intelligence, middle class background at least, graduate from good uni, driven and ambitious, energetic, robust and thick skinned, gift of the gab, alert to opportunities to get ahead.
The above being the typical profile of an MP, there's little doubt in my mind that most of them would have been able to earn more if they'd choosen a career in the private sector.
I am actually quite surprised the average is that high after 5 years.
I do wonder whether the base stats are on all degrees, including Masters (and MBAs) and PhDs etc. That would boost the numbers up a bit. Depending on data too, if it's survey based (how else?) then likely to be a differential response with lower earners less responsive? Don't account for that and you get high numbers.
Five years after first graduating I was doing a PhD on a £15k stipend, so I'm happy to believe those numbers are high
So 22 years after PhD I'm just touching 50K, but thats a middle ranking academic salary. Just shows that I do it for love and not for the cash...
Sounds familiar. I got my Ph.D. in 1973 and when I retired in 2001 as a progressed PL I had just reached 40K.
Glad I didn't go the PhD route, then.
I've said this before, but I know a fair few people who have PhDs. The vast majority of them either regret doing it, or think it has had no, or even negative, effect on their salary over those with ordinary degrees.
PhDs are important if you want to be an academic, helpful if you want to teach in a top private school or grammar, of little benefit otherwise unless in a specific area in demand in the commercial field
That's a rather British attitude.
Indeed. A close relative did a PhD. When he applied for management positions, just after he left academia, he would find himself being interviewed for jobs in research which paid peanuts.
If you want to go into business management an MBA would be far more useful than a PhD
He was under the delusion that having a PhD in Chemistry, would have some kind of usefulness in running companies that made chemicals.
LOL how the mighty have fallen. He can’t even put his camera the right way round.
Now, Cameo was a funny pandemic-era way to get an out-of-work actor or comedian to say happy birthday to your friend, but surely this sort of stunt raises all sorts of questions about advertising regulations?
It's amusing as I've said before I think we pay our politicians too much and it'd be better if their pay was more closely linked to citizens pay in general. I believe in the 90s an MP typically got two times average income and now it's three times and I don't think that's healthy.
Others have said they think MPs are underpaid compared to the private sector.
While a tiny, tiny minority of the private sector may be worth more than MPs that's far from the case for all MPs as the likes of Bercow etc whoring themselves post politics helps demonstrate. As does the desperation in many MPs to do anything to stay loyal to the Party and keep their seat, because if they lose their seat they lose their job and there £84k+ salary they'd never achieve in the real world.
Above average intelligence, middle class background at least, graduate from good uni, driven and ambitious, energetic, robust and thick skinned, gift of the gab, alert to opportunities to get ahead.
The above being the typical profile of an MP, there's little doubt in my mind that most of them would have been able to earn more if they'd choosen a career in the private sector.
I am actually quite surprised the average is that high after 5 years.
I do wonder whether the base stats are on all degrees, including Masters (and MBAs) and PhDs etc. That would boost the numbers up a bit. Depending on data too, if it's survey based (how else?) then likely to be a differential response with lower earners less responsive? Don't account for that and you get high numbers.
Five years after first graduating I was doing a PhD on a £15k stipend, so I'm happy to believe those numbers are high
So 22 years after PhD I'm just touching 50K, but thats a middle ranking academic salary. Just shows that I do it for love and not for the cash...
Sounds familiar. I got my Ph.D. in 1973 and when I retired in 2001 as a progressed PL I had just reached 40K.
Glad I didn't go the PhD route, then.
I've said this before, but I know a fair few people who have PhDs. The vast majority of them either regret doing it, or think it has had no, or even negative, effect on their salary over those with ordinary degrees.
PhDs are important if you want to be an academic, helpful if you want to teach in a top private school or grammar, of little benefit otherwise unless in a specific area in demand in the commercial field
That's a rather British attitude.
Indeed. A close relative did a PhD. When he applied for management positions, just after he left academia, he would find himself being interviewed for jobs in research which paid peanuts.
If you want to go into business management an MBA would be far more useful than a PhD
The famous Master of Bugger-All.
See those three letters after somebody's name, and you know that you'll be facing an avalanche of bullshit, buzzwords and inanity.
So still infuriatingly successful as a result then, given the popularity of bullshit, buzzwords and inanity?
Yes, plus the average salary for MBA graduates in the US for instance is $105, 000
On the last point I said before and I still think that there was a huge element of the South Africans being treated as "primitive spear chuckers" by our scientific establishment. They couldn't fathom that a nation like SA could be get the data right so chose to not believe them, essentially because it's an African nation. I found the whole thing extremely unedifying and it showed how institutionally racist the British establishment still is, which was quite disheartening.
I think that's a bit unfair. I think the skepticism was mostly driven by the fear that the data was too good to be true and that if they called it wrong — "yes, SA data is directly applicable to the UK" — a hell of a lot of people might die. I don't think anyone queried the South African testing and sequencing, it was the data about hospitalisation and development of disease that people were skeptical about. It was believed that our different demographics and different pre-existing immunity from vaccinations and prior infections might lead to different outcomes. It didn't, thank God, but how many people would want to take that risk? I would have certainly been very cautious if I had to make such a decision.
No. Whitty stood up in front of the UK public and said “all we know about omicron is bad”.
That was an outright untruth.
It all boils down to that word 'know'. You could argue that the only things 'known' about omicron at that stage was that it was more transmissible than delta and could result in breakthrough infections for both the vaccinated and those recovered from prior strains. Both of those are undoubtedly 'bad' characteristics. The other evidence was indicative not definitive at that point. So, at one level Whitty was not lying, just being cautious - and perhaps misleading - in the use of the word 'know'.
On the last point I said before and I still think that there was a huge element of the South Africans being treated as "primitive spear chuckers" by our scientific establishment. They couldn't fathom that a nation like SA could be get the data right so chose to not believe them, essentially because it's an African nation. I found the whole thing extremely unedifying and it showed how institutionally racist the British establishment still is, which was quite disheartening.
I think that's a bit unfair. I think the skepticism was mostly driven by the fear that the data was too good to be true and that if they called it wrong — "yes, SA data is directly applicable to the UK" — a hell of a lot of people might die. I don't think anyone queried the South African testing and sequencing, it was the data about hospitalisation and development of disease that people were skeptical about. It was believed that our different demographics and different pre-existing immunity from vaccinations and prior infections might lead to different outcomes. It didn't, thank God, but how many people would want to take that risk? I would have certainly been very cautious if I had to make such a decision.
Yep. The 'we ignored South African science' line ignores the fact that we took note of the sequencing and the high infectiousness. Think we had more local studies on vaccine escape in the lab, but I imagine (I don't recall) he first observational studies on vaccine escape were also SA? They'd have been best placed to do it.
The main caution I saw mentioned about SA findings on it being milder were more around possibly higher SA protection from past infection and particularly the early spread being mostly among the young, rather than suggestions of major biological differences between those in SA and here. Now it's possible I missed serious scientists claiming that SA science was crap or that the SA population was nothing like ours.
It's also been the approach of SAGE etc here to be 'cautious' in assuming bad things until the evidence comes in otherwise (see the modelling, many times). That's of course open to valid criticism, but working on Omicron being worse than it appeared was in line with working on cases and hospitalisations after easing restrictions last July being worse than the latest evidence suggested.
LOL how the mighty have fallen. He can’t even put his camera the right way round.
Now, Cameo was a funny pandemic-era way to get an out-of-work actor or comedian to say happy birthday to your friend, but surely this sort of stunt raises all sorts of questions about advertising regulations?
It's amusing as I've said before I think we pay our politicians too much and it'd be better if their pay was more closely linked to citizens pay in general. I believe in the 90s an MP typically got two times average income and now it's three times and I don't think that's healthy.
Others have said they think MPs are underpaid compared to the private sector.
While a tiny, tiny minority of the private sector may be worth more than MPs that's far from the case for all MPs as the likes of Bercow etc whoring themselves post politics helps demonstrate. As does the desperation in many MPs to do anything to stay loyal to the Party and keep their seat, because if they lose their seat they lose their job and there £84k+ salary they'd never achieve in the real world.
Above average intelligence, middle class background at least, graduate from good uni, driven and ambitious, energetic, robust and thick skinned, gift of the gab, alert to opportunities to get ahead.
The above being the typical profile of an MP, there's little doubt in my mind that most of them would have been able to earn more if they'd choosen a career in the private sector.
I am actually quite surprised the average is that high after 5 years.
I do wonder whether the base stats are on all degrees, including Masters (and MBAs) and PhDs etc. That would boost the numbers up a bit. Depending on data too, if it's survey based (how else?) then likely to be a differential response with lower earners less responsive? Don't account for that and you get high numbers.
Five years after first graduating I was doing a PhD on a £15k stipend, so I'm happy to believe those numbers are high
So 22 years after PhD I'm just touching 50K, but thats a middle ranking academic salary. Just shows that I do it for love and not for the cash...
Sounds familiar. I got my Ph.D. in 1973 and when I retired in 2001 as a progressed PL I had just reached 40K.
Glad I didn't go the PhD route, then.
I've said this before, but I know a fair few people who have PhDs. The vast majority of them either regret doing it, or think it has had no, or even negative, effect on their salary over those with ordinary degrees.
PhDs are important if you want to be an academic, helpful if you want to teach in a top private school or grammar, of little benefit otherwise unless in a specific area in demand in the commercial field
That's a rather British attitude.
Indeed. A close relative did a PhD. When he applied for management positions, just after he left academia, he would find himself being interviewed for jobs in research which paid peanuts.
If you want to go into business management an MBA would be far more useful than a PhD
He was under the delusion that having a PhD in Chemistry, would have some kind of usefulness in running companies that made chemicals.
Only if it was related to the specific chemicals they produce
I hope they havn’t got libdems bouncing up just because I bullied them 😠
I'd not worry too much about the headline Liberal number... my guess is that tactical voting will be back in a BIG way next time...
Yes, I agree, but there are dangers in being too far down. Labour now leads LibDems in the south (outside Lodon) by a large margin, and while there are places where that absolutely makes sense in tactical terms (along the coast and in parts of the West Country), there are others where it really doesn't, and real maturity will be needed by both parties for Labour to hold back where it makes tactical sense and the LibDems not to gloat about it.
Some truth in that.
Labour has never won a seat in Surrey for example, even in 1997. However the LDs won Guildford in 2001 and were a close second to the Tories in seats like Esher and Walton, Woking and Surrey South West in 2019
Yes, Labour has only ever been competitive with the Tories in Spelthorne (in 1997/2001) although I would argue that's possibly now the Tories safest seat in Surrey with the majority of seats in Surrey including Michael Gove's seat vulnerable to the Lib Dems longer term.
I hope they havn’t got libdems bouncing up just because I bullied them 😠
I'd not worry too much about the headline Liberal number... my guess is that tactical voting will be back in a BIG way next time...
Yes, I agree, but there are dangers in being too far down. Labour now leads LibDems in the south (outside Lodon) by a large margin, and while there are places where that absolutely makes sense in tactical terms (along the coast and in parts of the West Country), there are others where it really doesn't, and real maturity will be needed by both parties for Labour to hold back where it makes tactical sense and the LibDems not to gloat about it.
I think tactical voting will always be imperfect and there are some constituencies where we just don't know which party is best placed. Hopefully the Greens will also concentrate efforts in a small number of seats. The biggest issue is going to be those many constituencies where Labour did better than the Lib Dems in the 2019 election but Lib Dems have more seats on the council.
Simplest solution surely is for the LDs only to target those seats where they were second last time (and Labour to avoid those altogether), plus seats where the Tories are so far ahead that it's fair game to try to get into second place long term.
Seats like Colchester..... are there any other like that ..... present a bit of a problem.
I hope they havn’t got libdems bouncing up just because I bullied them 😠
I'd not worry too much about the headline Liberal number... my guess is that tactical voting will be back in a BIG way next time...
Yes, I agree, but there are dangers in being too far down. Labour now leads LibDems in the south (outside Lodon) by a large margin, and while there are places where that absolutely makes sense in tactical terms (along the coast and in parts of the West Country), there are others where it really doesn't, and real maturity will be needed by both parties for Labour to hold back where it makes tactical sense and the LibDems not to gloat about it.
Some truth in that.
Labour has never won a seat in Surrey for example, even in 1997. However the LDs won Guildford in 2001 and were a close second to the Tories in seats like Esher and Walton, Woking and Surrey South West in 2019
Both of your posts illustrate a key point, which is that starting or current support doesn’t necessarily correlate with the likelihood of being able to win the seat. A party starting lower down but where a large number of other voters are willing to consider supporting them has a logical and statistically better chance of taking a seat than a party that starts in clear second but where most other voters in the seat wouldn’t touch them with a bargepole.
I was assuming WILF had a different context in that headline. Much tamer than I anticipated.
The fact they showed no respect to anyone and even a child's slide must mean each and everyone gets a P45
That approach won't get anywhere in real life. Management-approved invitation to staff. Trade Union rep would rip hell out of any HR person trying to discipline someone for answering that positively. Cue big payoffs, cue more right wing whining.
They were breaking the law and are responsible for there own rule breaking
That's true, if proven (bearing in mind the arguments about such things as whether law even applies there cos it's a royal peculiar or stuff like that, I forget the term). Trouble is that if you prove that about them, it also applies to the top dog as well, and perhaps the less top dogs as well aka Cabinet ministers and journos etc. So politically very sticky.
I cannot imagine anyone is going to attempt to hide behind the royal estate argument but all those involved in those two parties have questions to answer
Where I think this terrible event is dangerous for Boris is the questions that follow as to how much he knew of it before and after and if he did know before he is 'gone' and if he knew after and took no disciplinary steps he is also 'gone'
Sky saying the report is expected on Monday so huge week next week
I hope they havn’t got libdems bouncing up just because I bullied them 😠
I'd not worry too much about the headline Liberal number... my guess is that tactical voting will be back in a BIG way next time...
Yes, I agree, but there are dangers in being too far down. Labour now leads LibDems in the south (outside Lodon) by a large margin, and while there are places where that absolutely makes sense in tactical terms (along the coast and in parts of the West Country), there are others where it really doesn't, and real maturity will be needed by both parties for Labour to hold back where it makes tactical sense and the LibDems not to gloat about it.
I was quite impressed that Daisy Cooper resisted the temptation to gloat to Angela Rayner on Peston this week, when they were discussing N Salop. Maybe a straw in the wind?
LOL how the mighty have fallen. He can’t even put his camera the right way round.
Now, Cameo was a funny pandemic-era way to get an out-of-work actor or comedian to say happy birthday to your friend, but surely this sort of stunt raises all sorts of questions about advertising regulations?
It's amusing as I've said before I think we pay our politicians too much and it'd be better if their pay was more closely linked to citizens pay in general. I believe in the 90s an MP typically got two times average income and now it's three times and I don't think that's healthy.
Others have said they think MPs are underpaid compared to the private sector.
While a tiny, tiny minority of the private sector may be worth more than MPs that's far from the case for all MPs as the likes of Bercow etc whoring themselves post politics helps demonstrate. As does the desperation in many MPs to do anything to stay loyal to the Party and keep their seat, because if they lose their seat they lose their job and there £84k+ salary they'd never achieve in the real world.
Above average intelligence, middle class background at least, graduate from good uni, driven and ambitious, energetic, robust and thick skinned, gift of the gab, alert to opportunities to get ahead.
The above being the typical profile of an MP, there's little doubt in my mind that most of them would have been able to earn more if they'd choosen a career in the private sector.
I am actually quite surprised the average is that high after 5 years.
I do wonder whether the base stats are on all degrees, including Masters (and MBAs) and PhDs etc. That would boost the numbers up a bit. Depending on data too, if it's survey based (how else?) then likely to be a differential response with lower earners less responsive? Don't account for that and you get high numbers.
Five years after first graduating I was doing a PhD on a £15k stipend, so I'm happy to believe those numbers are high
So 22 years after PhD I'm just touching 50K, but thats a middle ranking academic salary. Just shows that I do it for love and not for the cash...
Sounds familiar. I got my Ph.D. in 1973 and when I retired in 2001 as a progressed PL I had just reached 40K.
Glad I didn't go the PhD route, then.
But you do miss out on people sneering that you are not a real doctor as its not medicine...
Unless one is a surgeon in which case it is Mr/Mrs/Ms etc. Friend of mine became a surgeon and I used to razz him that he wasn't a real doctor, until he got his MD ...
FYI dentists are increasingly called doctors these days. Not sure why.
On the last point I said before and I still think that there was a huge element of the South Africans being treated as "primitive spear chuckers" by our scientific establishment. They couldn't fathom that a nation like SA could be get the data right so chose to not believe them, essentially because it's an African nation. I found the whole thing extremely unedifying and it showed how institutionally racist the British establishment still is, which was quite disheartening.
I think that's a bit unfair. I think the skepticism was mostly driven by the fear that the data was too good to be true and that if they called it wrong — "yes, SA data is directly applicable to the UK" — a hell of a lot of people might die. I don't think anyone queried the South African testing and sequencing, it was the data about hospitalisation and development of disease that people were skeptical about. It was believed that our different demographics and different pre-existing immunity from vaccinations and prior infections might lead to different outcomes. It didn't, thank God, but how many people would want to take that risk? I would have certainly been very cautious if I had to make such a decision.
No. Whitty stood up in front of the UK public and said “all we know about omicron is bad”.
That was an outright untruth.
It all boils down to that word 'know'. You could argue that the only things 'known' about omicron at that stage was that it was more transmissible than delta and could result in breakthrough infections for both the vaccinated and those recovered from prior strains. Both of those are undoubtedly 'bad' characteristics. The other evidence was indicative not definitive at that point. So, at one level Whitty was not lying, just being cautious - and perhaps misleading - in the use of the word 'know'.
We had the announcement of the battery factory funding. I missed this,
Wayve, a London-based startup creating autonomous driving technology based on computer vision and machine learning, has raised a $200m Series B funding round to help get self-driving cars onto the road faster.
Waymo has had $5.5bn and still can't solve the problems. Remember the issue isn't that driving is a 95% issue (and people can live with the 5%) it's a 99.9995% issue and until you've uncovered all the issues a self-driving car won't be allowed on the road.
If i had $200m to invest, it would be going into the battery factory rather than yet another SD car startup.
Unless someone builds a new town specifically around them, self-driving cars are coming a few years after personal flying cars powered by nuclear fusion.
Indeed, if the government was serious about levelling up it would announce a £30bn fund for electrification of our vehicle manufacturing industry, subsidies available to companies who will manufacture batteries, mine lithium, make the EVs, roll out charging stations and a few extras.
They seem to think that a few hundred million here and there will make a difference, it won't. Forget the cries from the left about "giving away billions to Elon Musk", just get on with it.
Agreed. Though I'd note Musk would have built his first European plant here, in all likelihood, had we not Brexited. Which probably makes you suggestion more, not less sensible.
South Korea (a similar sized country) is going to be one of the big global players in the battery market, and without a massive amount of government assistance. But we're five years behind.
What's really worrying for me is that the UK may end up becoming a net exporter of unrefined lithium, we'll miss out on the whole value chain other than exporting the cheapest bit of it. I don't understand why alarm bells aren't ringing at BEIS all day everyday about this. It's a £500bn per year market that we will have a vanishingly small role in unless we get moving now. A huge chunk of viable export industry just disappears because the Treasury decided to count coppers.
That's the Treasury for you - it seems the general rule at the moment is because of the money spent on Covid the answer is No...
Everything has to be justified which again means the default answer is (you've guessed it) No
What's mad is that for the first time we may actually have a leg up on a lot of countries with a huge stock of lithium in the UK that can be viably mined, instead of taking advantage of this very, very enviable position of being able to have a fully vertically integrated EV manufacturing industry in the UK with scads of money, we're "unlocking private investment" with a few hundred million here and there.
It's got to be the worst bit of economic vandalism I've seen in a while, the UK could potentially be an EV superpower with a hugely outsized presence in the market but the treasury seems determined to blow it.
On the last point I said before and I still think that there was a huge element of the South Africans being treated as "primitive spear chuckers" by our scientific establishment. They couldn't fathom that a nation like SA could be get the data right so chose to not believe them, essentially because it's an African nation. I found the whole thing extremely unedifying and it showed how institutionally racist the British establishment still is, which was quite disheartening.
I think that's a bit unfair. I think the skepticism was mostly driven by the fear that the data was too good to be true and that if they called it wrong — "yes, SA data is directly applicable to the UK" — a hell of a lot of people might die. I don't think anyone queried the South African testing and sequencing, it was the data about hospitalisation and development of disease that people were skeptical about. It was believed that our different demographics and different pre-existing immunity from vaccinations and prior infections might lead to different outcomes. It didn't, thank God, but how many people would want to take that risk? I would have certainly been very cautious if I had to make such a decision.
No. Whitty stood up in front of the UK public and said “all we know about omicron is bad”.
That was an outright untruth.
It all boils down to that word 'know'. You could argue that the only things 'known' about omicron at that stage was that it was more transmissible than delta and could result in breakthrough infections for both the vaccinated and those recovered from prior strains. Both of those are undoubtedly 'bad' characteristics. The other evidence was indicative not definitive at that point. So, at one level Whitty was not lying, just being cautious - and perhaps misleading - in the use of the word 'know'.
Which is what I think Selebian's point was.
It was. If anything, per one of Leon's later posts, the beef should be with Whitty saying we 'knew' bad things, not denying that we knew good things. We had high confidence in it being more transmissible, for example, but it would also be possible that was due to different profiles of vaccines used and different past infection (and recency/strain of past infection).
But, the evidence was more established on the bad, simply because the bad - spread - is picked up from cases which are both more numerous and happen earlier than hospitalisations and deaths. So you have more confidence on it being more tranmissible before you have the same confidence on it resulting in fewer hospitalisations and deaths.
LOL how the mighty have fallen. He can’t even put his camera the right way round.
Now, Cameo was a funny pandemic-era way to get an out-of-work actor or comedian to say happy birthday to your friend, but surely this sort of stunt raises all sorts of questions about advertising regulations?
It's amusing as I've said before I think we pay our politicians too much and it'd be better if their pay was more closely linked to citizens pay in general. I believe in the 90s an MP typically got two times average income and now it's three times and I don't think that's healthy.
Others have said they think MPs are underpaid compared to the private sector.
While a tiny, tiny minority of the private sector may be worth more than MPs that's far from the case for all MPs as the likes of Bercow etc whoring themselves post politics helps demonstrate. As does the desperation in many MPs to do anything to stay loyal to the Party and keep their seat, because if they lose their seat they lose their job and there £84k+ salary they'd never achieve in the real world.
Above average intelligence, middle class background at least, graduate from good uni, driven and ambitious, energetic, robust and thick skinned, gift of the gab, alert to opportunities to get ahead.
The above being the typical profile of an MP, there's little doubt in my mind that most of them would have been able to earn more if they'd choosen a career in the private sector.
I am actually quite surprised the average is that high after 5 years.
I do wonder whether the base stats are on all degrees, including Masters (and MBAs) and PhDs etc. That would boost the numbers up a bit. Depending on data too, if it's survey based (how else?) then likely to be a differential response with lower earners less responsive? Don't account for that and you get high numbers.
Five years after first graduating I was doing a PhD on a £15k stipend, so I'm happy to believe those numbers are high
So 22 years after PhD I'm just touching 50K, but thats a middle ranking academic salary. Just shows that I do it for love and not for the cash...
Sounds familiar. I got my Ph.D. in 1973 and when I retired in 2001 as a progressed PL I had just reached 40K.
Glad I didn't go the PhD route, then.
I've said this before, but I know a fair few people who have PhDs. The vast majority of them either regret doing it, or think it has had no, or even negative, effect on their salary over those with ordinary degrees.
PhDs are important if you want to be an academic, helpful if you want to teach in a top private school or grammar, of little benefit otherwise unless in a specific area in demand in the commercial field
That's a rather British attitude.
Indeed. A close relative did a PhD. When he applied for management positions, just after he left academia, he would find himself being interviewed for jobs in research which paid peanuts.
If you want to go into business management an MBA would be far more useful than a PhD
He was under the delusion that having a PhD in Chemistry, would have some kind of usefulness in running companies that made chemicals.
Only if it was related to the specific chemicals they produce
Having the MBAs take over from the engineers to run Boeing worked out so well, didn't it!
I hope they havn’t got libdems bouncing up just because I bullied them 😠
I'd not worry too much about the headline Liberal number... my guess is that tactical voting will be back in a BIG way next time...
Yes, I agree, but there are dangers in being too far down. Labour now leads LibDems in the south (outside Lodon) by a large margin, and while there are places where that absolutely makes sense in tactical terms (along the coast and in parts of the West Country), there are others where it really doesn't, and real maturity will be needed by both parties for Labour to hold back where it makes tactical sense and the LibDems not to gloat about it.
Some truth in that.
Labour has never won a seat in Surrey for example, even in 1997. However the LDs won Guildford in 2001 and were a close second to the Tories in seats like Esher and Walton, Woking and Surrey South West in 2019
Both of your posts illustrate a key point, which is that starting or current support doesn’t necessarily correlate with the likelihood of being able to win the seat. A party starting lower down but where a large number of other voters are willing to consider supporting them has a logical and statistically better chance of taking a seat than a party that starts in clear second but where most other voters in the seat wouldn’t touch them with a bargepole.
Most voters in Surrey wouldn't touch Labour with a bargepole.
They might vote LD over Tory but they would vote Tory over Labour
In happier news. My 100% record of having mildly disappointing food (on my one previous Sri Lankan trip) has been easily shattered. It’s all good so far. Black Pork Curry lunch here was absolutely excellent
Colombo is a strange city. Poor, scruffy, yet in places intensely civilised. And stunned by the sun and heat into an amiable complacency
Are there still lots of stray dogs lining the streets? Was when I was there. Plagued with them - a bit off-putting.
Not one that I’ve seen. Not cats. In fact a decided absence by “3rd World” standards (are we still allowed to say 3rd World? What’s the replacement?)
The Global South. Not to be confused with the pop group of that name.
The Global South is surely far more insulting than “3rd World” (which is an antique Cold War term, I readily confess)
For a start there are plenty of once-developing countries in the “Global South” which would really resent that characterization;. Chileans are quite haughty about being compared to Argentina, let alone Sudan. Indonesia is equally proud, likewise Costa Rica, the Maldives, Mauritius, what even is “the Global South”?
You asked what the term now is and I told you - The Global South. But please note it doesn't mean below the equator. It's pretty much a straight replacement for 3rd World. It's a development measure not a geographic one. Insulting? No, the whole point is that 3rd World was, but this isn't. Everyone is happy and onboard with it.
Erondu says she's embarrassed if she inadvertently uses the term during a workshop in one of the countries in Africa where she works on health care issues. Why? "Because people in Nigeria don't refer to themselves as the 'global south.' It's something someone named them."
I could go on and on. Third world is a no no, describing in terms of income is problematic and global south many don't like either.
In my work, I avoid all those terms completely. I refer, when I have to, to low-resource settings or environments. This does not seem to insult because, say, within Pakistan the relatively affluent institutions, such as Agha Khan University or LUMS, don't see themselves at being low-resource, while laboratories in Quetta or Gilgit do and want to know what they can do within those very real-life constraints.
PS And low-resource does not always mean 'poor' - it can be some other resource we take for granted in the West, such as water. In Quetta, for instance, a question I've had is how much water do you need to wash your hands properly?
Yes "low resource" is quite accurate. It also usefully deals with low income areas within high income countries such as Jaywick, and high resource areas of low or middle income countries such as Sandton in South Africa.
LOL how the mighty have fallen. He can’t even put his camera the right way round.
Now, Cameo was a funny pandemic-era way to get an out-of-work actor or comedian to say happy birthday to your friend, but surely this sort of stunt raises all sorts of questions about advertising regulations?
It's amusing as I've said before I think we pay our politicians too much and it'd be better if their pay was more closely linked to citizens pay in general. I believe in the 90s an MP typically got two times average income and now it's three times and I don't think that's healthy.
Others have said they think MPs are underpaid compared to the private sector.
While a tiny, tiny minority of the private sector may be worth more than MPs that's far from the case for all MPs as the likes of Bercow etc whoring themselves post politics helps demonstrate. As does the desperation in many MPs to do anything to stay loyal to the Party and keep their seat, because if they lose their seat they lose their job and there £84k+ salary they'd never achieve in the real world.
Above average intelligence, middle class background at least, graduate from good uni, driven and ambitious, energetic, robust and thick skinned, gift of the gab, alert to opportunities to get ahead.
The above being the typical profile of an MP, there's little doubt in my mind that most of them would have been able to earn more if they'd choosen a career in the private sector.
I am actually quite surprised the average is that high after 5 years.
I do wonder whether the base stats are on all degrees, including Masters (and MBAs) and PhDs etc. That would boost the numbers up a bit. Depending on data too, if it's survey based (how else?) then likely to be a differential response with lower earners less responsive? Don't account for that and you get high numbers.
Five years after first graduating I was doing a PhD on a £15k stipend, so I'm happy to believe those numbers are high
So 22 years after PhD I'm just touching 50K, but thats a middle ranking academic salary. Just shows that I do it for love and not for the cash...
Sounds familiar. I got my Ph.D. in 1973 and when I retired in 2001 as a progressed PL I had just reached 40K.
Glad I didn't go the PhD route, then.
I've said this before, but I know a fair few people who have PhDs. The vast majority of them either regret doing it, or think it has had no, or even negative, effect on their salary over those with ordinary degrees.
PhDs are important if you want to be an academic, helpful if you want to teach in a top private school or grammar, of little benefit otherwise unless in a specific area in demand in the commercial field
That's a rather British attitude.
Indeed. A close relative did a PhD. When he applied for management positions, just after he left academia, he would find himself being interviewed for jobs in research which paid peanuts.
If you want to go into business management an MBA would be far more useful than a PhD
He was under the delusion that having a PhD in Chemistry, would have some kind of usefulness in running companies that made chemicals.
Only if it was related to the specific chemicals they produce
Having the MBAs take over from the engineers to run Boeing worked out so well, didn't it!
Maybe not but then most engineers don't need PhDs either
In happier news. My 100% record of having mildly disappointing food (on my one previous Sri Lankan trip) has been easily shattered. It’s all good so far. Black Pork Curry lunch here was absolutely excellent
Colombo is a strange city. Poor, scruffy, yet in places intensely civilised. And stunned by the sun and heat into an amiable complacency
Are there still lots of stray dogs lining the streets? Was when I was there. Plagued with them - a bit off-putting.
Not one that I’ve seen. Not cats. In fact a decided absence by “3rd World” standards (are we still allowed to say 3rd World? What’s the replacement?)
The Global South. Not to be confused with the pop group of that name.
The Global South is surely far more insulting than “3rd World” (which is an antique Cold War term, I readily confess)
For a start there are plenty of once-developing countries in the “Global South” which would really resent that characterization;. Chileans are quite haughty about being compared to Argentina, let alone Sudan. Indonesia is equally proud, likewise Costa Rica, the Maldives, Mauritius, what even is “the Global South”?
You asked what the term now is and I told you - The Global South. But please note it doesn't mean below the equator. It's pretty much a straight replacement for 3rd World. It's a development measure not a geographic one. Insulting? No, the whole point is that 3rd World was, but this isn't. Everyone is happy and onboard with it.
"Everyone is happy and onboard with it."
Not true....its far from settled issue.
‘Global South’, a term frequently used on websites and in papers related to academic and ‘predatory’ publishing, may represent a form of unscholarly discrimination. Arguments are put forward as to why the current use of this term is geographically meaningless, since it implies countries in the southern hemisphere, whereas many of the entities in publishing that are referred to as being part of the Global South are in fact either on the equator or in the northern hemisphere. Therefore, academics, in writing about academic publishing, should cease using this broad, culturally insensitive, and geographically inaccurate term.
Erondu says she's embarrassed if she inadvertently uses the term during a workshop in one of the countries in Africa where she works on health care issues. Why? "Because people in Nigeria don't refer to themselves as the 'global south.' It's something someone named them."
I could go on and on. Third world is a no no, describing in terms of income is problematic and global south many don't like either.
I see. So what's a better term then? What gets your stamp of approval? Or let's put it this way. What term do YOU use when needing one for referring to the relatively impoverished parts of the world?
Eg, complete this sentence - The pandemic will soon be over in the rich nations of the West but will rage on for a long time in ????????? unless vaccines are rolled out there as a matter of priority.
I still use third world. This isn't me being deliberately old-fashioned or deliberately refusing to use the woke term. It would never occur to me that third world was unwoke. Actually, I might use developing world. Which itself is a polite euphemism which replaced the earlier and more pejorative 'undeveloped world' despite it being glaringly apparently that many parts of the undeveloped world were not developing. I suppose - if it occurred to me, because it's not a phrase that ever really does occur to me - you could use 'global south' to include countries like Chile whereas third world brings to mind more countries like Benin.
And I tend to say "poorer countries". Whatever, I don't find it a big deal. All that happened here was @Leon asked what was the modern term for 3rd World and I replied to him - being the helpful sort - with what I believe is the answer, Global South.
From this we get to him - Leon - telling me I'm hung up about "woke" and that I act like some sort of language policema ... person, and now we have @MaxPB crashing in and saying I'm worse than a racist!
Utterly bizarrio. And on a day that Meat Loaf died too. Chilean Red and Bag of Nuts time cannot come too soon for me today, I tell you.
It's the same reason that SA Omicron data was dismissed. You and liberal racists have othered them with some new term that makes them different to us because they're poor, not white or both. The "global south" is stupid term.
How has he othered them? They are different from us - we are rich, they are poor; we have privileged access to powerful global institutions, they don't; our citizens can easily travel to their countries, their citizens can't easily travel to our countries; they consume our media and culture; we don't consume their media and culture; ... the list of differences goes on. Whatever term or phrase you deem politically correct to differentiate between these groups of countries, they are different. It is the existence of these differences that is problematic, surely, not the acknowledgement of them?
That would make an excellent tequila Lazy Susan… together with his genius giant vodka slide idea, you can see why Bozza and pals opted for a playground theme.
LOL how the mighty have fallen. He can’t even put his camera the right way round.
Now, Cameo was a funny pandemic-era way to get an out-of-work actor or comedian to say happy birthday to your friend, but surely this sort of stunt raises all sorts of questions about advertising regulations?
It's amusing as I've said before I think we pay our politicians too much and it'd be better if their pay was more closely linked to citizens pay in general. I believe in the 90s an MP typically got two times average income and now it's three times and I don't think that's healthy.
Others have said they think MPs are underpaid compared to the private sector.
While a tiny, tiny minority of the private sector may be worth more than MPs that's far from the case for all MPs as the likes of Bercow etc whoring themselves post politics helps demonstrate. As does the desperation in many MPs to do anything to stay loyal to the Party and keep their seat, because if they lose their seat they lose their job and there £84k+ salary they'd never achieve in the real world.
Above average intelligence, middle class background at least, graduate from good uni, driven and ambitious, energetic, robust and thick skinned, gift of the gab, alert to opportunities to get ahead.
The above being the typical profile of an MP, there's little doubt in my mind that most of them would have been able to earn more if they'd choosen a career in the private sector.
I am actually quite surprised the average is that high after 5 years.
I do wonder whether the base stats are on all degrees, including Masters (and MBAs) and PhDs etc. That would boost the numbers up a bit. Depending on data too, if it's survey based (how else?) then likely to be a differential response with lower earners less responsive? Don't account for that and you get high numbers.
Five years after first graduating I was doing a PhD on a £15k stipend, so I'm happy to believe those numbers are high
So 22 years after PhD I'm just touching 50K, but thats a middle ranking academic salary. Just shows that I do it for love and not for the cash...
Sounds familiar. I got my Ph.D. in 1973 and when I retired in 2001 as a progressed PL I had just reached 40K.
Glad I didn't go the PhD route, then.
But you do miss out on people sneering that you are not a real doctor as its not medicine...
Unless one is a surgeon in which case it is Mr/Mrs/Ms etc. Friend of mine became a surgeon and I used to razz him that he wasn't a real doctor, until he got his MD ...
FYI dentists are increasingly called doctors these days. Not sure why.
Apparently a courtesy title. To be fair, now dentists have caught up on the apothecaries, academically, seems only fair. Pharmacists, incidentally, nowadays have Masters degrees. GP's have Bachelors, although frequently, AIUI, they're double Bachelors.
I was assuming WILF had a different context in that headline. Much tamer than I anticipated.
The fact they showed no respect to anyone and even a child's slide must mean each and everyone gets a P45
That approach won't get anywhere in real life. Management-approved invitation to staff. Trade Union rep would rip hell out of any HR person trying to discipline someone for answering that positively. Cue big payoffs, cue more right wing whining.
They were breaking the law and are responsible for there own rule breaking
That's true, if proven (bearing in mind the arguments about such things as whether law even applies there cos it's a royal peculiar or stuff like that, I forget the term). Trouble is that if you prove that about them, it also applies to the top dog as well, and perhaps the less top dogs as well aka Cabinet ministers and journos etc. So politically very sticky.
I cannot imagine anyone is going to attempt to hide behind the royal estate argument but all those involved in those two parties have questions to answer
Where I think this terrible event is dangerous for Boris is the questions that follow as to how much he knew of it before and after and if he did know before he is 'gone' and if he knew after and took no disciplinary steps he is also 'gone'
Sky saying the report is expected on Monday so huge week next week
If I were the union rep I would most certainly plead the royal estate argument if I could - if it exists, why not? Edit: If it is not technically illegal, then you can't be sacked because it is illegal.
It must be said that the timescale of the formal disciplinary process may well be longer than that for the resolution of the matter as far as Mr J is concerned - so the problem I raise might not actually apply, always assuming the civil servants did break the law and/or the Civil Service disciplinary code and/or specific regs relating to Downing St in ways which justify immediate dismissal rather than a reprimand etc. (caveat: they may well be formally innocent, so I'm not going to prejudge that in public).
Another complication is, of course, the Spads - who are neither elected fisn nor civil servant fowl. I'm not sure what their disciplinary system is like, though I imagine they are out of the door if their pet minister goes anyway.
On the last point I said before and I still think that there was a huge element of the South Africans being treated as "primitive spear chuckers" by our scientific establishment. They couldn't fathom that a nation like SA could be get the data right so chose to not believe them, essentially because it's an African nation. I found the whole thing extremely unedifying and it showed how institutionally racist the British establishment still is, which was quite disheartening.
I think that's a bit unfair. I think the skepticism was mostly driven by the fear that the data was too good to be true and that if they called it wrong — "yes, SA data is directly applicable to the UK" — a hell of a lot of people might die. I don't think anyone queried the South African testing and sequencing, it was the data about hospitalisation and development of disease that people were skeptical about. It was believed that our different demographics and different pre-existing immunity from vaccinations and prior infections might lead to different outcomes. It didn't, thank God, but how many people would want to take that risk? I would have certainly been very cautious if I had to make such a decision.
No. Whitty stood up in front of the UK public and said “all we know about omicron is bad”.
That was an outright untruth.
To be fair, all we really actually knew at the time was that it spread fast. The rest was mostly informed speculation.
Re: Ignoring data from SA. Didn't we also ignore what we were seeing in Italy at the very beginning?
There is definitely a 'not invented here' syndrome but I'm not sure whether it is racist.
LOL how the mighty have fallen. He can’t even put his camera the right way round.
Now, Cameo was a funny pandemic-era way to get an out-of-work actor or comedian to say happy birthday to your friend, but surely this sort of stunt raises all sorts of questions about advertising regulations?
It's amusing as I've said before I think we pay our politicians too much and it'd be better if their pay was more closely linked to citizens pay in general. I believe in the 90s an MP typically got two times average income and now it's three times and I don't think that's healthy.
Others have said they think MPs are underpaid compared to the private sector.
While a tiny, tiny minority of the private sector may be worth more than MPs that's far from the case for all MPs as the likes of Bercow etc whoring themselves post politics helps demonstrate. As does the desperation in many MPs to do anything to stay loyal to the Party and keep their seat, because if they lose their seat they lose their job and there £84k+ salary they'd never achieve in the real world.
Above average intelligence, middle class background at least, graduate from good uni, driven and ambitious, energetic, robust and thick skinned, gift of the gab, alert to opportunities to get ahead.
The above being the typical profile of an MP, there's little doubt in my mind that most of them would have been able to earn more if they'd choosen a career in the private sector.
I am actually quite surprised the average is that high after 5 years.
I do wonder whether the base stats are on all degrees, including Masters (and MBAs) and PhDs etc. That would boost the numbers up a bit. Depending on data too, if it's survey based (how else?) then likely to be a differential response with lower earners less responsive? Don't account for that and you get high numbers.
Five years after first graduating I was doing a PhD on a £15k stipend, so I'm happy to believe those numbers are high
So 22 years after PhD I'm just touching 50K, but thats a middle ranking academic salary. Just shows that I do it for love and not for the cash...
Sounds familiar. I got my Ph.D. in 1973 and when I retired in 2001 as a progressed PL I had just reached 40K.
Glad I didn't go the PhD route, then.
But you do miss out on people sneering that you are not a real doctor as its not medicine...
Unless one is a surgeon in which case it is Mr/Mrs/Ms etc. Friend of mine became a surgeon and I used to razz him that he wasn't a real doctor, until he got his MD ...
FYI dentists are increasingly called doctors these days. Not sure why.
There may be a hint in the name of their degrees. In the US their degrees are either "Doctor in Dental Medicine", or "Doctor of Dental Surgery".
LOL how the mighty have fallen. He can’t even put his camera the right way round.
Now, Cameo was a funny pandemic-era way to get an out-of-work actor or comedian to say happy birthday to your friend, but surely this sort of stunt raises all sorts of questions about advertising regulations?
It's amusing as I've said before I think we pay our politicians too much and it'd be better if their pay was more closely linked to citizens pay in general. I believe in the 90s an MP typically got two times average income and now it's three times and I don't think that's healthy.
Others have said they think MPs are underpaid compared to the private sector.
While a tiny, tiny minority of the private sector may be worth more than MPs that's far from the case for all MPs as the likes of Bercow etc whoring themselves post politics helps demonstrate. As does the desperation in many MPs to do anything to stay loyal to the Party and keep their seat, because if they lose their seat they lose their job and there £84k+ salary they'd never achieve in the real world.
Above average intelligence, middle class background at least, graduate from good uni, driven and ambitious, energetic, robust and thick skinned, gift of the gab, alert to opportunities to get ahead.
The above being the typical profile of an MP, there's little doubt in my mind that most of them would have been able to earn more if they'd choosen a career in the private sector.
I am actually quite surprised the average is that high after 5 years.
I do wonder whether the base stats are on all degrees, including Masters (and MBAs) and PhDs etc. That would boost the numbers up a bit. Depending on data too, if it's survey based (how else?) then likely to be a differential response with lower earners less responsive? Don't account for that and you get high numbers.
Five years after first graduating I was doing a PhD on a £15k stipend, so I'm happy to believe those numbers are high
So 22 years after PhD I'm just touching 50K, but thats a middle ranking academic salary. Just shows that I do it for love and not for the cash...
Sounds familiar. I got my Ph.D. in 1973 and when I retired in 2001 as a progressed PL I had just reached 40K.
Glad I didn't go the PhD route, then.
I've said this before, but I know a fair few people who have PhDs. The vast majority of them either regret doing it, or think it has had no, or even negative, effect on their salary over those with ordinary degrees.
PhDs are important if you want to be an academic, helpful if you want to teach in a top private school or grammar, of little benefit otherwise unless in a specific area in demand in the commercial field
That's a rather British attitude.
Indeed. A close relative did a PhD. When he applied for management positions, just after he left academia, he would find himself being interviewed for jobs in research which paid peanuts.
If you want to go into business management an MBA would be far more useful than a PhD
He was under the delusion that having a PhD in Chemistry, would have some kind of usefulness in running companies that made chemicals.
Only if it was related to the specific chemicals they produce
Having the MBAs take over from the engineers to run Boeing worked out so well, didn't it!
Does the McDonnell Douglas - Boeing merger go down as one of the worst corporate mergers of all time? Totally destroyed the profitability and reputation of the company, by forgetting that what they actually did was top level engineering.
I'm surprised that Johnson is being allowed to get away with this crap ...the most successful roll out anywhere .... 'the best vaccine program'... 'The best track and trace'....'the best economy in the G20' ....'The best recovery....The most sought after destination blah blah blah...."
That isn't what the coronavirus figures show. We have the sixth biggest death toll in the world and a bigger death toll than any country in the EU.
What exactly have we done that makes us the best?
I went to Chester two days ago and there were more rough sleepers than I've even seen in Barcelona. It was back to the dark days of Thatcher when you couldn't pass a doorway in the West End without stepping over a cardboard box with someone sleeping in it.
That is massively misleading by you. From the table you link to:
The German homeless number "*Includes "around 441,000 asylum seekers and refugees in temporary accommodation"; only 4.9/10000 people are without any shelter"
The US total is higher than the UK but in terms of % population they are massively lower - 17.7 per 10,000 compared to the UK value of 54 per 10,000. That we have a higher rate of homelessness than the US should be a matter of shame to any British Government.
No he's not being misleading in this instance since people with temporary shelter are defined as homeless in the UK too. So you should compare the UK's raw figure with Germany's raw figure for a like-for-like comparison.
This is like discussions about poverty, but where poverty has been redefined to mean inequality. International tables and comparisons are absurd if you aren't comparing like for like.
There is no way the real homeless situation in the UK is worse than America's. Any drive or walk through British and American cities would confirm that.
When the UK takes in a million or so refugees like Germany has over the last few years then you might have a point. Until then you are just talking bullshit. Germany has a short term issue related to accepting all those refugees. The UK has a long standing and endemic problem with homelessness which no Government has been taking seriously.
The UK has taken in millions of migrants over the last few years, net migration is considerably higher in the UK than it has been in Germany for many years now which inevitably affects the housing situation. Either way though on a like-for-like comparison the German situation is worse.
However I was primarily responding to your nonsense claim that the homeless situation in the UK is worse than the USA. Stop and think about that for thirty seconds please and think for thirty seconds about the fact that, like in Germany, those in temporary accommodation are classed as "homeless" in the UK.
Now after stopping and thinking do you still want to claim the homeless situation in the UK is worse than the USA? Really?
Yet again you are being thoroughly dishonest in your comparisons. The UK has taken in millions of migrants who came here with work and with money to pay for accommodation. Germany has taken in millions with nothing but the clothes on their back. The comparison you make is simply stupid and ignorant.
No that isn't true whatsoever.
The housing supply is [barring construction/demolitions] relatively fixed. A house doesn't care whether its occupants have money or not, are asylum seekers or workers, or so on and so forth.
More people coming here than leaving means more houses are required whether that's for asylum seekers or immigrants. Asylum seekers are no more a negative for housing demand than any other immigrants are and its wrong for your to characterise them as such.
However anyway under free movement it is simply categorically not the case that people could only migrate here if they had the money to pay for their accommodation. We had no visa pre-screening for wealth or income or ability to pay for housing.
We had millions arrive from Eastern Europe with "the clothes on their back" who did not arrive with the cash to pay for British housing costs. But we did have housing benefit etc available, but yes just like with asylum seekers, that means in times people ending up in temporary accommodation. Especially since there was no glut of empty housing available for people to move into, like there was in parts of Germany.
That is just fantasy from start to finish. You will say anything to justify your indefensible positions.
So you really think everyone who arrived in the UK from Eastern Europe arrived with enough money to pay British accommodation costs already in the bank?
Over a million Romanians in the UK according to the settled status visa scheme. You think every single one of them arrived with enough money already in the bank saved up in Romania to pay for British housing costs and none of them came with just their shirt on their back?
If so you're being indefensible. And I say that as someone who's a big fan of immigration and welcomes the fact that many people arrived here with nothing but the clothes on their back and have worked hard since arriving here. But to deny it happened because it suits your agenda is just absurd.
I'd be perfectly happy to see restrictions on movement abolished and free movement restored, so long as that's twinned with restrictions on building abolished and the requirement for planning consent to be abolished too. No visa requirements, no planning consent requirements, should go hand-in-hand. But we've had one without the other and many people quite reasonably took advantage of that with nothing but their clothes on their back to start a new life in this country - and good luck to them too. Why would you pour scorn on them for doing so?
What makes me laugh about your posts is your absurd absolutism. Where did Richard say suggest or imply that "everyone" arriving from elsewhere had loads of money on arrival? Some arrived here to do actual jobs with contracts. Others arrived to beg. It is neither everyone nor no-one.
"The UK has taken in millions of migrants who came here with work and with money to pay for accommodation. "
There was no visa pre-screening to check that the millions who came here had the money to pay for accommodation before they arrived.
That it is neither everyone nor no-one verifies what I was saying. Thank you for agreeing with me.
Nobody can even tell what the fuck you are arguing about at this point.
Bartholomew originally wanted to say that Germany should be doing better on homelessness than the UK because Germany has had "significantly lower net migration" than the UK for many years.
Ignoring the crapness of the argument (and the fact that nobody is sure whether or not Germany is in fact doing better or worse on homelessness), Bartholomew was unable to even provide any kind of source for the claim that the UK has had significantly more net migration than Germany, hence bizarre straw men
Are you serious?
Source: Google's population statistics
Germany population 2000: 82.21 mn people. Germany population 2020: 83.24 mn people. Net increase in population in 20 years: 1.03 mn people = 1.25%
UK population 2000: 58.89 mn people UK population 2020: 67.22 mn people. Net increase in population in 20 years: 8.33 mn people = 14.14%
Now in my world a 14% increase in population in a generation causes a bigger housing crisis than a 1% increase in population in a generation. Your mileage may vary.
You still have not given any source for your claim that net migration to the UK is significantly higher than to Germany, I am really curious and this is the third time I am asking for it. Nigeria's population is increasing at a faster rate, is that evidence that they have a higher net migration rate? Of course not. Population change doesn't tell you much about net migration rate, this must be obvious even to you - but maybe you are just trolling?
In happier news. My 100% record of having mildly disappointing food (on my one previous Sri Lankan trip) has been easily shattered. It’s all good so far. Black Pork Curry lunch here was absolutely excellent
Colombo is a strange city. Poor, scruffy, yet in places intensely civilised. And stunned by the sun and heat into an amiable complacency
Are there still lots of stray dogs lining the streets? Was when I was there. Plagued with them - a bit off-putting.
Not one that I’ve seen. Not cats. In fact a decided absence by “3rd World” standards (are we still allowed to say 3rd World? What’s the replacement?)
The Global South. Not to be confused with the pop group of that name.
The Global South is surely far more insulting than “3rd World” (which is an antique Cold War term, I readily confess)
For a start there are plenty of once-developing countries in the “Global South” which would really resent that characterization;. Chileans are quite haughty about being compared to Argentina, let alone Sudan. Indonesia is equally proud, likewise Costa Rica, the Maldives, Mauritius, what even is “the Global South”?
You asked what the term now is and I told you - The Global South. But please note it doesn't mean below the equator. It's pretty much a straight replacement for 3rd World. It's a development measure not a geographic one. Insulting? No, the whole point is that 3rd World was, but this isn't. Everyone is happy and onboard with it.
"Everyone is happy and onboard with it."
Not true....its far from settled issue.
‘Global South’, a term frequently used on websites and in papers related to academic and ‘predatory’ publishing, may represent a form of unscholarly discrimination. Arguments are put forward as to why the current use of this term is geographically meaningless, since it implies countries in the southern hemisphere, whereas many of the entities in publishing that are referred to as being part of the Global South are in fact either on the equator or in the northern hemisphere. Therefore, academics, in writing about academic publishing, should cease using this broad, culturally insensitive, and geographically inaccurate term.
Erondu says she's embarrassed if she inadvertently uses the term during a workshop in one of the countries in Africa where she works on health care issues. Why? "Because people in Nigeria don't refer to themselves as the 'global south.' It's something someone named them."
I could go on and on. Third world is a no no, describing in terms of income is problematic and global south many don't like either.
I see. So what's a better term then? What gets your stamp of approval? Or let's put it this way. What term do YOU use when needing one for referring to the relatively impoverished parts of the world?
Eg, complete this sentence - The pandemic will soon be over in the rich nations of the West but will rage on for a long time in ????????? unless vaccines are rolled out there as a matter of priority.
I still use third world. This isn't me being deliberately old-fashioned or deliberately refusing to use the woke term. It would never occur to me that third world was unwoke. Actually, I might use developing world. Which itself is a polite euphemism which replaced the earlier and more pejorative 'undeveloped world' despite it being glaringly apparently that many parts of the undeveloped world were not developing. I suppose - if it occurred to me, because it's not a phrase that ever really does occur to me - you could use 'global south' to include countries like Chile whereas third world brings to mind more countries like Benin.
And I tend to say "poorer countries". Whatever, I don't find it a big deal. All that happened here was @Leon asked what was the modern term for 3rd World and I replied to him - being the helpful sort - with what I believe is the answer, Global South.
From this we get to him - Leon - telling me I'm hung up about "woke" and that I act like some sort of language policema ... person, and now we have @MaxPB crashing in and saying I'm worse than a racist!
Utterly bizarrio. And on a day that Meat Loaf died too. Chilean Red and Bag of Nuts time cannot come too soon for me today, I tell you.
It's the same reason that SA Omicron data was dismissed. You and liberal racists have othered them with some new term that makes them different to us because they're poor, not white or both. The "global south" is stupid term.
How has he othered them? They are different from us - we are rich, they are poor; we have privileged access to powerful global institutions, they don't; our citizens can easily travel to their countries, their citizens can't easily travel to our countries; they consume our media and culture; we don't consume their media and culture; ... the list of differences goes on. Whatever term or phrase you deem politically correct to differentiate between these groups of countries, they are different. It is the existence of these differences that is problematic, surely, not the acknowledgement of them?
And yet in matters of infectious diseases and other science South Africa is pretty reliable, they've only had, what 30 years, of dealing with HIV/AIDS? Lumping SA in with the "global south" or having a generalisation that doesn't recognise that not all poorer/non-white countries are the same is racist. Would we say that India, the producer of billions of vaccine doses per year and a nation that has true scientific expertise in infectious disease research is part of this "global south" because they're poor and not white?
Labels like this are racist, I'm glad we finally got rid of that stupid idea of BAME in the UK, hopefully the wider world can do it too.
Comments
Professor Karol Sikora @ProfKarolSikora
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6h
I hope all of those going back into the offices will make a special effort to support small businesses in the cities which have been decimated by plan B.
Go and grab a coffee from a local cafe or a pint from your favourite pub.
I will be doing just that!
https://twitter.com/ProfKarolSikora/status/1484470757937795074
We are the ones who should have a title in front of our name, not those who spend 3+ years loafing about in the common room.
Eng. Sandy Rentool
The thing that gets too much attention is school grades. They are a passport to a degree, but once you've got to uni, nobody cares what you did in school.
TBH, the people on here who get hung up about this stuff are not the ones agonizing over the "correct" term to use. Hardly anybody does that. I certainly don't. No, the ones for whom this is a matter of great concern are those forever keen to eye-roll about how "difficult" and "illogical" it all is.
It's just virtue signalling, where the virtue being signalled is "Ooo I'm a free-thinking, intellectually muscular type, me."
They will have a photo. As I keep pointing out they are holding stuff back for release when it does him the maximum damage.
For a start most of the doctors and profs reporting the mildness of Omicron were white
It was more a kind of lingering, snobbish western-eurocentrism. We might have reacted with equal skepticism to data coming out of Bulgaria, or the Phillipines, or the Falklands, or Macau, or Iceland, or even the Trumpier states of the USA
The sense was “we need a big important sensible country to back up these numbers - Western Europe, bits of Eastern Europe, developed east Asia, eg Japan or korea, MOST of the USA, the wider Anglosphere”
I admit this is a slender difference, but it is a difference. Either way it hindered our understanding of Omicron. And I am still sure Whitty told untruths at that presser. We did not KNOW anything. We had some bad intimations (justified) and some good (justified)
There will be rich Western countries, including much of the US for example, far worse positioned re covid than some poorer ex Third World countries. Other poorer countries might have so many other problems that covid is not an especially big one for them anyway.
We want a single descriptor because we are all too lazy to explicitly rank 200 countries accurately each time, with the inevitable result that often we get it wrong, and then people get offended by being in an incorrect categorisation.
The pandemic will soon be over in most highly vaccinated countries but will rage on for a long time in others with low levels of vaccination unless vaccines are rolled out there as a matter of priority.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-14/battery-maker-lg-energy-poised-to-price-ipo-at-top-of-range
And yes, his sentence of "we don't know very much but what do know is bad" was clearly bullshit. What we knew about Omicron was mixed and some of it pretty favourable.
See those three letters after somebody's name, and you know that you'll be facing an avalanche of bullshit, buzzwords and inanity.
They seem to think that a few hundred million here and there will make a difference, it won't. Forget the cries from the left about "giving away billions to Elon Musk", just get on with it.
OTOH, I have a relative being sponsored by the company he works for to do a PHD in an area directly related to their business.
So for vaccines you can specifically refer to countries that don't have domestic vaccine production capacity, or the cash to pay for vaccines manufactured elsewhere. Because this will be a different group of countries, not involving India for example, than if you want to talk about countries where a large proportion of the country still lacks basic sanitation or electricity (which does include a lot of rural India still).
Your approach is a hangover from Colonialism. It betrays a Colonialist mindset. It divides the world between those countries that are strong enough to colonize others and those that would be better off if they were still colonised. You need to free yourself from that paradigm of thinking.
Maybe one downside of this kind of polling though, when it’s gets granular, and we believe it rather than take it with a pinch of salt, is it bundling together the first time Tory voters with lifelong Tory voters? Of which even red wall must have had significant numbers of them. You are only interested in a small amount of potential switch backers, but their motives and intentions wrapped up alongside inside lifelong Tory voters? So it’s not clear what the subset of first time Tory voters for Boris really think.
Also we don’t really know with that key subset how they feel about losing Boris and who will run the country when he is gone because it’s just hypotheticals. There might only be a short lived poll bounce with new leader because it was something about Boris they really liked. I think that is what the `Tory press are thinking, who remain solidly behind Boris, but you would think not keen on a Labour government.
Because what I've actually said is completely beige.
Though I'd note Musk would have built his first European plant here, in all likelihood, had we not Brexited. Which probably makes you suggestion more, not less sensible.
South Korea (a similar sized country) is going to be one of the big global players in the battery market, and without a massive amount of government assistance. But we're five years behind.
- France, Ireland, Netherlands, Germany
- Nordics, Belgium, Switzerland, ANZ, US East coast and Canada
- Italy and Spain
- Central & Eastern Europe, plus Portugal and Greece
- Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and Korea
- Everywhere else
Not dissimilar from the way the media reports political or natural events too.
I had a colleague who did one and said “all I got was “older””
Labour has never won a seat in Surrey for example, even in 1997. However the LDs won Guildford in 2001 and were a close second to the Tories in seats like Esher and Walton, Woking and Surrey South West in 2019
From this we get to him - Leon - telling me I'm hung up about "woke" and that I act like some sort of language policema ... person, and now we have @MaxPB crashing in and saying I'm worse than a racist!
Utterly bizarrio. And on a day that Meat Loaf died too. Chilean Red and Bag of Nuts time cannot come too soon for me today, I tell you.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/gardaí-investigating-after-man-s-body-used-in-apparent-attempt-to-claim-pension-1.4782598
Simplest solution surely is for the LDs only to target those seats where they were second last time (and Labour to avoid those altogether), plus seats where the Tories are so far ahead that it's fair game to try to get into second place long term.
That was an outright untruth.
If you REALLY want to find reasons to be superior!
Edit: OKC is being cynical and sarcastic.
Everything has to be justified which again means the default answer is (you've guessed it) No
"Butterkist have erected a billboard outside Downing Street with the slogan “here for the drama” emblazoned on it."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/m-b-a-starting-salaries-are-soaring-11636952464
Which is what I think Selebian's point was.
The main caution I saw mentioned about SA findings on it being milder were more around possibly higher SA protection from past infection and particularly the early spread being mostly among the young, rather than suggestions of major biological differences between those in SA and here. Now it's possible I missed serious scientists claiming that SA science was crap or that the SA population was nothing like ours.
It's also been the approach of SAGE etc here to be 'cautious' in assuming bad things until the evidence comes in otherwise (see the modelling, many times). That's of course open to valid criticism, but working on Omicron being worse than it appeared was in line with working on cases and hospitalisations after easing restrictions last July being worse than the latest evidence suggested.
Where I think this terrible event is dangerous for Boris is the questions that follow as to how much he knew of it before and after and if he did know before he is 'gone' and if he knew after and took no disciplinary steps he is also 'gone'
Sky saying the report is expected on Monday so huge week next week
It's got to be the worst bit of economic vandalism I've seen in a while, the UK could potentially be an EV superpower with a hugely outsized presence in the market but the treasury seems determined to blow it.
In general hard evidence of events could complicate Downing Street’s defence - esp on whether they were work events.
Sue Gray + team have asked some Downing St officials to hand over phones, per a government source
https://twitter.com/benrileysmith/status/1484576577048485899
But, the evidence was more established on the bad, simply because the bad - spread - is picked up from cases which are both more numerous and happen earlier than hospitalisations and deaths. So you have more confidence on it being more tranmissible before you have the same confidence on it resulting in fewer hospitalisations and deaths.
They might vote LD over Tory but they would vote Tory over Labour
That would make an excellent tequila Lazy Susan… together with his genius giant vodka slide idea, you can see why Bozza and pals opted for a playground theme.
Pharmacists, incidentally, nowadays have Masters degrees. GP's have Bachelors, although frequently, AIUI, they're double Bachelors.
It must be said that the timescale of the formal disciplinary process may well be longer than that for the resolution of the matter as far as Mr J is concerned - so the problem I raise might not actually apply, always assuming the civil servants did break the law and/or the Civil Service disciplinary code and/or specific regs relating to Downing St in ways which justify immediate dismissal rather than a reprimand etc. (caveat: they may well be formally innocent, so I'm not going to prejudge that in public).
Another complication is, of course, the Spads - who are neither elected fisn nor civil servant fowl. I'm not sure what their disciplinary system is like, though I imagine they are out of the door if their pet minister goes anyway.
Re: Ignoring data from SA. Didn't we also ignore what we were seeing in Italy at the very beginning?
There is definitely a 'not invented here' syndrome but I'm not sure whether it is racist.
according wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migration_rate
Annual net migration per 1000 inhabitants 2010-2015:
Germany 4.7
UK 4.0
2015-2020 (predicted)
Germany 6.6
UK 3.9
As I have just said the danger for Boris is whether he was aware of them before or after and indeed had he been invited
Downing Street is expressing concerned over the report and is this the silver bullet
Labels like this are racist, I'm glad we finally got rid of that stupid idea of BAME in the UK, hopefully the wider world can do it too.
Lightweight.