That will result in a return to office for the cleansed of all sins Boris Johnson. Oh joy, and should that come to pass he will get a landslide. New broom and all that.
Interesting analysis by @ShippersUnbound@thetimes on state of the Union. IMO what shld most alarm Unionists throughout UK is English indifference: 42% in 🏴 wld welcome or aren't bothered by 🏴 separation, goes up to 55% re Irish unification @YouGov
Yet only 1 in 7 English voters want Scotland to leave the UK and by a 17% margin English voters would be upset not pleased if Northern Ireland left the UK. Despite England still being the only home nation in the UK without its own parliament.
In any case unless the whole UK gets a vote on the Union in a referendum or England votes for the English Democrats and ultimately English independence, English voters get no say on the Union anyway
Lockdown was neither necessary (other countries survived without it) nor successful on our priorities.
I backed it. I apologise, I was completely wrong. I'll never back another one again.
It was the overwhelming Will of the People, barty, whether you like it or not. Cast your mind back to polling on the subject where the general public was invariably to the lockdowner side of SKS, whether you like it or not. ask yourself whether the system would have lasted 24 hours without the overwhelming consent of the governed. I don't say that justifies anything, but then I am also no fan of putting complex constitutional questions to the lumpenproletariat and enacting their hilariously wrong answers. You ostensibly are.
Your elitism is showing.
If people wanted to stay at home to hide from the virus, they could have done that without government legislation.
Many did, that's why the first wave probably peaked before lockdown.
So without legislation teachers could have chosen to stay at home to hide from the virus, and parents could have chosen to not let their kids go to school. Have I got that right? If so, schools would have ended up being shut anyway.
Anyway, the idea that schools could have stayed open to all (remember, they stayed open for the vulnerable and key workers) when a virus that makes people ill is rampaging through the population is for the birds.
Many countries around the planet managed to keep schools open.
Absolutely I would say that if any parents chose not to let their kids go to school during the pandemic, that should have been their choice. And if any teachers chose not to teach during the pandemic, they absolutely should have the right to quit the jobs too, if that were their choice.
Let the schools be open to teachers who wanted to teach, and children of parents who wanted to send their kids to school. Sacrificing the education of the young was not a price worth paying and should have an extremely high non-monetary equivalent "cost" in any QALY style calculations.
Genuinely, Boris's most valuable legacy is the permanent discreditation of any form of lockdown by Partygate. It's just not gonna happen again. Which is excellent but has no bearing on the inevitability of it in 2020.
As long as there is no vaccine immune mutation, yes
And I asked the waiter for bruschetta and pronounced it brooshetta as posh Italians have told me it is NOT broosketta and I like to do it the posh way
But the Italian waiter just called it broosketta
😶😶😶
What is right???
he thinks he is conforming to your expectations.
There was a cheap French table wine called Piat d'Or heavily advertised on telly. it was 100% exported to the UK but then a bit had to be re-exported to the restaurants of Calais because sophisticated day trippers knew it was what the french drink.
Maybe. But another waiter has also just now said Broosketta - to a 3rd waiter
Its closure was announced five years ago due to safety concerns after the government ended subsidy funding for maintenance and upgrades needed to keep it going. At the time, ministers said its closure would save the UK £750m over 10 years by switching the focus on securing the country's energy needs to different 'cleaner' alternatives, including the importation of liquid gas from the Middle East. However, critics warned the move would leave the UK at the mercy of the potentially volatile global gas market while forcing it to compete with other countries to attract imports.
Just over a year ago, business secretary Kwasi Kwanteng dismissed concerns raised by MPs on a parliamentary select committee over rising gas prices and a reliance on Russian gas. He said he was not convinced by calls for more domestic gas storage and described criticism of the closure of the Rough storage facility as "a bit of a red herring".
Saving of £750m over 10 years LOL
The story is misleading. Rough was failing as a storage facility not just because of topside issues but also reservoir failures. The conservative estimate was that it would cost Centrica (or whoever could be persuaded to pay for it) £1 billion in immediate repairs/stabilisation costs and even then there was a good chance they would fail.
Reopening Rough is a sign of real desperation and I would not be at all surprised to see it close again quite quickly. However long it lasts it will cost a lot more than the £750 million over 10 years mentioned in the article.
The real governmental failure was not trying harder to find alterative sites for gas storage. Someone the other day mentioned on here about an Irish Sea candidate but I had not heard of that one before. Certainly suitable geology is hard to find for these types of facilities.
Genuinely, Boris's most valuable legacy is the permanent discreditation of any form of lockdown by Partygate. It's just not gonna happen again. Which is excellent but has no bearing on the inevitability of it in 2020.
As long as there is no vaccine immune mutation, yes
No, and the same applies to a new non-covid disease with no vaccine in sight. People are still gonns say yeah well look at the elite partying their tits off (good work from sir beer korma there making it cross party), just gonna happen again, fuck that.
Entirely consistent with recent personal experience (the A&E wait, not the death). In my case 24h from accident to ward admission. After that they got their skates on, but it was a grim start.
An excellent and detailed analysis. And, sadly, a brilliant example of Brandolini's Law (the effort required to counter bullshit is orders of magnitude greater than that required to generate it).
The Telegraph came up with their crap in order to seed the idea that the excess deaths were due to lockdown. Didn't need any effort for Sarah Knapton to come up with it, and instantly publicised by the Usual Suspects (and added to the "we now know..." lines).
John Burn-Murdoch put huge amounts of effort in to deep dive what is happening and where the excess deaths are and concluded it's down to the healthcare system collapse, especially in A&E and ambulances. What are the odds it gets the attention it deserves? Versus the odds that it vanishes under the Telegraph's crap?
The healthcare system collapse now is due to lockdown though.
Had we not locked down, had we allowed Covid to take its course, then we'd have had extra fatalities then, sure, but we wouldn't have trashed the future or the NHS for the long-term by abolishing everything else leading to mammoth waiting lists etc.
People who would have died from Covid wouldn't be on any waiting lists now. People who survived, wouldn't be paying the price of lockdown.
No, it's not. It's got very little to do with that. As Burn-Murdoch analyses. It's got most to do with the soaring waits in A&E and ambulances post-July 2021. But you will never accept that, because you hated lockdown (Can't blame you there; I hated it too) and therefore have to insist that bad things that happen must have come from it.
And why did it soar post-July 2021 (the unlocking)? Surely not because people who had been complying by staying at home to protect the NHS finally sought treatment for what had been afflicting them for some time?
No. Because we still had thousands of people going to hospital for covid. Far less than earlier, but a sustained and consistent high rate of utilisation of beds.
When you're normally running at 85%+ utilisation, adding 10-15% on top consistently makes a big impact. It's also unlikely that these people would be phoning ambulances and getting categorised in the "emergency" category to seek treatment, isn't it? Few people would be waiting months during a heart attack in order to call for an ambulance.
No but people who could have been treated sooner for diseases like diabetes etc that are not urgently life-threatening but lead to cardiovascular etc demands later on if left untreated could have been seen sooner. Similar for cancer etc
1 - The excess deaths are not in the diabetes and cancer area, but across the board. 2 - Your apparent belief that if the NHS was more swamped with covid, we'd somehow have been able to treat more cancer patients alongside (and kept them more separate?) and that having far more NHS stuff off sick with covid would have helped capacity does seem rather optimistic.
If we hadn't had lockdown then the NHS wouldn't have been more swamped with Covid than it was.
It would have been more swamped at the peak, but then that peak would have entailed telling more people "we can't help you" and the peak would have been over sooner and then the downhill would have happened sooner. Exponential figures again.
Instead we "flattened the sombrero" with lockdown so that the NHS had nothing but Covid for two years, rather than 3 horrific months of Covid then it was done.
Head. Desk. If you'd only ever come up with actual facts and numbers supporting your position - well, you'd not bother trying it, anyway.
During the first wave, under 5% of the country had been exposed to covid. By the time of the second lockdown, about 9% By the third lockdown, about 12% (Source - ONS antibodies survey). That means we had LOADS of doubling left to do.
"We should have just let it rip crowd" refuse to acknowledge that only a tiny proportion of the country had got Covid by December 2020.
They cling to the fantasy of "everyone secretly got it." peddled by charlatans like Gupta.
The let it rip argument assumes that restrictions acted like some kind of 'thermostat' control on the virus.
That assumption is not correct. The relationship was far more complex, if it existed at all.
That infections dropped after lockdowns were announced, every time, was a pure coincidence. Just like that "meta-analysis"* by a trio of hard right economists "proved" that lockdowns and border closures had no impact on covid spread.
When one of them was asked, "So why didn't Australia or New Zealand see big outbreaks if their border closures and lockdowns had no effect?" the answer was "Don't know. Could have been just luck."
* A meta-analysis that filers out all bar one of tens of thousands of studies and then reverses the conclusions of that one remaining one is not what most would call a meta-analysis. However, the Toby Disciples instantly believed it and accepted it as fact.
There was also periods where infections dropped even after restrictions were lifted, and rose even after they were re-imposed.
In my view. patterns are just not there as you claim they are and you are wholly ignoring all the downsides of the restrictions as if they were as nothing. As if there were no downsides.
Entirely consistent with recent personal experience (the A&E wait, not the death). In my case 24h from accident to ward admission. After that they got their skates on, but it was a grim start.
An excellent and detailed analysis. And, sadly, a brilliant example of Brandolini's Law (the effort required to counter bullshit is orders of magnitude greater than that required to generate it).
The Telegraph came up with their crap in order to seed the idea that the excess deaths were due to lockdown. Didn't need any effort for Sarah Knapton to come up with it, and instantly publicised by the Usual Suspects (and added to the "we now know..." lines).
John Burn-Murdoch put huge amounts of effort in to deep dive what is happening and where the excess deaths are and concluded it's down to the healthcare system collapse, especially in A&E and ambulances. What are the odds it gets the attention it deserves? Versus the odds that it vanishes under the Telegraph's crap?
The healthcare system collapse now is due to lockdown though.
Had we not locked down, had we allowed Covid to take its course, then we'd have had extra fatalities then, sure, but we wouldn't have trashed the future or the NHS for the long-term by abolishing everything else leading to mammoth waiting lists etc.
People who would have died from Covid wouldn't be on any waiting lists now. People who survived, wouldn't be paying the price of lockdown.
No, it's not. It's got very little to do with that. As Burn-Murdoch analyses. It's got most to do with the soaring waits in A&E and ambulances post-July 2021. But you will never accept that, because you hated lockdown (Can't blame you there; I hated it too) and therefore have to insist that bad things that happen must have come from it.
And why did it soar post-July 2021 (the unlocking)? Surely not because people who had been complying by staying at home to protect the NHS finally sought treatment for what had been afflicting them for some time?
No. Because we still had thousands of people going to hospital for covid. Far less than earlier, but a sustained and consistent high rate of utilisation of beds.
When you're normally running at 85%+ utilisation, adding 10-15% on top consistently makes a big impact. It's also unlikely that these people would be phoning ambulances and getting categorised in the "emergency" category to seek treatment, isn't it? Few people would be waiting months during a heart attack in order to call for an ambulance.
No but people who could have been treated sooner for diseases like diabetes etc that are not urgently life-threatening but lead to cardiovascular etc demands later on if left untreated could have been seen sooner. Similar for cancer etc
1 - The excess deaths are not in the diabetes and cancer area, but across the board. 2 - Your apparent belief that if the NHS was more swamped with covid, we'd somehow have been able to treat more cancer patients alongside (and kept them more separate?) and that having far more NHS stuff off sick with covid would have helped capacity does seem rather optimistic.
If we hadn't had lockdown then the NHS wouldn't have been more swamped with Covid than it was.
It would have been more swamped at the peak, but then that peak would have entailed telling more people "we can't help you" and the peak would have been over sooner and then the downhill would have happened sooner. Exponential figures again.
Instead we "flattened the sombrero" with lockdown so that the NHS had nothing but Covid for two years, rather than 3 horrific months of Covid then it was done.
Head. Desk. If you'd only ever come up with actual facts and numbers supporting your position - well, you'd not bother trying it, anyway.
During the first wave, under 5% of the country had been exposed to covid. By the time of the second lockdown, about 9% By the third lockdown, about 12% (Source - ONS antibodies survey). That means we had LOADS of doubling left to do.
If you have a capacity of c. 100,000 and existing utilisation of 75,000, how many people do you fit in on top of that? Note as well that the closer you get to capacity, the harder it is, and in many hospitals you'll already be over capacity (above 90% and you're in serious trouble) As it was, we added a bit under 20,000 in the first wave. They called the second lockdown when they could see they were heading over 15,000 additions (in winter, when the existing utilisation is closer to 85,000+) In the third one, they added nearly 35,000, and yes, heavy triaging was going on and we'll be feeling the effects of that for a long time.
With your airy "Oh, it would have been more swamped" - we'd be looking at hundreds of thousands of extra beds needed.
If people need intensive care to stay alive, then removing that intensive care is pretty sure to result in them being dead. To a slightly lesser extent, hospitalisation itself. It's rare that people go to hospital for fun.
And the ones who most benefited from ICU and hospitalisation were the younger ones and those without serious conditions. Unsurprisingly.
Supposedly the argument from your pro-lockdown side of the fence is that the doublings were happening every three days (despite the fact that we know people were already taking their own decisions, of their own free will, to avoid the risk).
If you claim 5% as the pre-lockdown figure then at doubling every three days, if we'd avoided locking down for another fortnight then we'd have achieved 100% and the pandemic would have been over, all for the sake of a fortnight. Not two years of lockdown and restrictions. So not "LOADS of doublings left to do", less than a fortnight left to go supposedly.
Alternatively, the doublings wouldn't have continued as the virus would have ran out of hosts and people would have changed behaviour voluntarily even without lockdown, so no we didn't have to have lockdown then either.
Either way, your logic is inconsistent and flawed.
Lockdown was neither necessary (other countries survived without it) nor successful on our priorities.
I backed it. I apologise, I was completely wrong. I'll never back another one again.
It was the overwhelming Will of the People, barty, whether you like it or not. Cast your mind back to polling on the subject where the general public was invariably to the lockdowner side of SKS, whether you like it or not. ask yourself whether the system would have lasted 24 hours without the overwhelming consent of the governed. I don't say that justifies anything, but then I am also no fan of putting complex constitutional questions to the lumpenproletariat and enacting their hilariously wrong answers. You ostensibly are.
Your elitism is showing.
If people wanted to stay at home to hide from the virus, they could have done that without government legislation.
Many did, that's why the first wave probably peaked before lockdown.
So without legislation teachers could have chosen to stay at home to hide from the virus, and parents could have chosen to not let their kids go to school. Have I got that right? If so, schools would have ended up being shut anyway.
Anyway, the idea that schools could have stayed open to all (remember, they stayed open for the vulnerable and key workers) when a virus that makes people ill is rampaging through the population is for the birds.
Many countries around the planet managed to keep schools open.
Really? The World Bank put the number of countries in question at 26.
Genuinely, Boris's most valuable legacy is the permanent discreditation of any form of lockdown by Partygate. It's just not gonna happen again. Which is excellent but has no bearing on the inevitability of it in 2020.
As long as there is no vaccine immune mutation, yes
Vaccines don't mutate - viruses do, all the time, and covid has done so amply.
But yes, we have to hope the virus doesn't come up with something nasty. Not helped by Mr Johnson's regime's selling off the much touted new vaccine development centre for the UK, as if it was something to be ashamed of instead of being needed sooner or later.
I would still be willing to bet on a modest Truss lead.
I refuse to believe that she wants to enter office and by December/January be the most unpopular PM of all time.
She has never held a view or political position for any longer than once it ceases to be politically advantageous to her.
There will be action on energy bills because simply put there has to be unless Truss wants to be irrecoverably holed below the waterline in a matter of weeks. Top tip: she doesn’t.
Of course there will be action. But it will be too little too late for a number of reasons: 1. The latest mental price cap is unveiled on Friday. Then we have a week and a half where the Tory party and the government refuse to engage on the subject. 2. Truss will cut taxes as the priority. We know this because her team are telling the Times. That it won't have been run through the OBR & Treasury because there isn't time 3. This tells us two things: that as it is quickly modelled the experts will point out how fucking insane borrowing to fund tax cuts for the well off is and then arguments will break out; and that if they haven't modelled the big priority they won't have modelled the thing she repeatedly and stridently tells us she won't do is 4. Truss appears to be an absolute believer in her beliefs. Brits are skivers. They don't deserve a handout. Only the earn more pay less tax carrot will force them to work. So when she keeps saying "no handouts" why do some of her supporters believe she is lying?
She may not want to become unpopular, but her wing of the Tory Party has dug itself a zealotry pit and shows no sign of wanting to extract itself. Its response to the various problems hasn't just been to deny reality, its been to sneer whilst doing so. Not a good look.
Indeed.
"When somebody tells you who they are, believe them."
Truss has told us who she is and what she wants to do. That events may overtake her and force her hand into offering further support is by the by.
Any further support is likely to be inadequate, off the hoof, and almost certainly aimed at supporting the wrong people through this crisis.
My guess for what will be announced:
- Pensioners will be given increased credits to stay warm using existing mechanisms (winter fuel payment). - Businesses will be offered loans wholly inadequate to preventing them going under. - Working people will be told, we've given you a tiny tax cut, what more do you people want? As they freeze. Followed by a hasty "loan" scheme that will, as with businesses, prove wholly inadequate. - Everyone else - good luck, you feckless, workshy bastards!
Only in the depths of the bleakest of midwinters, when the temperatures are below zero (and so are the Conservatives in the polls), will something adequate to assuage fuel poverty finally be done.
Entirely consistent with recent personal experience (the A&E wait, not the death). In my case 24h from accident to ward admission. After that they got their skates on, but it was a grim start.
If we have a cold winter with a significant number of pensioners not putting on their heating then the NHS will collapse.
Indeed. There is no resilience.
Prepare for a lot of horrifying personal tragedies in the media this winter. The right-wing media will help the Tories, but only up to a certain point. Societal collapse is simply too good a story for anyone with even an iota of journalistic integrity left.
This is another reason why Truss needs to call a snap GE. It is her only chance.
If not the electorate will give her a thrashing, which the Tories will not enjoy but according to Leon she probably will.
Leon is an eccentric right wing loon who ironically lives here in London where Tories (and Brexiteers) are despised.
..and of late seems to have spent an awful lot of time spending his Euros in the European Union. Brexit isn't so bad if one spends one's life pretending it never happened.
Interesting analysis by @ShippersUnbound@thetimes on state of the Union. IMO what shld most alarm Unionists throughout UK is English indifference: 42% in 🏴 wld welcome or aren't bothered by 🏴 separation, goes up to 55% re Irish unification @YouGov
Yet only 1 in 7 English voters want Scotland to leave the UK and by a 17% margin English voters would be upset not pleased if Northern Ireland left the UK. Despite England still being the only home nation in the UK without its own parliament.
In any case unless the whole UK gets a vote on the Union in a referendum or England votes for the English Democrats and ultimately English independence, English voters get no say on the Union anyway
England does have its own Parliament. The one at Westminster. It is the old English Pmt with assorted others added and subtracted at various times. And until your very own glorious Party recently deleted the legislation for reasons which remain completely unclear, it had English votes for English laws.
Entirely consistent with recent personal experience (the A&E wait, not the death). In my case 24h from accident to ward admission. After that they got their skates on, but it was a grim start.
An excellent and detailed analysis. And, sadly, a brilliant example of Brandolini's Law (the effort required to counter bullshit is orders of magnitude greater than that required to generate it).
The Telegraph came up with their crap in order to seed the idea that the excess deaths were due to lockdown. Didn't need any effort for Sarah Knapton to come up with it, and instantly publicised by the Usual Suspects (and added to the "we now know..." lines).
John Burn-Murdoch put huge amounts of effort in to deep dive what is happening and where the excess deaths are and concluded it's down to the healthcare system collapse, especially in A&E and ambulances. What are the odds it gets the attention it deserves? Versus the odds that it vanishes under the Telegraph's crap?
The healthcare system collapse now is due to lockdown though.
Had we not locked down, had we allowed Covid to take its course, then we'd have had extra fatalities then, sure, but we wouldn't have trashed the future or the NHS for the long-term by abolishing everything else leading to mammoth waiting lists etc.
People who would have died from Covid wouldn't be on any waiting lists now. People who survived, wouldn't be paying the price of lockdown.
No, it's not. It's got very little to do with that. As Burn-Murdoch analyses. It's got most to do with the soaring waits in A&E and ambulances post-July 2021. But you will never accept that, because you hated lockdown (Can't blame you there; I hated it too) and therefore have to insist that bad things that happen must have come from it.
And why did it soar post-July 2021 (the unlocking)? Surely not because people who had been complying by staying at home to protect the NHS finally sought treatment for what had been afflicting them for some time?
No. Because we still had thousands of people going to hospital for covid. Far less than earlier, but a sustained and consistent high rate of utilisation of beds.
When you're normally running at 85%+ utilisation, adding 10-15% on top consistently makes a big impact. It's also unlikely that these people would be phoning ambulances and getting categorised in the "emergency" category to seek treatment, isn't it? Few people would be waiting months during a heart attack in order to call for an ambulance.
No but people who could have been treated sooner for diseases like diabetes etc that are not urgently life-threatening but lead to cardiovascular etc demands later on if left untreated could have been seen sooner. Similar for cancer etc
1 - The excess deaths are not in the diabetes and cancer area, but across the board. 2 - Your apparent belief that if the NHS was more swamped with covid, we'd somehow have been able to treat more cancer patients alongside (and kept them more separate?) and that having far more NHS stuff off sick with covid would have helped capacity does seem rather optimistic.
If we hadn't had lockdown then the NHS wouldn't have been more swamped with Covid than it was.
It would have been more swamped at the peak, but then that peak would have entailed telling more people "we can't help you" and the peak would have been over sooner and then the downhill would have happened sooner. Exponential figures again.
Instead we "flattened the sombrero" with lockdown so that the NHS had nothing but Covid for two years, rather than 3 horrific months of Covid then it was done.
Head. Desk. If you'd only ever come up with actual facts and numbers supporting your position - well, you'd not bother trying it, anyway.
During the first wave, under 5% of the country had been exposed to covid. By the time of the second lockdown, about 9% By the third lockdown, about 12% (Source - ONS antibodies survey). That means we had LOADS of doubling left to do.
If you have a capacity of c. 100,000 and existing utilisation of 75,000, how many people do you fit in on top of that? Note as well that the closer you get to capacity, the harder it is, and in many hospitals you'll already be over capacity (above 90% and you're in serious trouble) As it was, we added a bit under 20,000 in the first wave. They called the second lockdown when they could see they were heading over 15,000 additions (in winter, when the existing utilisation is closer to 85,000+) In the third one, they added nearly 35,000, and yes, heavy triaging was going on and we'll be feeling the effects of that for a long time.
With your airy "Oh, it would have been more swamped" - we'd be looking at hundreds of thousands of extra beds needed.
If people need intensive care to stay alive, then removing that intensive care is pretty sure to result in them being dead. To a slightly lesser extent, hospitalisation itself. It's rare that people go to hospital for fun.
And the ones who most benefited from ICU and hospitalisation were the younger ones and those without serious conditions. Unsurprisingly.
Fair points, but why didn't Sweden's health system collapse as you outline?
Much lower population density and a much higher incidence of remote working prior to the pandemic. But even so they did terribly in comparison with their neighbours.
That will result in a return to office for the cleansed of all sins Boris Johnson. Oh joy, and should that come to pass he will get a landslide. New broom and all that.
That, I'm sure is how Boris sees it playing out.
I'm not sure it works, because it's only really the Conservative faithful who would want it, not the floating voters. And the economy will still be rubbish to 2024 and beyond.
It would be amusing if he does return as the resurrected Messiah and loses bigly to Boring Old Starmer running on a "just make it stop" ticket.
Entirely consistent with recent personal experience (the A&E wait, not the death). In my case 24h from accident to ward admission. After that they got their skates on, but it was a grim start.
If we have a cold winter with a significant number of pensioners not putting on their heating then the NHS will collapse.
Indeed. There is no resilience.
Prepare for a lot of horrifying personal tragedies in the media this winter. The right-wing media will help the Tories, but only up to a certain point. Societal collapse is simply too good a story for anyone with even an iota of journalistic integrity left.
This is another reason why Truss needs to call a snap GE. It is her only chance.
Please, not 'snap' - bad taste in that context of fear of cold snaps. Unintentional tho', I do appreciate.
Entirely consistent with recent personal experience (the A&E wait, not the death). In my case 24h from accident to ward admission. After that they got their skates on, but it was a grim start.
An excellent and detailed analysis. And, sadly, a brilliant example of Brandolini's Law (the effort required to counter bullshit is orders of magnitude greater than that required to generate it).
The Telegraph came up with their crap in order to seed the idea that the excess deaths were due to lockdown. Didn't need any effort for Sarah Knapton to come up with it, and instantly publicised by the Usual Suspects (and added to the "we now know..." lines).
John Burn-Murdoch put huge amounts of effort in to deep dive what is happening and where the excess deaths are and concluded it's down to the healthcare system collapse, especially in A&E and ambulances. What are the odds it gets the attention it deserves? Versus the odds that it vanishes under the Telegraph's crap?
The healthcare system collapse now is due to lockdown though.
Had we not locked down, had we allowed Covid to take its course, then we'd have had extra fatalities then, sure, but we wouldn't have trashed the future or the NHS for the long-term by abolishing everything else leading to mammoth waiting lists etc.
People who would have died from Covid wouldn't be on any waiting lists now. People who survived, wouldn't be paying the price of lockdown.
No, it's not. It's got very little to do with that. As Burn-Murdoch analyses. It's got most to do with the soaring waits in A&E and ambulances post-July 2021. But you will never accept that, because you hated lockdown (Can't blame you there; I hated it too) and therefore have to insist that bad things that happen must have come from it.
And why did it soar post-July 2021 (the unlocking)? Surely not because people who had been complying by staying at home to protect the NHS finally sought treatment for what had been afflicting them for some time?
No. Because we still had thousands of people going to hospital for covid. Far less than earlier, but a sustained and consistent high rate of utilisation of beds.
When you're normally running at 85%+ utilisation, adding 10-15% on top consistently makes a big impact. It's also unlikely that these people would be phoning ambulances and getting categorised in the "emergency" category to seek treatment, isn't it? Few people would be waiting months during a heart attack in order to call for an ambulance.
No but people who could have been treated sooner for diseases like diabetes etc that are not urgently life-threatening but lead to cardiovascular etc demands later on if left untreated could have been seen sooner. Similar for cancer etc
1 - The excess deaths are not in the diabetes and cancer area, but across the board. 2 - Your apparent belief that if the NHS was more swamped with covid, we'd somehow have been able to treat more cancer patients alongside (and kept them more separate?) and that having far more NHS stuff off sick with covid would have helped capacity does seem rather optimistic.
If we hadn't had lockdown then the NHS wouldn't have been more swamped with Covid than it was.
It would have been more swamped at the peak, but then that peak would have entailed telling more people "we can't help you" and the peak would have been over sooner and then the downhill would have happened sooner. Exponential figures again.
Instead we "flattened the sombrero" with lockdown so that the NHS had nothing but Covid for two years, rather than 3 horrific months of Covid then it was done.
Head. Desk. If you'd only ever come up with actual facts and numbers supporting your position - well, you'd not bother trying it, anyway.
During the first wave, under 5% of the country had been exposed to covid. By the time of the second lockdown, about 9% By the third lockdown, about 12% (Source - ONS antibodies survey). That means we had LOADS of doubling left to do.
If you have a capacity of c. 100,000 and existing utilisation of 75,000, how many people do you fit in on top of that? Note as well that the closer you get to capacity, the harder it is, and in many hospitals you'll already be over capacity (above 90% and you're in serious trouble) As it was, we added a bit under 20,000 in the first wave. They called the second lockdown when they could see they were heading over 15,000 additions (in winter, when the existing utilisation is closer to 85,000+) In the third one, they added nearly 35,000, and yes, heavy triaging was going on and we'll be feeling the effects of that for a long time.
With your airy "Oh, it would have been more swamped" - we'd be looking at hundreds of thousands of extra beds needed.
If people need intensive care to stay alive, then removing that intensive care is pretty sure to result in them being dead. To a slightly lesser extent, hospitalisation itself. It's rare that people go to hospital for fun.
And the ones who most benefited from ICU and hospitalisation were the younger ones and those without serious conditions. Unsurprisingly.
Supposedly the argument from your pro-lockdown side of the fence is that the doublings were happening every three days (despite the fact that we know people were already taking their own decisions, of their own free will, to avoid the risk).
If you claim 5% as the pre-lockdown figure then at doubling every three days, if we'd avoided locking down for another fortnight then we'd have achieved 100% and the pandemic would have been over, all for the sake of a fortnight. Not two years of lockdown and restrictions. So not "LOADS of doublings left to do", less than a fortnight left to go supposedly.
Alternatively, the doublings wouldn't have continued as the virus would have ran out of hosts and people would have changed behaviour voluntarily even without lockdown, so no we didn't have to have lockdown then either.
Either way, your logic is inconsistent and flawed.
You haven't noticed the frequent discussions about how people tend to "virtually" lock down voluntarily? Just too late (because of the lag) and too leaky.
It wouldn't have been over in a fortnight. And it wouldn't have been exactly the same (because some people would have had to work who didn't in our reality, others would have denied anything was happening until it happened to someone they knew, others would not have cared about passing it on if they were less affected when infected.
I would say your logic is inconsistent and flawed if you were attempting any. You've consistently failed to provide any facts or numbers. It's a live example of Brandolini's Law - you just have to spout whatever comes into your head whilst the rest of us have to actually go and get the facts.
Entirely consistent with recent personal experience (the A&E wait, not the death). In my case 24h from accident to ward admission. After that they got their skates on, but it was a grim start.
An excellent and detailed analysis. And, sadly, a brilliant example of Brandolini's Law (the effort required to counter bullshit is orders of magnitude greater than that required to generate it).
The Telegraph came up with their crap in order to seed the idea that the excess deaths were due to lockdown. Didn't need any effort for Sarah Knapton to come up with it, and instantly publicised by the Usual Suspects (and added to the "we now know..." lines).
John Burn-Murdoch put huge amounts of effort in to deep dive what is happening and where the excess deaths are and concluded it's down to the healthcare system collapse, especially in A&E and ambulances. What are the odds it gets the attention it deserves? Versus the odds that it vanishes under the Telegraph's crap?
The healthcare system collapse now is due to lockdown though.
Had we not locked down, had we allowed Covid to take its course, then we'd have had extra fatalities then, sure, but we wouldn't have trashed the future or the NHS for the long-term by abolishing everything else leading to mammoth waiting lists etc.
People who would have died from Covid wouldn't be on any waiting lists now. People who survived, wouldn't be paying the price of lockdown.
No, it's not. It's got very little to do with that. As Burn-Murdoch analyses. It's got most to do with the soaring waits in A&E and ambulances post-July 2021. But you will never accept that, because you hated lockdown (Can't blame you there; I hated it too) and therefore have to insist that bad things that happen must have come from it.
And why did it soar post-July 2021 (the unlocking)? Surely not because people who had been complying by staying at home to protect the NHS finally sought treatment for what had been afflicting them for some time?
No. Because we still had thousands of people going to hospital for covid. Far less than earlier, but a sustained and consistent high rate of utilisation of beds.
When you're normally running at 85%+ utilisation, adding 10-15% on top consistently makes a big impact. It's also unlikely that these people would be phoning ambulances and getting categorised in the "emergency" category to seek treatment, isn't it? Few people would be waiting months during a heart attack in order to call for an ambulance.
No but people who could have been treated sooner for diseases like diabetes etc that are not urgently life-threatening but lead to cardiovascular etc demands later on if left untreated could have been seen sooner. Similar for cancer etc
1 - The excess deaths are not in the diabetes and cancer area, but across the board. 2 - Your apparent belief that if the NHS was more swamped with covid, we'd somehow have been able to treat more cancer patients alongside (and kept them more separate?) and that having far more NHS stuff off sick with covid would have helped capacity does seem rather optimistic.
If we hadn't had lockdown then the NHS wouldn't have been more swamped with Covid than it was.
It would have been more swamped at the peak, but then that peak would have entailed telling more people "we can't help you" and the peak would have been over sooner and then the downhill would have happened sooner. Exponential figures again.
Instead we "flattened the sombrero" with lockdown so that the NHS had nothing but Covid for two years, rather than 3 horrific months of Covid then it was done.
Head. Desk. If you'd only ever come up with actual facts and numbers supporting your position - well, you'd not bother trying it, anyway.
During the first wave, under 5% of the country had been exposed to covid. By the time of the second lockdown, about 9% By the third lockdown, about 12% (Source - ONS antibodies survey). That means we had LOADS of doubling left to do.
If you have a capacity of c. 100,000 and existing utilisation of 75,000, how many people do you fit in on top of that? Note as well that the closer you get to capacity, the harder it is, and in many hospitals you'll already be over capacity (above 90% and you're in serious trouble) As it was, we added a bit under 20,000 in the first wave. They called the second lockdown when they could see they were heading over 15,000 additions (in winter, when the existing utilisation is closer to 85,000+) In the third one, they added nearly 35,000, and yes, heavy triaging was going on and we'll be feeling the effects of that for a long time.
With your airy "Oh, it would have been more swamped" - we'd be looking at hundreds of thousands of extra beds needed.
If people need intensive care to stay alive, then removing that intensive care is pretty sure to result in them being dead. To a slightly lesser extent, hospitalisation itself. It's rare that people go to hospital for fun.
And the ones who most benefited from ICU and hospitalisation were the younger ones and those without serious conditions. Unsurprisingly.
Fair points, but why didn't Sweden's health system collapse as you outline?
Much lower population density and a much higher incidence of remote working prior to the pandemic. But even so they did terribly in comparison with their neighbours.
Interesting analysis by @ShippersUnbound@thetimes on state of the Union. IMO what shld most alarm Unionists throughout UK is English indifference: 42% in 🏴 wld welcome or aren't bothered by 🏴 separation, goes up to 55% re Irish unification @YouGov
Yet only 1 in 7 English voters want Scotland to leave the UK and by a 17% margin English voters would be upset not pleased if Northern Ireland left the UK. Despite England still being the only home nation in the UK without its own parliament.
In any case unless the whole UK gets a vote on the Union in a referendum or England votes for the English Democrats and ultimately English independence, English voters get no say on the Union anyway
You have still never replied to my question: if you were PM at the relevant time, at the end of WW2, would you give India (as it was then) its independence? Or would you send in the Army?
Genuinely, Boris's most valuable legacy is the permanent discreditation of any form of lockdown by Partygate. It's just not gonna happen again. Which is excellent but has no bearing on the inevitability of it in 2020.
As long as there is no vaccine immune mutation, yes
No, and the same applies to a new non-covid disease with no vaccine in sight. People are still gonns say yeah well look at the elite partying their tits off (good work from sir beer korma there making it cross party), just gonna happen again, fuck that.
It was the threat of hospitals being overloaded with severely ill Covid patients that necessitated lockdown. We must hope the vaccines avoid that ever happening again
If not the electorate will give her a thrashing, which the Tories will not enjoy but according to Leon she probably will.
Leon is an eccentric right wing loon who ironically lives here in London where Tories (and Brexiteers) are despised.
..and of late seems to have spent an awful lot of time spending his Euros in the European Union. Brexit isn't so bad if one spends one's life pretending it never happened.
…. Which is a load of bollocks. I did 3 months continuous travel this spring. 10 days of it was in the EU
That will result in a return to office for the cleansed of all sins Boris Johnson. Oh joy, and should that come to pass he will get a landslide. New broom and all that.
That, I'm sure is how Boris sees it playing out.
I'm not sure it works, because it's only really the Conservative faithful who would want it, not the floating voters. And the economy will still be rubbish to 2024 and beyond.
It would be amusing if he does return as the resurrected Messiah and loses bigly to Boring Old Starmer running on a "just make it stop" ticket.
You forget "Boris got all the big calls right", the voters love him.
Its closure was announced five years ago due to safety concerns after the government ended subsidy funding for maintenance and upgrades needed to keep it going. At the time, ministers said its closure would save the UK £750m over 10 years by switching the focus on securing the country's energy needs to different 'cleaner' alternatives, including the importation of liquid gas from the Middle East. However, critics warned the move would leave the UK at the mercy of the potentially volatile global gas market while forcing it to compete with other countries to attract imports.
Just over a year ago, business secretary Kwasi Kwanteng dismissed concerns raised by MPs on a parliamentary select committee over rising gas prices and a reliance on Russian gas. He said he was not convinced by calls for more domestic gas storage and described criticism of the closure of the Rough storage facility as "a bit of a red herring".
Saving of £750m over 10 years LOL
The story is misleading. Rough was failing as a storage facility not just because of topside issues but also reservoir failures. The conservative estimate was that it would cost Centrica (or whoever could be persuaded to pay for it) £1 billion in immediate repairs/stabilisation costs and even then there was a good chance they would fail.
Reopening Rough is a sign of real desperation and I would not be at all surprised to see it close again quite quickly. However long it lasts it will cost a lot more than the £750 million over 10 years mentioned in the article.
The real governmental failure was not trying harder to find alterative sites for gas storage. Someone the other day mentioned on here about an Irish Sea candidate but I had not heard of that one before. Certainly suitable geology is hard to find for these types of facilities.
Obviously stuff that doesn't get built doesn't become a story. But I refuse to believe as a nation we couldn't have found (And SHOULD HAVE FOUND given our reliance on the stuff) more gas storage as a nation. France has storage for ~ 100 Twh and they barely use the stuff; their issues will resolve when the rain falls to refill their rivers (And get their nuclear back on the front foot), it'll happen before we're on good terms with Russia...
Entirely consistent with recent personal experience (the A&E wait, not the death). In my case 24h from accident to ward admission. After that they got their skates on, but it was a grim start.
An excellent and detailed analysis. And, sadly, a brilliant example of Brandolini's Law (the effort required to counter bullshit is orders of magnitude greater than that required to generate it).
The Telegraph came up with their crap in order to seed the idea that the excess deaths were due to lockdown. Didn't need any effort for Sarah Knapton to come up with it, and instantly publicised by the Usual Suspects (and added to the "we now know..." lines).
John Burn-Murdoch put huge amounts of effort in to deep dive what is happening and where the excess deaths are and concluded it's down to the healthcare system collapse, especially in A&E and ambulances. What are the odds it gets the attention it deserves? Versus the odds that it vanishes under the Telegraph's crap?
The healthcare system collapse now is due to lockdown though.
Had we not locked down, had we allowed Covid to take its course, then we'd have had extra fatalities then, sure, but we wouldn't have trashed the future or the NHS for the long-term by abolishing everything else leading to mammoth waiting lists etc.
People who would have died from Covid wouldn't be on any waiting lists now. People who survived, wouldn't be paying the price of lockdown.
No, it's not. It's got very little to do with that. As Burn-Murdoch analyses. It's got most to do with the soaring waits in A&E and ambulances post-July 2021. But you will never accept that, because you hated lockdown (Can't blame you there; I hated it too) and therefore have to insist that bad things that happen must have come from it.
And why did it soar post-July 2021 (the unlocking)? Surely not because people who had been complying by staying at home to protect the NHS finally sought treatment for what had been afflicting them for some time?
No. Because we still had thousands of people going to hospital for covid. Far less than earlier, but a sustained and consistent high rate of utilisation of beds.
When you're normally running at 85%+ utilisation, adding 10-15% on top consistently makes a big impact. It's also unlikely that these people would be phoning ambulances and getting categorised in the "emergency" category to seek treatment, isn't it? Few people would be waiting months during a heart attack in order to call for an ambulance.
No but people who could have been treated sooner for diseases like diabetes etc that are not urgently life-threatening but lead to cardiovascular etc demands later on if left untreated could have been seen sooner. Similar for cancer etc
1 - The excess deaths are not in the diabetes and cancer area, but across the board. 2 - Your apparent belief that if the NHS was more swamped with covid, we'd somehow have been able to treat more cancer patients alongside (and kept them more separate?) and that having far more NHS stuff off sick with covid would have helped capacity does seem rather optimistic.
If we hadn't had lockdown then the NHS wouldn't have been more swamped with Covid than it was.
It would have been more swamped at the peak, but then that peak would have entailed telling more people "we can't help you" and the peak would have been over sooner and then the downhill would have happened sooner. Exponential figures again.
Instead we "flattened the sombrero" with lockdown so that the NHS had nothing but Covid for two years, rather than 3 horrific months of Covid then it was done.
Head. Desk. If you'd only ever come up with actual facts and numbers supporting your position - well, you'd not bother trying it, anyway.
During the first wave, under 5% of the country had been exposed to covid. By the time of the second lockdown, about 9% By the third lockdown, about 12% (Source - ONS antibodies survey). That means we had LOADS of doubling left to do.
If you have a capacity of c. 100,000 and existing utilisation of 75,000, how many people do you fit in on top of that? Note as well that the closer you get to capacity, the harder it is, and in many hospitals you'll already be over capacity (above 90% and you're in serious trouble) As it was, we added a bit under 20,000 in the first wave. They called the second lockdown when they could see they were heading over 15,000 additions (in winter, when the existing utilisation is closer to 85,000+) In the third one, they added nearly 35,000, and yes, heavy triaging was going on and we'll be feeling the effects of that for a long time.
With your airy "Oh, it would have been more swamped" - we'd be looking at hundreds of thousands of extra beds needed.
If people need intensive care to stay alive, then removing that intensive care is pretty sure to result in them being dead. To a slightly lesser extent, hospitalisation itself. It's rare that people go to hospital for fun.
And the ones who most benefited from ICU and hospitalisation were the younger ones and those without serious conditions. Unsurprisingly.
Fair points, but why didn't Sweden's health system collapse as you outline?
Much lower population density and a much higher incidence of remote working prior to the pandemic. But even so they did terribly in comparison with their neighbours.
Entirely consistent with recent personal experience (the A&E wait, not the death). In my case 24h from accident to ward admission. After that they got their skates on, but it was a grim start.
If we have a cold winter with a significant number of pensioners not putting on their heating then the NHS will collapse.
Another way to cut waiting lists. /cynic
Allowing Covid to take its course naturally would have been kinder than having people freeze because theres's no money left as it was all spunked on stopping Covid.
The energy inflation is caused by the Russia sanctions and war on Ukraine, not covid.
The simplest way to solve it is to end the sanctions, which effectively means abandoning Ukraine.
I am impressed that no one politically significant is advocating that.
The energy inflation is caused by the Russia sanctions, I totally agree with that, and I agree with you that no one politically significant advocating ending the sanctions is a good and impressive thing.
However just as Gordon Brown was to blame for the poor state of the fiscal situation before the GFC even hit, which meant we were utterly exposed when the GFC hit, so too the catastrophic f**k up to the Covid response meant the NHS etc were already on their knees before Russia invaded Ukraine. The roof was ripped off in the response to the prior storm and there was no time to fix it before this storm happened.
Had Covid been allowed to take its course, Sweden style, then we'd have gone into the energy/Putin/inflation crisis with much less debt, much less Quantitative Easing, and much smaller waiting lists in the NHS.
COVID was not "allowed to take its course" in Sweden. Sweden did have a different approach to COVID, but they never "allowed [it] to take its course".
Allowing COVID to take its course would have harmed the NHS more.
I would still be willing to bet on a modest Truss lead.
I refuse to believe that she wants to enter office and by December/January be the most unpopular PM of all time.
She has never held a view or political position for any longer than once it ceases to be politically advantageous to her.
There will be action on energy bills because simply put there has to be unless Truss wants to be irrecoverably holed below the waterline in a matter of weeks. Top tip: she doesn’t.
Of course there will be action. But it will be too little too late for a number of reasons: 1. The latest mental price cap is unveiled on Friday. Then we have a week and a half where the Tory party and the government refuse to engage on the subject. 2. Truss will cut taxes as the priority. We know this because her team are telling the Times. That it won't have been run through the OBR & Treasury because there isn't time 3. This tells us two things: that as it is quickly modelled the experts will point out how fucking insane borrowing to fund tax cuts for the well off is and then arguments will break out; and that if they haven't modelled the big priority they won't have modelled the thing she repeatedly and stridently tells us she won't do is 4. Truss appears to be an absolute believer in her beliefs. Brits are skivers. They don't deserve a handout. Only the earn more pay less tax carrot will force them to work. So when she keeps saying "no handouts" why do some of her supporters believe she is lying?
She may not want to become unpopular, but her wing of the Tory Party has dug itself a zealotry pit and shows no sign of wanting to extract itself. Its response to the various problems hasn't just been to deny reality, its been to sneer whilst doing so. Not a good look.
Indeed.
"When somebody tells you who they are, believe them."
Truss has told us who she is and what she wants to do. That events may overtake her and force her hand into offering further support is by the by.
Any further support is likely to be inadequate, off the hoof, and almost certainly aimed at supporting the wrong people through this crisis.
My guess for what will be announced:
- Pensioners will be given increased credits to stay warm using existing mechanisms (winter fuel payment). - Businesses will be offered loans wholly inadequate to preventing them going under. - Working people will be told, we've given you a tiny tax cut, what more do you people want? As they freeze. Followed by a hasty "loan" scheme that will, as with businesses, prove wholly inadequate. - Everyone else - good luck, you feckless, workshy bastards!
Only in the depths of the bleakest of midwinters, when the temperatures are below zero (and so are the Conservatives in the polls), will something adequate to assuage fuel poverty finally be done.
Nothing on the table even begins to address the problem. She might as well absolutely hose tens of billions at it and show Labour's little scheme up as pitiful, inadequate and ridiculous. She won't.
Entirely consistent with recent personal experience (the A&E wait, not the death). In my case 24h from accident to ward admission. After that they got their skates on, but it was a grim start.
If we have a cold winter with a significant number of pensioners not putting on their heating then the NHS will collapse.
Indeed. There is no resilience.
Prepare for a lot of horrifying personal tragedies in the media this winter. The right-wing media will help the Tories, but only up to a certain point. Societal collapse is simply too good a story for anyone with even an iota of journalistic integrity left.
This is another reason why Truss needs to call a snap GE. It is her only chance.
Given the choice between a scraped majority or minority government under Truss and ever worse cost of living problems leading to landslide defeat, or opposition under Badenoch or Braverman and leaving Starmer to deal with inflation in a hung parliament, some Tories would prefer the latter. Assuming Truss gets some bounce next month but not enough to win
If not the electorate will give her a thrashing, which the Tories will not enjoy but according to Leon she probably will.
Leon is an eccentric right wing loon who ironically lives here in London where Tories (and Brexiteers) are despised.
..and of late seems to have spent an awful lot of time spending his Euros in the European Union. Brexit isn't so bad if one spends one's life pretending it never happened.
…. Which is a load of bollocks. I did 3 months continuous travel this spring. 10 days of it was in the EU
I would still be willing to bet on a modest Truss lead.
I refuse to believe that she wants to enter office and by December/January be the most unpopular PM of all time.
She has never held a view or political position for any longer than once it ceases to be politically advantageous to her.
There will be action on energy bills because simply put there has to be unless Truss wants to be irrecoverably holed below the waterline in a matter of weeks. Top tip: she doesn’t.
Of course there will be action. But it will be too little too late for a number of reasons: 1. The latest mental price cap is unveiled on Friday. Then we have a week and a half where the Tory party and the government refuse to engage on the subject. 2. Truss will cut taxes as the priority. We know this because her team are telling the Times. That it won't have been run through the OBR & Treasury because there isn't time 3. This tells us two things: that as it is quickly modelled the experts will point out how fucking insane borrowing to fund tax cuts for the well off is and then arguments will break out; and that if they haven't modelled the big priority they won't have modelled the thing she repeatedly and stridently tells us she won't do is 4. Truss appears to be an absolute believer in her beliefs. Brits are skivers. They don't deserve a handout. Only the earn more pay less tax carrot will force them to work. So when she keeps saying "no handouts" why do some of her supporters believe she is lying?
She may not want to become unpopular, but her wing of the Tory Party has dug itself a zealotry pit and shows no sign of wanting to extract itself. Its response to the various problems hasn't just been to deny reality, its been to sneer whilst doing so. Not a good look.
Don’t put too much stock in number 4. She’s an absolute believer in her beliefs until she isn’t. She’s proven that all the way through her career.
Just my opinion, but I still think we are headed for a price cap freeze. Probably on top of the tax cuts too.
Sweeties for all.
Question is *when* such a thing happens. Best for the government if they had followed the LDs and Labour in simply imposing a freeze on the cap.
They haven't - a huge rise is announced on Friday with forecasts of ever more insanity beyond that.
They will do literally nothing until Truss is entombed in Number 10. So a week and a half of excruciating interviews where at best Trussteam people say "we have to wait and see" and at worst they repeat the "shut up feckless lazy plebs" rhetoric.
When she becomes PM there could be a "here's one I prepared earlier" proposal which nobody has leaked. Unlikely, and would be uncosted and badly thought through as they're focused on the uncosted and badly thought through tax cuts.
More likely she repeats "no handouts", but that Sunak already created coming rebates and isn't that enough and anyway look at my tax cut. Which will be torn apart.
So yes, eventually, she may u-turn and unveil something. But it will be so late that millions have already suffered. And will be presented in the wrong tone and the wrong way as something she has been forced into.
However you cut it, this is political napalm. Voters remember when the government screws up and screws them. Despite the relatively benign recovery delivered by KenClarke the party was not forgiven for Black Wednesday for a decade and a half. Expect the same here.
Entirely consistent with recent personal experience (the A&E wait, not the death). In my case 24h from accident to ward admission. After that they got their skates on, but it was a grim start.
An excellent and detailed analysis. And, sadly, a brilliant example of Brandolini's Law (the effort required to counter bullshit is orders of magnitude greater than that required to generate it).
The Telegraph came up with their crap in order to seed the idea that the excess deaths were due to lockdown. Didn't need any effort for Sarah Knapton to come up with it, and instantly publicised by the Usual Suspects (and added to the "we now know..." lines).
John Burn-Murdoch put huge amounts of effort in to deep dive what is happening and where the excess deaths are and concluded it's down to the healthcare system collapse, especially in A&E and ambulances. What are the odds it gets the attention it deserves? Versus the odds that it vanishes under the Telegraph's crap?
The healthcare system collapse now is due to lockdown though.
Had we not locked down, had we allowed Covid to take its course, then we'd have had extra fatalities then, sure, but we wouldn't have trashed the future or the NHS for the long-term by abolishing everything else leading to mammoth waiting lists etc.
People who would have died from Covid wouldn't be on any waiting lists now. People who survived, wouldn't be paying the price of lockdown.
Entirely consistent with recent personal experience (the A&E wait, not the death). In my case 24h from accident to ward admission. After that they got their skates on, but it was a grim start.
An excellent and detailed analysis. And, sadly, a brilliant example of Brandolini's Law (the effort required to counter bullshit is orders of magnitude greater than that required to generate it).
The Telegraph came up with their crap in order to seed the idea that the excess deaths were due to lockdown. Didn't need any effort for Sarah Knapton to come up with it, and instantly publicised by the Usual Suspects (and added to the "we now know..." lines).
John Burn-Murdoch put huge amounts of effort in to deep dive what is happening and where the excess deaths are and concluded it's down to the healthcare system collapse, especially in A&E and ambulances. What are the odds it gets the attention it deserves? Versus the odds that it vanishes under the Telegraph's crap?
The healthcare system collapse now is due to lockdown though.
Had we not locked down, had we allowed Covid to take its course, then we'd have had extra fatalities then, sure, but we wouldn't have trashed the future or the NHS for the long-term by abolishing everything else leading to mammoth waiting lists etc.
People who would have died from Covid wouldn't be on any waiting lists now. People who survived, wouldn't be paying the price of lockdown.
No, it's not. It's got very little to do with that. As Burn-Murdoch analyses. It's got most to do with the soaring waits in A&E and ambulances post-July 2021. But you will never accept that, because you hated lockdown (Can't blame you there; I hated it too) and therefore have to insist that bad things that happen must have come from it.
And why did it soar post-July 2021 (the unlocking)? Surely not because people who had been complying by staying at home to protect the NHS finally sought treatment for what had been afflicting them for some time?
No. Because we still had thousands of people going to hospital for covid. Far less than earlier, but a sustained and consistent high rate of utilisation of beds.
When you're normally running at 85%+ utilisation, adding 10-15% on top consistently makes a big impact. It's also unlikely that these people would be phoning ambulances and getting categorised in the "emergency" category to seek treatment, isn't it? Few people would be waiting months during a heart attack in order to call for an ambulance.
No but people who could have been treated sooner for diseases like diabetes etc that are not urgently life-threatening but lead to cardiovascular etc demands later on if left untreated could have been seen sooner. Similar for cancer etc
1 - The excess deaths are not in the diabetes and cancer area, but across the board. 2 - Your apparent belief that if the NHS was more swamped with covid, we'd somehow have been able to treat more cancer patients alongside (and kept them more separate?) and that having far more NHS stuff off sick with covid would have helped capacity does seem rather optimistic.
If we hadn't had lockdown then the NHS wouldn't have been more swamped with Covid than it was.
It would have been more swamped at the peak, but then that peak would have entailed telling more people "we can't help you" and the peak would have been over sooner and then the downhill would have happened sooner. Exponential figures again.
Instead we "flattened the sombrero" with lockdown so that the NHS had nothing but Covid for two years, rather than 3 horrific months of Covid then it was done.
Head. Desk. If you'd only ever come up with actual facts and numbers supporting your position - well, you'd not bother trying it, anyway.
During the first wave, under 5% of the country had been exposed to covid. By the time of the second lockdown, about 9% By the third lockdown, about 12% (Source - ONS antibodies survey). That means we had LOADS of doubling left to do.
If you have a capacity of c. 100,000 and existing utilisation of 75,000, how many people do you fit in on top of that? Note as well that the closer you get to capacity, the harder it is, and in many hospitals you'll already be over capacity (above 90% and you're in serious trouble) As it was, we added a bit under 20,000 in the first wave. They called the second lockdown when they could see they were heading over 15,000 additions (in winter, when the existing utilisation is closer to 85,000+) In the third one, they added nearly 35,000, and yes, heavy triaging was going on and we'll be feeling the effects of that for a long time.
With your airy "Oh, it would have been more swamped" - we'd be looking at hundreds of thousands of extra beds needed.
If people need intensive care to stay alive, then removing that intensive care is pretty sure to result in them being dead. To a slightly lesser extent, hospitalisation itself. It's rare that people go to hospital for fun.
And the ones who most benefited from ICU and hospitalisation were the younger ones and those without serious conditions. Unsurprisingly.
Fair points, but why didn't Sweden's health system collapse as you outline?
Much lower population density and a much higher incidence of remote working prior to the pandemic. But even so they did terribly in comparison with their neighbours.
Killing their population. It ranks quite highly in some people's minds.
Oh and Sweden shut their secondary schools.
Sweden switched their secondary schools to distance learning for a few weeks, which while not ideal secondary schools at least distance learning is far more viable.
Sweden was AFAIK the only country in Europe not to shut its primary schools. For that alone, it did far better than every one of its neighbours.
How many children need to lose their education to justify one fewer excess death in your eyes? What is the QALY value of an excess death, and the QALY value of education in your eyes, or are you just religiously dogmatic about it?
This is reminding me of the different ways my parents pronounce 'scone' (unusually, the dividing line for that is right through the middle of Yorkshire).
If not the electorate will give her a thrashing, which the Tories will not enjoy but according to Leon she probably will.
Leon is an eccentric right wing loon who ironically lives here in London where Tories (and Brexiteers) are despised.
..and of late seems to have spent an awful lot of time spending his Euros in the European Union. Brexit isn't so bad if one spends one's life pretending it never happened.
…. Which is a load of bollocks. I did 3 months continuous travel this spring. 10 days of it was in the EU
Ooh, touched a nerve. Sorry.
No nerve. Just wrong. I am a stickler for accuracy
Interesting analysis by @ShippersUnbound@thetimes on state of the Union. IMO what shld most alarm Unionists throughout UK is English indifference: 42% in 🏴 wld welcome or aren't bothered by 🏴 separation, goes up to 55% re Irish unification @YouGov
Yet only 1 in 7 English voters want Scotland to leave the UK and by a 17% margin English voters would be upset not pleased if Northern Ireland left the UK. Despite England still being the only home nation in the UK without its own parliament.
In any case unless the whole UK gets a vote on the Union in a referendum or England votes for the English Democrats and ultimately English independence, English voters get no say on the Union anyway
You have still never replied to my question: if you were PM at the relevant time, at the end of WW2, would you give India (as it was then) its independence? Or would you send in the Army?
The position of Churchill and most of the Tory Party at the time was not to give India independence but Attlee gave it independence and there is no going back now
Its closure was announced five years ago due to safety concerns after the government ended subsidy funding for maintenance and upgrades needed to keep it going. At the time, ministers said its closure would save the UK £750m over 10 years by switching the focus on securing the country's energy needs to different 'cleaner' alternatives, including the importation of liquid gas from the Middle East. However, critics warned the move would leave the UK at the mercy of the potentially volatile global gas market while forcing it to compete with other countries to attract imports.
Just over a year ago, business secretary Kwasi Kwanteng dismissed concerns raised by MPs on a parliamentary select committee over rising gas prices and a reliance on Russian gas. He said he was not convinced by calls for more domestic gas storage and described criticism of the closure of the Rough storage facility as "a bit of a red herring".
Saving of £750m over 10 years LOL
The story is misleading. Rough was failing as a storage facility not just because of topside issues but also reservoir failures. The conservative estimate was that it would cost Centrica (or whoever could be persuaded to pay for it) £1 billion in immediate repairs/stabilisation costs and even then there was a good chance they would fail.
Reopening Rough is a sign of real desperation and I would not be at all surprised to see it close again quite quickly. However long it lasts it will cost a lot more than the £750 million over 10 years mentioned in the article.
The real governmental failure was not trying harder to find alterative sites for gas storage. Someone the other day mentioned on here about an Irish Sea candidate but I had not heard of that one before. Certainly suitable geology is hard to find for these types of facilities.
Obviously stuff that doesn't get built doesn't become a story. But I refuse to believe as a nation we couldn't have found (And SHOULD HAVE FOUND given our reliance on the stuff) more gas storage as a nation. France has storage for ~ 100 Twh and they barely use the stuff; their issues will resolve when the rain falls to refill their rivers (And get their nuclear back on the front foot), it'll happen before the war ends in Ukraine.
Oh I agree. More effort should have been put into it. But as I say it is extremely difficult to find suitable geology to use for gas storage.
Entirely consistent with recent personal experience (the A&E wait, not the death). In my case 24h from accident to ward admission. After that they got their skates on, but it was a grim start.
An excellent and detailed analysis. And, sadly, a brilliant example of Brandolini's Law (the effort required to counter bullshit is orders of magnitude greater than that required to generate it).
The Telegraph came up with their crap in order to seed the idea that the excess deaths were due to lockdown. Didn't need any effort for Sarah Knapton to come up with it, and instantly publicised by the Usual Suspects (and added to the "we now know..." lines).
John Burn-Murdoch put huge amounts of effort in to deep dive what is happening and where the excess deaths are and concluded it's down to the healthcare system collapse, especially in A&E and ambulances. What are the odds it gets the attention it deserves? Versus the odds that it vanishes under the Telegraph's crap?
The healthcare system collapse now is due to lockdown though.
Had we not locked down, had we allowed Covid to take its course, then we'd have had extra fatalities then, sure, but we wouldn't have trashed the future or the NHS for the long-term by abolishing everything else leading to mammoth waiting lists etc.
People who would have died from Covid wouldn't be on any waiting lists now. People who survived, wouldn't be paying the price of lockdown.
No, it's not. It's got very little to do with that. As Burn-Murdoch analyses. It's got most to do with the soaring waits in A&E and ambulances post-July 2021. But you will never accept that, because you hated lockdown (Can't blame you there; I hated it too) and therefore have to insist that bad things that happen must have come from it.
And why did it soar post-July 2021 (the unlocking)? Surely not because people who had been complying by staying at home to protect the NHS finally sought treatment for what had been afflicting them for some time?
No. Because we still had thousands of people going to hospital for covid. Far less than earlier, but a sustained and consistent high rate of utilisation of beds.
When you're normally running at 85%+ utilisation, adding 10-15% on top consistently makes a big impact. It's also unlikely that these people would be phoning ambulances and getting categorised in the "emergency" category to seek treatment, isn't it? Few people would be waiting months during a heart attack in order to call for an ambulance.
No but people who could have been treated sooner for diseases like diabetes etc that are not urgently life-threatening but lead to cardiovascular etc demands later on if left untreated could have been seen sooner. Similar for cancer etc
1 - The excess deaths are not in the diabetes and cancer area, but across the board. 2 - Your apparent belief that if the NHS was more swamped with covid, we'd somehow have been able to treat more cancer patients alongside (and kept them more separate?) and that having far more NHS stuff off sick with covid would have helped capacity does seem rather optimistic.
It would have been more swamped at the peak, but then that peak would have entailed telling more people "we can't help you" and the peak would have been over sooner and then the downhill would have happened sooner. Exponential figures again.
Back to Hot Broth, I see.
Many were saved by timely oxygen, fluids, CPAP, treatment of renal failure etc, before we get into the ICU cases.
Certainly lessons can and should be learnt, but such simplistic ideas of let it rip are callous as well as wrong.
Similarly with economic support. Without this many businesses would have been bankrupt, particularly in the hospitality and retail sectors.
It is not about lockdown* vs nothing, it is about what measures helped and what didn't. Some of those lessons may help with the coming winter crisis too.
*lockdown was very variable, not a single phenomenon. The tightest periods were relatively short in the first wave (EOTHO was just months after the first lockdown, and the winter lockdown in 20-21 was necessary for the vaccination roll out).
Liz Truss 'won't keep Union safe' by copying Boris Johnson stance on independence referendum - Professor John Curtice told the Record that Liz Truss was "kicking the can down the road" if she refused to engage with SNP demands for an IndyRef2.
Independence likely regardless of who’s prime minister, new poll reveals - Britain’s leading analyst Sir John Curtice said: “Simply arguing that another referendum should not be held at all seems unlikely to win many converts. While 44% oppose a referendum in the next five years, 48% are in favour. Ultimately the Union will only be safe if people in Scotland come to believe in it. But it is far from clear that the next prime minister will have the right strategy to achieve that.”
Entirely consistent with recent personal experience (the A&E wait, not the death). In my case 24h from accident to ward admission. After that they got their skates on, but it was a grim start.
An excellent and detailed analysis. And, sadly, a brilliant example of Brandolini's Law (the effort required to counter bullshit is orders of magnitude greater than that required to generate it).
The Telegraph came up with their crap in order to seed the idea that the excess deaths were due to lockdown. Didn't need any effort for Sarah Knapton to come up with it, and instantly publicised by the Usual Suspects (and added to the "we now know..." lines).
John Burn-Murdoch put huge amounts of effort in to deep dive what is happening and where the excess deaths are and concluded it's down to the healthcare system collapse, especially in A&E and ambulances. What are the odds it gets the attention it deserves? Versus the odds that it vanishes under the Telegraph's crap?
The healthcare system collapse now is due to lockdown though.
Had we not locked down, had we allowed Covid to take its course, then we'd have had extra fatalities then, sure, but we wouldn't have trashed the future or the NHS for the long-term by abolishing everything else leading to mammoth waiting lists etc.
People who would have died from Covid wouldn't be on any waiting lists now. People who survived, wouldn't be paying the price of lockdown.
No, it's not. It's got very little to do with that. As Burn-Murdoch analyses. It's got most to do with the soaring waits in A&E and ambulances post-July 2021. But you will never accept that, because you hated lockdown (Can't blame you there; I hated it too) and therefore have to insist that bad things that happen must have come from it.
And why did it soar post-July 2021 (the unlocking)? Surely not because people who had been complying by staying at home to protect the NHS finally sought treatment for what had been afflicting them for some time?
No. Because we still had thousands of people going to hospital for covid. Far less than earlier, but a sustained and consistent high rate of utilisation of beds.
When you're normally running at 85%+ utilisation, adding 10-15% on top consistently makes a big impact. It's also unlikely that these people would be phoning ambulances and getting categorised in the "emergency" category to seek treatment, isn't it? Few people would be waiting months during a heart attack in order to call for an ambulance.
No but people who could have been treated sooner for diseases like diabetes etc that are not urgently life-threatening but lead to cardiovascular etc demands later on if left untreated could have been seen sooner. Similar for cancer etc
1 - The excess deaths are not in the diabetes and cancer area, but across the board. 2 - Your apparent belief that if the NHS was more swamped with covid, we'd somehow have been able to treat more cancer patients alongside (and kept them more separate?) and that having far more NHS stuff off sick with covid would have helped capacity does seem rather optimistic.
If we hadn't had lockdown then the NHS wouldn't have been more swamped with Covid than it was.
It would have been more swamped at the peak, but then that peak would have entailed telling more people "we can't help you" and the peak would have been over sooner and then the downhill would have happened sooner. Exponential figures again.
Instead we "flattened the sombrero" with lockdown so that the NHS had nothing but Covid for two years, rather than 3 horrific months of Covid then it was done.
Head. Desk. If you'd only ever come up with actual facts and numbers supporting your position - well, you'd not bother trying it, anyway.
During the first wave, under 5% of the country had been exposed to covid. By the time of the second lockdown, about 9% By the third lockdown, about 12% (Source - ONS antibodies survey). That means we had LOADS of doubling left to do.
If you have a capacity of c. 100,000 and existing utilisation of 75,000, how many people do you fit in on top of that? Note as well that the closer you get to capacity, the harder it is, and in many hospitals you'll already be over capacity (above 90% and you're in serious trouble) As it was, we added a bit under 20,000 in the first wave. They called the second lockdown when they could see they were heading over 15,000 additions (in winter, when the existing utilisation is closer to 85,000+) In the third one, they added nearly 35,000, and yes, heavy triaging was going on and we'll be feeling the effects of that for a long time.
With your airy "Oh, it would have been more swamped" - we'd be looking at hundreds of thousands of extra beds needed.
If people need intensive care to stay alive, then removing that intensive care is pretty sure to result in them being dead. To a slightly lesser extent, hospitalisation itself. It's rare that people go to hospital for fun.
And the ones who most benefited from ICU and hospitalisation were the younger ones and those without serious conditions. Unsurprisingly.
Fair points, but why didn't Sweden's health system collapse as you outline?
Because what we call "social distancing" is just normal behaviour for Swedes.
If not the electorate will give her a thrashing, which the Tories will not enjoy but according to Leon she probably will.
Leon is an eccentric right wing loon who ironically lives here in London where Tories (and Brexiteers) are despised.
..and of late seems to have spent an awful lot of time spending his Euros in the European Union. Brexit isn't so bad if one spends one's life pretending it never happened.
…. Which is a load of bollocks. I did 3 months continuous travel this spring. 10 days of it was in the EU
Ooh, touched a nerve. Sorry.
No nerve. Just wrong. I am a stickler for accuracy
Either way you were still not here to take in the joys of post Brexit Blighty. Hats off to you, I wish I were elsewhere too.
That will result in a return to office for the cleansed of all sins Boris Johnson. Oh joy, and should that come to pass he will get a landslide. New broom and all that.
I’m not so sure. He would have to remain an MP, and I can’t see him doing that. He can make oodles of real money putting the greasy pole behind him now.
I would still be willing to bet on a modest Truss lead.
I refuse to believe that she wants to enter office and by December/January be the most unpopular PM of all time.
She has never held a view or political position for any longer than once it ceases to be politically advantageous to her.
There will be action on energy bills because simply put there has to be unless Truss wants to be irrecoverably holed below the waterline in a matter of weeks. Top tip: she doesn’t.
Of course there will be action. But it will be too little too late for a number of reasons: 1. The latest mental price cap is unveiled on Friday. Then we have a week and a half where the Tory party and the government refuse to engage on the subject. 2. Truss will cut taxes as the priority. We know this because her team are telling the Times. That it won't have been run through the OBR & Treasury because there isn't time 3. This tells us two things: that as it is quickly modelled the experts will point out how fucking insane borrowing to fund tax cuts for the well off is and then arguments will break out; and that if they haven't modelled the big priority they won't have modelled the thing she repeatedly and stridently tells us she won't do is 4. Truss appears to be an absolute believer in her beliefs. Brits are skivers. They don't deserve a handout. Only the earn more pay less tax carrot will force them to work. So when she keeps saying "no handouts" why do some of her supporters believe she is lying?
She may not want to become unpopular, but her wing of the Tory Party has dug itself a zealotry pit and shows no sign of wanting to extract itself. Its response to the various problems hasn't just been to deny reality, its been to sneer whilst doing so. Not a good look.
Indeed.
"When somebody tells you who they are, believe them."
Truss has told us who she is and what she wants to do. That events may overtake her and force her hand into offering further support is by the by.
Any further support is likely to be inadequate, off the hoof, and almost certainly aimed at supporting the wrong people through this crisis.
My guess for what will be announced:
- Pensioners will be given increased credits to stay warm using existing mechanisms (winter fuel payment). - Businesses will be offered loans wholly inadequate to preventing them going under. - Working people will be told, we've given you a tiny tax cut, what more do you people want? As they freeze. Followed by a hasty "loan" scheme that will, as with businesses, prove wholly inadequate. - Everyone else - good luck, you feckless, workshy bastards!
Only in the depths of the bleakest of midwinters, when the temperatures are below zero (and so are the Conservatives in the polls), will something adequate to assuage fuel poverty finally be done.
Nothing on the table even begins to address the problem. She might as well absolutely hose tens of billions at it and show Labour's little scheme up as pitiful, inadequate and ridiculous. She won't.
I think Foxy's suggestion downthread of a furlough scheme paid out to energy intensive industries over the winter period to reduce demand is a good start.
We probably need to nationalise (temporarily?) the power companies to hold prices down (cost to be picked up by the taxpayer over several years - we paid people furlough to sit in their gardens for a year so why not pay now?).
And, dare I say it, because the current situation is caused by there being greater demand for power than available supply, ration it over winter so everyone gets enough and nobody freezes - back to 70s style rolling blackouts.
Grim. But it's a plan - which is more than the Conservatives have got.
Liz Truss 'won't keep Union safe' by copying Boris Johnson stance on independence referendum - Professor John Curtice told the Record that Liz Truss was "kicking the can down the road" if she refused to engage with SNP demands for an IndyRef2.
Independence likely regardless of who’s prime minister, new poll reveals - Britain’s leading analyst Sir John Curtice said: “Simply arguing that another referendum should not be held at all seems unlikely to win many converts. While 44% oppose a referendum in the next five years, 48% are in favour. Ultimately the Union will only be safe if people in Scotland come to believe in it. But it is far from clear that the next prime minister will have the right strategy to achieve that.”
Not true, the poll showed Scots thought independence would be less likely under PM Starmer than PM Johnson, Truss or Sunak and Starmer is the only PM who might allow indyref2
Entirely consistent with recent personal experience (the A&E wait, not the death). In my case 24h from accident to ward admission. After that they got their skates on, but it was a grim start.
An excellent and detailed analysis. And, sadly, a brilliant example of Brandolini's Law (the effort required to counter bullshit is orders of magnitude greater than that required to generate it).
The Telegraph came up with their crap in order to seed the idea that the excess deaths were due to lockdown. Didn't need any effort for Sarah Knapton to come up with it, and instantly publicised by the Usual Suspects (and added to the "we now know..." lines).
John Burn-Murdoch put huge amounts of effort in to deep dive what is happening and where the excess deaths are and concluded it's down to the healthcare system collapse, especially in A&E and ambulances. What are the odds it gets the attention it deserves? Versus the odds that it vanishes under the Telegraph's crap?
The healthcare system collapse now is due to lockdown though.
Had we not locked down, had we allowed Covid to take its course, then we'd have had extra fatalities then, sure, but we wouldn't have trashed the future or the NHS for the long-term by abolishing everything else leading to mammoth waiting lists etc.
People who would have died from Covid wouldn't be on any waiting lists now. People who survived, wouldn't be paying the price of lockdown.
No, it's not. It's got very little to do with that. As Burn-Murdoch analyses. It's got most to do with the soaring waits in A&E and ambulances post-July 2021. But you will never accept that, because you hated lockdown (Can't blame you there; I hated it too) and therefore have to insist that bad things that happen must have come from it.
And why did it soar post-July 2021 (the unlocking)? Surely not because people who had been complying by staying at home to protect the NHS finally sought treatment for what had been afflicting them for some time?
No. Because we still had thousands of people going to hospital for covid. Far less than earlier, but a sustained and consistent high rate of utilisation of beds.
When you're normally running at 85%+ utilisation, adding 10-15% on top consistently makes a big impact. It's also unlikely that these people would be phoning ambulances and getting categorised in the "emergency" category to seek treatment, isn't it? Few people would be waiting months during a heart attack in order to call for an ambulance.
No but people who could have been treated sooner for diseases like diabetes etc that are not urgently life-threatening but lead to cardiovascular etc demands later on if left untreated could have been seen sooner. Similar for cancer etc
1 - The excess deaths are not in the diabetes and cancer area, but across the board. 2 - Your apparent belief that if the NHS was more swamped with covid, we'd somehow have been able to treat more cancer patients alongside (and kept them more separate?) and that having far more NHS stuff off sick with covid would have helped capacity does seem rather optimistic.
If we hadn't had lockdown then the NHS wouldn't have been more swamped with Covid than it was.
It would have been more swamped at the peak, but then that peak would have entailed telling more people "we can't help you" and the peak would have been over sooner and then the downhill would have happened sooner. Exponential figures again.
Instead we "flattened the sombrero" with lockdown so that the NHS had nothing but Covid for two years, rather than 3 horrific months of Covid then it was done.
Head. Desk. If you'd only ever come up with actual facts and numbers supporting your position - well, you'd not bother trying it, anyway.
During the first wave, under 5% of the country had been exposed to covid. By the time of the second lockdown, about 9% By the third lockdown, about 12% (Source - ONS antibodies survey). That means we had LOADS of doubling left to do.
If you have a capacity of c. 100,000 and existing utilisation of 75,000, how many people do you fit in on top of that? Note as well that the closer you get to capacity, the harder it is, and in many hospitals you'll already be over capacity (above 90% and you're in serious trouble) As it was, we added a bit under 20,000 in the first wave. They called the second lockdown when they could see they were heading over 15,000 additions (in winter, when the existing utilisation is closer to 85,000+) In the third one, they added nearly 35,000, and yes, heavy triaging was going on and we'll be feeling the effects of that for a long time.
With your airy "Oh, it would have been more swamped" - we'd be looking at hundreds of thousands of extra beds needed.
If people need intensive care to stay alive, then removing that intensive care is pretty sure to result in them being dead. To a slightly lesser extent, hospitalisation itself. It's rare that people go to hospital for fun.
And the ones who most benefited from ICU and hospitalisation were the younger ones and those without serious conditions. Unsurprisingly.
Fair points, but why didn't Sweden's health system collapse as you outline?
Much lower population density and a much higher incidence of remote working prior to the pandemic. But even so they did terribly in comparison with their neighbours.
Killing their population. It ranks quite highly in some people's minds.
Oh and Sweden shut their secondary schools.
Sweden switched their secondary schools to distance learning for a few weeks, which while not ideal secondary schools at least distance learning is far more viable.
Sweden was AFAIK the only country in Europe not to shut its primary schools. For that alone, it did far better than every one of its neighbours.
How many children need to lose their education to justify one fewer excess death in your eyes? What is the QALY value of an excess death, and the QALY value of education in your eyes, or are you just religiously dogmatic about it?
Well given my son did miles better doing distance learning compared to being in school I am looking at this from both a practical and an ethical/moral point of view.
Now clearly you, as an advocate of contrived euthanasia have no interest in the ethical and moral questions but even your practical claims are not as black and white as you like to pretend.
That will result in a return to office for the cleansed of all sins Boris Johnson. Oh joy, and should that come to pass he will get a landslide. New broom and all that.
I’m not so sure. He would have to remain an MP, and I can’t see him doing that. He can make oodles of real money putting the greasy pole behind him now.
I'll hold you to that.
Would you pay good money for more than one Peppa Pig speech?
I would still be willing to bet on a modest Truss lead.
I refuse to believe that she wants to enter office and by December/January be the most unpopular PM of all time.
She has never held a view or political position for any longer than once it ceases to be politically advantageous to her.
There will be action on energy bills because simply put there has to be unless Truss wants to be irrecoverably holed below the waterline in a matter of weeks. Top tip: she doesn’t.
Of course there will be action. But it will be too little too late for a number of reasons: 1. The latest mental price cap is unveiled on Friday. Then we have a week and a half where the Tory party and the government refuse to engage on the subject. 2. Truss will cut taxes as the priority. We know this because her team are telling the Times. That it won't have been run through the OBR & Treasury because there isn't time 3. This tells us two things: that as it is quickly modelled the experts will point out how fucking insane borrowing to fund tax cuts for the well off is and then arguments will break out; and that if they haven't modelled the big priority they won't have modelled the thing she repeatedly and stridently tells us she won't do is 4. Truss appears to be an absolute believer in her beliefs. Brits are skivers. They don't deserve a handout. Only the earn more pay less tax carrot will force them to work. So when she keeps saying "no handouts" why do some of her supporters believe she is lying?
She may not want to become unpopular, but her wing of the Tory Party has dug itself a zealotry pit and shows no sign of wanting to extract itself. Its response to the various problems hasn't just been to deny reality, its been to sneer whilst doing so. Not a good look.
Indeed.
"When somebody tells you who they are, believe them."
Truss has told us who she is and what she wants to do. That events may overtake her and force her hand into offering further support is by the by.
Any further support is likely to be inadequate, off the hoof, and almost certainly aimed at supporting the wrong people through this crisis.
My guess for what will be announced:
- Pensioners will be given increased credits to stay warm using existing mechanisms (winter fuel payment). - Businesses will be offered loans wholly inadequate to preventing them going under. - Working people will be told, we've given you a tiny tax cut, what more do you people want? As they freeze. Followed by a hasty "loan" scheme that will, as with businesses, prove wholly inadequate. - Everyone else - good luck, you feckless, workshy bastards!
Only in the depths of the bleakest of midwinters, when the temperatures are below zero (and so are the Conservatives in the polls), will something adequate to assuage fuel poverty finally be done.
Nothing on the table even begins to address the problem. She might as well absolutely hose tens of billions at it and show Labour's little scheme up as pitiful, inadequate and ridiculous. She won't.
I think Foxy's suggestion downthread of a furlough scheme paid out to energy intensive industries over the winter period to reduce demand is a good start.
We probably need to nationalise (temporarily?) the power companies to hold prices down (cost to be picked up by the taxpayer over several years - we paid people furlough to sit in their gardens for a year so why not pay now?).
And, dare I say it, because the current situation is caused by there being greater demand for power than available supply, ration it over winter so everyone gets enough and nobody freezes - back to 70s style rolling blackouts.
Grim. But it's a plan - which is more than the Conservatives have got.
I'm wondering how energy intensive is defined though.
Manufacturing can be quite energy intensive, but then so too can hospitality. Considering Leon's other conversation, making a bruschetta probably doesn't entail too much energy consumption but I imagine keeping a pizza oven at high temperatures for hours at a time probably would.
A lot of small businesses will be looking at their costs and thinking they're quite energy intensive, even if others don't necessarily think the same of them.
I would still be willing to bet on a modest Truss lead.
I refuse to believe that she wants to enter office and by December/January be the most unpopular PM of all time.
She has never held a view or political position for any longer than once it ceases to be politically advantageous to her.
There will be action on energy bills because simply put there has to be unless Truss wants to be irrecoverably holed below the waterline in a matter of weeks. Top tip: she doesn’t.
Of course there will be action. But it will be too little too late for a number of reasons: 1. The latest mental price cap is unveiled on Friday. Then we have a week and a half where the Tory party and the government refuse to engage on the subject. 2. Truss will cut taxes as the priority. We know this because her team are telling the Times. That it won't have been run through the OBR & Treasury because there isn't time 3. This tells us two things: that as it is quickly modelled the experts will point out how fucking insane borrowing to fund tax cuts for the well off is and then arguments will break out; and that if they haven't modelled the big priority they won't have modelled the thing she repeatedly and stridently tells us she won't do is 4. Truss appears to be an absolute believer in her beliefs. Brits are skivers. They don't deserve a handout. Only the earn more pay less tax carrot will force them to work. So when she keeps saying "no handouts" why do some of her supporters believe she is lying?
She may not want to become unpopular, but her wing of the Tory Party has dug itself a zealotry pit and shows no sign of wanting to extract itself. Its response to the various problems hasn't just been to deny reality, its been to sneer whilst doing so. Not a good look.
Indeed.
"When somebody tells you who they are, believe them."
Truss has told us who she is and what she wants to do. That events may overtake her and force her hand into offering further support is by the by.
Any further support is likely to be inadequate, off the hoof, and almost certainly aimed at supporting the wrong people through this crisis.
My guess for what will be announced:
- Pensioners will be given increased credits to stay warm using existing mechanisms (winter fuel payment). - Businesses will be offered loans wholly inadequate to preventing them going under. - Working people will be told, we've given you a tiny tax cut, what more do you people want? As they freeze. Followed by a hasty "loan" scheme that will, as with businesses, prove wholly inadequate. - Everyone else - good luck, you feckless, workshy bastards!
Only in the depths of the bleakest of midwinters, when the temperatures are below zero (and so are the Conservatives in the polls), will something adequate to assuage fuel poverty finally be done.
Nothing on the table even begins to address the problem. She might as well absolutely hose tens of billions at it and show Labour's little scheme up as pitiful, inadequate and ridiculous. She won't.
I think Foxy's suggestion downthread of a furlough scheme paid out to energy intensive industries over the winter period to reduce demand is a good start.
We probably need to nationalise (temporarily?) the power companies to hold prices down (cost to be picked up by the taxpayer over several years - we paid people furlough to sit in their gardens for a year so why not pay now?).
And, dare I say it, because the current situation is caused by there being greater demand for power than available supply, ration it over winter so everyone gets enough and nobody freezes - back to 70s style rolling blackouts.
Grim. But it's a plan - which is more than the Conservatives have got.
I follow the rationale for why such a thing could be proposed. But they won't: 1 Refusing to copy other EU governments imposing restrictions on business 2 Paying people to sit at home isn't what Mistress Truss became PM to do 3 The economic impact of shutting chunks of industry and retail down again
Nope. Some people will get a small tax cut. Some bills will have 50p shaved off their rise by scrapping all the green "crap". And the government is giving us all a couple of hundred quid phased over a few months. Thats it. For us at least - I expect she will bung billions to the energy industry who will give some of it back by shaving an additional £1.50 off the increase.
That will result in a return to office for the cleansed of all sins Boris Johnson. Oh joy, and should that come to pass he will get a landslide. New broom and all that.
I’m not so sure. He would have to remain an MP, and I can’t see him doing that. He can make oodles of real money putting the greasy pole behind him now.
He can make money and remain an MP. Why would he give it up? It's money for nothing.
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
A bit of googling suggests there is some dispute between Italians
I wonder if this is anglicised wealthy Italians adopting brooshetta?
Italian, like Welsh, is a phonetic language, so once you've learned the simple rules pronunciation is easy. "H" is used after c or g to specify a hard sound when the following vowel (e or i) would otherwise make it soft. Think Lamborghini.
Entirely consistent with recent personal experience (the A&E wait, not the death). In my case 24h from accident to ward admission. After that they got their skates on, but it was a grim start.
An excellent and detailed analysis. And, sadly, a brilliant example of Brandolini's Law (the effort required to counter bullshit is orders of magnitude greater than that required to generate it).
The Telegraph came up with their crap in order to seed the idea that the excess deaths were due to lockdown. Didn't need any effort for Sarah Knapton to come up with it, and instantly publicised by the Usual Suspects (and added to the "we now know..." lines).
John Burn-Murdoch put huge amounts of effort in to deep dive what is happening and where the excess deaths are and concluded it's down to the healthcare system collapse, especially in A&E and ambulances. What are the odds it gets the attention it deserves? Versus the odds that it vanishes under the Telegraph's crap?
The healthcare system collapse now is due to lockdown though.
Had we not locked down, had we allowed Covid to take its course, then we'd have had extra fatalities then, sure, but we wouldn't have trashed the future or the NHS for the long-term by abolishing everything else leading to mammoth waiting lists etc.
People who would have died from Covid wouldn't be on any waiting lists now. People who survived, wouldn't be paying the price of lockdown.
No, it's not. It's got very little to do with that. As Burn-Murdoch analyses. It's got most to do with the soaring waits in A&E and ambulances post-July 2021. But you will never accept that, because you hated lockdown (Can't blame you there; I hated it too) and therefore have to insist that bad things that happen must have come from it.
And why did it soar post-July 2021 (the unlocking)? Surely not because people who had been complying by staying at home to protect the NHS finally sought treatment for what had been afflicting them for some time?
No. Because we still had thousands of people going to hospital for covid. Far less than earlier, but a sustained and consistent high rate of utilisation of beds.
When you're normally running at 85%+ utilisation, adding 10-15% on top consistently makes a big impact. It's also unlikely that these people would be phoning ambulances and getting categorised in the "emergency" category to seek treatment, isn't it? Few people would be waiting months during a heart attack in order to call for an ambulance.
No but people who could have been treated sooner for diseases like diabetes etc that are not urgently life-threatening but lead to cardiovascular etc demands later on if left untreated could have been seen sooner. Similar for cancer etc
1 - The excess deaths are not in the diabetes and cancer area, but across the board. 2 - Your apparent belief that if the NHS was more swamped with covid, we'd somehow have been able to treat more cancer patients alongside (and kept them more separate?) and that having far more NHS stuff off sick with covid would have helped capacity does seem rather optimistic.
If we hadn't had lockdown then the NHS wouldn't have been more swamped with Covid than it was.
It would have been more swamped at the peak, but then that peak would have entailed telling more people "we can't help you" and the peak would have been over sooner and then the downhill would have happened sooner. Exponential figures again.
Instead we "flattened the sombrero" with lockdown so that the NHS had nothing but Covid for two years, rather than 3 horrific months of Covid then it was done.
Head. Desk. If you'd only ever come up with actual facts and numbers supporting your position - well, you'd not bother trying it, anyway.
During the first wave, under 5% of the country had been exposed to covid. By the time of the second lockdown, about 9% By the third lockdown, about 12% (Source - ONS antibodies survey). That means we had LOADS of doubling left to do.
If you have a capacity of c. 100,000 and existing utilisation of 75,000, how many people do you fit in on top of that? Note as well that the closer you get to capacity, the harder it is, and in many hospitals you'll already be over capacity (above 90% and you're in serious trouble) As it was, we added a bit under 20,000 in the first wave. They called the second lockdown when they could see they were heading over 15,000 additions (in winter, when the existing utilisation is closer to 85,000+) In the third one, they added nearly 35,000, and yes, heavy triaging was going on and we'll be feeling the effects of that for a long time.
With your airy "Oh, it would have been more swamped" - we'd be looking at hundreds of thousands of extra beds needed.
If people need intensive care to stay alive, then removing that intensive care is pretty sure to result in them being dead. To a slightly lesser extent, hospitalisation itself. It's rare that people go to hospital for fun.
And the ones who most benefited from ICU and hospitalisation were the younger ones and those without serious conditions. Unsurprisingly.
Fair points, but why didn't Sweden's health system collapse as you outline?
Much lower population density and a much higher incidence of remote working prior to the pandemic. But even so they did terribly in comparison with their neighbours.
Killing their population. It ranks quite highly in some people's minds.
Oh and Sweden shut their secondary schools.
Sweden switched their secondary schools to distance learning for a few weeks, which while not ideal secondary schools at least distance learning is far more viable.
Sweden was AFAIK the only country in Europe not to shut its primary schools. For that alone, it did far better than every one of its neighbours.
How many children need to lose their education to justify one fewer excess death in your eyes? What is the QALY value of an excess death, and the QALY value of education in your eyes, or are you just religiously dogmatic about it?
Well given my son did miles better doing distance learning compared to being in school I am looking at this from both a practical and an ethical/moral point of view.
Now clearly you, as an advocate of contrived euthanasia have no interest in the ethical and moral questions but even your practical claims are not as black and white as you like to pretend.
I have never once advocated contrived euthanasia but I am certainly a lifelong advocate of voluntary euthanasia. People who wish to die absolutely should be treated with dignity and respect, but lets not mix it up with this serious conversation by using the term as a contrived insult.
How old is your son? Secondary or primary, if you don't mind me asking. From what I saw, secondary pupils were better able to cope than primary pupils were with distance learning which makes sense considering their relevant stages of development. Being with other children and adults is a critical part of development for young children and can't be entirely displaced onto a computer screen.
Sweden kept their primary schools open while other countries closed theirs. On that metric alone, Sweden undeniably had a superior pandemic to any of its neighbours.
You may prefer other metrics to that one, but that's just your choice. In a free society, we all get to make our own choices, and I value children and their education more highly than just keeping adults alive for longer.
Would you permanently abolish primary schools if it meant 1 year extra life expectancy for adults? I most certainly would not. Education is more important than mere life expectancy.
I would still be willing to bet on a modest Truss lead.
I refuse to believe that she wants to enter office and by December/January be the most unpopular PM of all time.
She has never held a view or political position for any longer than once it ceases to be politically advantageous to her.
There will be action on energy bills because simply put there has to be unless Truss wants to be irrecoverably holed below the waterline in a matter of weeks. Top tip: she doesn’t.
Of course there will be action. But it will be too little too late for a number of reasons: 1. The latest mental price cap is unveiled on Friday. Then we have a week and a half where the Tory party and the government refuse to engage on the subject. 2. Truss will cut taxes as the priority. We know this because her team are telling the Times. That it won't have been run through the OBR & Treasury because there isn't time 3. This tells us two things: that as it is quickly modelled the experts will point out how fucking insane borrowing to fund tax cuts for the well off is and then arguments will break out; and that if they haven't modelled the big priority they won't have modelled the thing she repeatedly and stridently tells us she won't do is 4. Truss appears to be an absolute believer in her beliefs. Brits are skivers. They don't deserve a handout. Only the earn more pay less tax carrot will force them to work. So when she keeps saying "no handouts" why do some of her supporters believe she is lying?
She may not want to become unpopular, but her wing of the Tory Party has dug itself a zealotry pit and shows no sign of wanting to extract itself. Its response to the various problems hasn't just been to deny reality, its been to sneer whilst doing so. Not a good look.
Indeed.
"When somebody tells you who they are, believe them."
Truss has told us who she is and what she wants to do. That events may overtake her and force her hand into offering further support is by the by.
Any further support is likely to be inadequate, off the hoof, and almost certainly aimed at supporting the wrong people through this crisis.
My guess for what will be announced:
- Pensioners will be given increased credits to stay warm using existing mechanisms (winter fuel payment). - Businesses will be offered loans wholly inadequate to preventing them going under. - Working people will be told, we've given you a tiny tax cut, what more do you people want? As they freeze. Followed by a hasty "loan" scheme that will, as with businesses, prove wholly inadequate. - Everyone else - good luck, you feckless, workshy bastards!
Only in the depths of the bleakest of midwinters, when the temperatures are below zero (and so are the Conservatives in the polls), will something adequate to assuage fuel poverty finally be done.
Nothing on the table even begins to address the problem. She might as well absolutely hose tens of billions at it and show Labour's little scheme up as pitiful, inadequate and ridiculous. She won't.
I think Foxy's suggestion downthread of a furlough scheme paid out to energy intensive industries over the winter period to reduce demand is a good start.
We probably need to nationalise (temporarily?) the power companies to hold prices down (cost to be picked up by the taxpayer over several years - we paid people furlough to sit in their gardens for a year so why not pay now?).
And, dare I say it, because the current situation is caused by there being greater demand for power than available supply, ration it over winter so everyone gets enough and nobody freezes - back to 70s style rolling blackouts.
Grim. But it's a plan - which is more than the Conservatives have got.
I'm wondering how energy intensive is defined though.
Manufacturing can be quite energy intensive, but then so too can hospitality. Considering Leon's other conversation, making a bruschetta probably doesn't entail too much energy consumption but I imagine keeping a pizza oven at high temperatures for hours at a time probably would.
A lot of small businesses will be looking at their costs and thinking they're quite energy intensive, even if others don't necessarily think the same of them.
To unite this thread with the other topic du jour, I increasingly I get the horrible feeling that this winter is going to look an awful lot like lockdown, with hospitality and other non essential businesses shut down (furloughed?) to save power. ( *edit: or gone bust due to astronomical bills)
At least this time people will be able to go out and mingle without the fear of plod arresting them for being more than five miles from their home or standing less than two metres apart.
But still, grim. There will be slim chance of a pint in your favourite pub or a meal out, put it that way.
I would still be willing to bet on a modest Truss lead.
I refuse to believe that she wants to enter office and by December/January be the most unpopular PM of all time.
She has never held a view or political position for any longer than once it ceases to be politically advantageous to her.
There will be action on energy bills because simply put there has to be unless Truss wants to be irrecoverably holed below the waterline in a matter of weeks. Top tip: she doesn’t.
Of course there will be action. But it will be too little too late for a number of reasons: 1. The latest mental price cap is unveiled on Friday. Then we have a week and a half where the Tory party and the government refuse to engage on the subject. 2. Truss will cut taxes as the priority. We know this because her team are telling the Times. That it won't have been run through the OBR & Treasury because there isn't time 3. This tells us two things: that as it is quickly modelled the experts will point out how fucking insane borrowing to fund tax cuts for the well off is and then arguments will break out; and that if they haven't modelled the big priority they won't have modelled the thing she repeatedly and stridently tells us she won't do is 4. Truss appears to be an absolute believer in her beliefs. Brits are skivers. They don't deserve a handout. Only the earn more pay less tax carrot will force them to work. So when she keeps saying "no handouts" why do some of her supporters believe she is lying?
She may not want to become unpopular, but her wing of the Tory Party has dug itself a zealotry pit and shows no sign of wanting to extract itself. Its response to the various problems hasn't just been to deny reality, its been to sneer whilst doing so. Not a good look.
Indeed.
"When somebody tells you who they are, believe them."
Truss has told us who she is and what she wants to do. That events may overtake her and force her hand into offering further support is by the by.
Any further support is likely to be inadequate, off the hoof, and almost certainly aimed at supporting the wrong people through this crisis.
My guess for what will be announced:
- Pensioners will be given increased credits to stay warm using existing mechanisms (winter fuel payment). - Businesses will be offered loans wholly inadequate to preventing them going under. - Working people will be told, we've given you a tiny tax cut, what more do you people want? As they freeze. Followed by a hasty "loan" scheme that will, as with businesses, prove wholly inadequate. - Everyone else - good luck, you feckless, workshy bastards!
Only in the depths of the bleakest of midwinters, when the temperatures are below zero (and so are the Conservatives in the polls), will something adequate to assuage fuel poverty finally be done.
Nothing on the table even begins to address the problem. She might as well absolutely hose tens of billions at it and show Labour's little scheme up as pitiful, inadequate and ridiculous. She won't.
I think Foxy's suggestion downthread of a furlough scheme paid out to energy intensive industries over the winter period to reduce demand is a good start.
We probably need to nationalise (temporarily?) the power companies to hold prices down (cost to be picked up by the taxpayer over several years - we paid people furlough to sit in their gardens for a year so why not pay now?).
And, dare I say it, because the current situation is caused by there being greater demand for power than available supply, ration it over winter so everyone gets enough and nobody freezes - back to 70s style rolling blackouts.
Grim. But it's a plan - which is more than the Conservatives have got.
Yeah, something like that will be necessary. Nobody is even close in the political world to getting it. Theres no gain in being the first to admit we are fucked and the solution will be very painful. So we get Mr Micawberism and sticking plasters
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
Interesting analysis by @ShippersUnbound@thetimes on state of the Union. IMO what shld most alarm Unionists throughout UK is English indifference: 42% in 🏴 wld welcome or aren't bothered by 🏴 separation, goes up to 55% re Irish unification @YouGov
Yet only 1 in 7 English voters want Scotland to leave the UK and by a 17% margin English voters would be upset not pleased if Northern Ireland left the UK. Despite England still being the only home nation in the UK without its own parliament.
In any case unless the whole UK gets a vote on the Union in a referendum or England votes for the English Democrats and ultimately English independence, English voters get no say on the Union anyway
You have still never replied to my question: if you were PM at the relevant time, at the end of WW2, would you give India (as it was then) its independence? Or would you send in the Army?
The position of Churchill and most of the Tory Party at the time was not to give India independence but Attlee gave it independence and there is no going back now
You see? You always deflect the blame. Baaaad Labour. No, nothing to do with me Tory, no sireee. You never, ever, give a straight answer.
Interesting analysis by @ShippersUnbound@thetimes on state of the Union. IMO what shld most alarm Unionists throughout UK is English indifference: 42% in 🏴 wld welcome or aren't bothered by 🏴 separation, goes up to 55% re Irish unification @YouGov
Yet only 1 in 7 English voters want Scotland to leave the UK and by a 17% margin English voters would be upset not pleased if Northern Ireland left the UK. Despite England still being the only home nation in the UK without its own parliament.
In any case unless the whole UK gets a vote on the Union in a referendum or England votes for the English Democrats and ultimately English independence, English voters get no say on the Union anyway
That will result in a return to office for the cleansed of all sins Boris Johnson. Oh joy, and should that come to pass he will get a landslide. New broom and all that.
I’m not so sure. He would have to remain an MP, and I can’t see him doing that. He can make oodles of real money putting the greasy pole behind him now.
He can make money and remain an MP. Why would he give it up? It's money for nothing.
Would he not be obliged to do some MP stuff, sometimes? His seat looks far from safe as well.
Not doing a days work since his resignation statement is also not the way to build foundation of a comeback.
That will result in a return to office for the cleansed of all sins Boris Johnson. Oh joy, and should that come to pass he will get a landslide. New broom and all that.
I’m not so sure. He would have to remain an MP, and I can’t see him doing that. He can make oodles of real money putting the greasy pole behind him now.
He can make money and remain an MP. Why would he give it up? It's money for nothing.
Its closure was announced five years ago due to safety concerns after the government ended subsidy funding for maintenance and upgrades needed to keep it going. At the time, ministers said its closure would save the UK £750m over 10 years by switching the focus on securing the country's energy needs to different 'cleaner' alternatives, including the importation of liquid gas from the Middle East. However, critics warned the move would leave the UK at the mercy of the potentially volatile global gas market while forcing it to compete with other countries to attract imports.
Just over a year ago, business secretary Kwasi Kwanteng dismissed concerns raised by MPs on a parliamentary select committee over rising gas prices and a reliance on Russian gas. He said he was not convinced by calls for more domestic gas storage and described criticism of the closure of the Rough storage facility as "a bit of a red herring".
Saving of £750m over 10 years LOL
The story is misleading. Rough was failing as a storage facility not just because of topside issues but also reservoir failures. The conservative estimate was that it would cost Centrica (or whoever could be persuaded to pay for it) £1 billion in immediate repairs/stabilisation costs and even then there was a good chance they would fail.
Reopening Rough is a sign of real desperation and I would not be at all surprised to see it close again quite quickly. However long it lasts it will cost a lot more than the £750 million over 10 years mentioned in the article.
The real governmental failure was not trying harder to find alterative sites for gas storage. Someone the other day mentioned on here about an Irish Sea candidate but I had not heard of that one before. Certainly suitable geology is hard to find for these types of facilities.
It is still utterly disgusting that it was closed with the alternative being to import gas from overseas. Just who are the Government meant to be working for?
Entirely consistent with recent personal experience (the A&E wait, not the death). In my case 24h from accident to ward admission. After that they got their skates on, but it was a grim start.
An excellent and detailed analysis. And, sadly, a brilliant example of Brandolini's Law (the effort required to counter bullshit is orders of magnitude greater than that required to generate it).
The Telegraph came up with their crap in order to seed the idea that the excess deaths were due to lockdown. Didn't need any effort for Sarah Knapton to come up with it, and instantly publicised by the Usual Suspects (and added to the "we now know..." lines).
John Burn-Murdoch put huge amounts of effort in to deep dive what is happening and where the excess deaths are and concluded it's down to the healthcare system collapse, especially in A&E and ambulances. What are the odds it gets the attention it deserves? Versus the odds that it vanishes under the Telegraph's crap?
The healthcare system collapse now is due to lockdown though.
Had we not locked down, had we allowed Covid to take its course, then we'd have had extra fatalities then, sure, but we wouldn't have trashed the future or the NHS for the long-term by abolishing everything else leading to mammoth waiting lists etc.
People who would have died from Covid wouldn't be on any waiting lists now. People who survived, wouldn't be paying the price of lockdown.
No, it's not. It's got very little to do with that. As Burn-Murdoch analyses. It's got most to do with the soaring waits in A&E and ambulances post-July 2021. But you will never accept that, because you hated lockdown (Can't blame you there; I hated it too) and therefore have to insist that bad things that happen must have come from it.
And why did it soar post-July 2021 (the unlocking)? Surely not because people who had been complying by staying at home to protect the NHS finally sought treatment for what had been afflicting them for some time?
No. Because we still had thousands of people going to hospital for covid. Far less than earlier, but a sustained and consistent high rate of utilisation of beds.
When you're normally running at 85%+ utilisation, adding 10-15% on top consistently makes a big impact. It's also unlikely that these people would be phoning ambulances and getting categorised in the "emergency" category to seek treatment, isn't it? Few people would be waiting months during a heart attack in order to call for an ambulance.
No but people who could have been treated sooner for diseases like diabetes etc that are not urgently life-threatening but lead to cardiovascular etc demands later on if left untreated could have been seen sooner. Similar for cancer etc
1 - The excess deaths are not in the diabetes and cancer area, but across the board. 2 - Your apparent belief that if the NHS was more swamped with covid, we'd somehow have been able to treat more cancer patients alongside (and kept them more separate?) and that having far more NHS stuff off sick with covid would have helped capacity does seem rather optimistic.
If we hadn't had lockdown then the NHS wouldn't have been more swamped with Covid than it was.
It would have been more swamped at the peak, but then that peak would have entailed telling more people "we can't help you" and the peak would have been over sooner and then the downhill would have happened sooner. Exponential figures again.
Instead we "flattened the sombrero" with lockdown so that the NHS had nothing but Covid for two years, rather than 3 horrific months of Covid then it was done.
Head. Desk. If you'd only ever come up with actual facts and numbers supporting your position - well, you'd not bother trying it, anyway.
During the first wave, under 5% of the country had been exposed to covid. By the time of the second lockdown, about 9% By the third lockdown, about 12% (Source - ONS antibodies survey). That means we had LOADS of doubling left to do.
If you have a capacity of c. 100,000 and existing utilisation of 75,000, how many people do you fit in on top of that? Note as well that the closer you get to capacity, the harder it is, and in many hospitals you'll already be over capacity (above 90% and you're in serious trouble) As it was, we added a bit under 20,000 in the first wave. They called the second lockdown when they could see they were heading over 15,000 additions (in winter, when the existing utilisation is closer to 85,000+) In the third one, they added nearly 35,000, and yes, heavy triaging was going on and we'll be feeling the effects of that for a long time.
With your airy "Oh, it would have been more swamped" - we'd be looking at hundreds of thousands of extra beds needed.
If people need intensive care to stay alive, then removing that intensive care is pretty sure to result in them being dead. To a slightly lesser extent, hospitalisation itself. It's rare that people go to hospital for fun.
And the ones who most benefited from ICU and hospitalisation were the younger ones and those without serious conditions. Unsurprisingly.
Fair points, but why didn't Sweden's health system collapse as you outline?
Much lower population density and a much higher incidence of remote working prior to the pandemic. But even so they did terribly in comparison with their neighbours.
Killing their population. It ranks quite highly in some people's minds.
Oh and Sweden shut their secondary schools.
Sweden switched their secondary schools to distance learning for a few weeks, which while not ideal secondary schools at least distance learning is far more viable.
Sweden was AFAIK the only country in Europe not to shut its primary schools. For that alone, it did far better than every one of its neighbours.
How many children need to lose their education to justify one fewer excess death in your eyes? What is the QALY value of an excess death, and the QALY value of education in your eyes, or are you just religiously dogmatic about it?
Well given my son did miles better doing distance learning compared to being in school I am looking at this from both a practical and an ethical/moral point of view.
Now clearly you, as an advocate of contrived euthanasia have no interest in the ethical and moral questions but even your practical claims are not as black and white as you like to pretend.
I have never once advocated contrived euthanasia but I am certainly a lifelong advocate of voluntary euthanasia. People who wish to die absolutely should be treated with dignity and respect, but lets not mix it up with this serious conversation by using the term as a contrived insult.
How old is your son? Secondary or primary, if you don't mind me asking. From what I saw, secondary pupils were better able to cope than primary pupils were with distance learning which makes sense considering their relevant stages of development. Being with other children and adults is a critical part of development for young children and can't be entirely displaced onto a computer screen.
Sweden kept their primary schools open while other countries closed theirs. On that metric alone, Sweden undeniably had a superior pandemic to any of its neighbours.
You may prefer other metrics to that one, but that's just your choice. In a free society, we all get to make our own choices, and I value children and their education more highly than just keeping adults alive for longer.
Would you permanently abolish primary schools if it meant 1 year extra life expectancy for adults? I most certainly would not. Education is more important than mere life expectancy.
You were certainly happy in principle for oldies to catch covid and die just because you were satisfying your libertarian principles by going out and doing things when infected. That's not voluntary euthanasia, except on your part.
I would still be willing to bet on a modest Truss lead.
I refuse to believe that she wants to enter office and by December/January be the most unpopular PM of all time.
She has never held a view or political position for any longer than once it ceases to be politically advantageous to her.
There will be action on energy bills because simply put there has to be unless Truss wants to be irrecoverably holed below the waterline in a matter of weeks. Top tip: she doesn’t.
Of course there will be action. But it will be too little too late for a number of reasons: 1. The latest mental price cap is unveiled on Friday. Then we have a week and a half where the Tory party and the government refuse to engage on the subject. 2. Truss will cut taxes as the priority. We know this because her team are telling the Times. That it won't have been run through the OBR & Treasury because there isn't time 3. This tells us two things: that as it is quickly modelled the experts will point out how fucking insane borrowing to fund tax cuts for the well off is and then arguments will break out; and that if they haven't modelled the big priority they won't have modelled the thing she repeatedly and stridently tells us she won't do is 4. Truss appears to be an absolute believer in her beliefs. Brits are skivers. They don't deserve a handout. Only the earn more pay less tax carrot will force them to work. So when she keeps saying "no handouts" why do some of her supporters believe she is lying?
She may not want to become unpopular, but her wing of the Tory Party has dug itself a zealotry pit and shows no sign of wanting to extract itself. Its response to the various problems hasn't just been to deny reality, its been to sneer whilst doing so. Not a good look.
Indeed.
"When somebody tells you who they are, believe them."
Truss has told us who she is and what she wants to do. That events may overtake her and force her hand into offering further support is by the by.
Any further support is likely to be inadequate, off the hoof, and almost certainly aimed at supporting the wrong people through this crisis.
My guess for what will be announced:
- Pensioners will be given increased credits to stay warm using existing mechanisms (winter fuel payment). - Businesses will be offered loans wholly inadequate to preventing them going under. - Working people will be told, we've given you a tiny tax cut, what more do you people want? As they freeze. Followed by a hasty "loan" scheme that will, as with businesses, prove wholly inadequate. - Everyone else - good luck, you feckless, workshy bastards!
Only in the depths of the bleakest of midwinters, when the temperatures are below zero (and so are the Conservatives in the polls), will something adequate to assuage fuel poverty finally be done.
Nothing on the table even begins to address the problem. She might as well absolutely hose tens of billions at it and show Labour's little scheme up as pitiful, inadequate and ridiculous. She won't.
I think Foxy's suggestion downthread of a furlough scheme paid out to energy intensive industries over the winter period to reduce demand is a good start.
We probably need to nationalise (temporarily?) the power companies to hold prices down (cost to be picked up by the taxpayer over several years - we paid people furlough to sit in their gardens for a year so why not pay now?).
And, dare I say it, because the current situation is caused by there being greater demand for power than available supply, ration it over winter so everyone gets enough and nobody freezes - back to 70s style rolling blackouts.
Grim. But it's a plan - which is more than the Conservatives have got.
I'm wondering how energy intensive is defined though.
Manufacturing can be quite energy intensive, but then so too can hospitality. Considering Leon's other conversation, making a bruschetta probably doesn't entail too much energy consumption but I imagine keeping a pizza oven at high temperatures for hours at a time probably would.
A lot of small businesses will be looking at their costs and thinking they're quite energy intensive, even if others don't necessarily think the same of them.
I would leave the decision up to individual businesses, indeed there is enough time to devise a voluntary 3 day week type scheme for restaurants etc, on a pro-rata subsidy, if they choose.
Extraordinarily interesting and intelligent (as in, agrees exactly with every point I have been making) piece
"This culture war has become a mechanism of distraction that prevents us from discussing the painful legacies of Britain’s colonial past, and examining how this history has entrenched social inequalities in the present day. Instead of intelligent and compassionate conversation about history, there has been a hardening of positions on all sides.
The conversation shouldn’t be about deciding whether the British empire was “good” or “bad”. The purpose of slavery was to build wealth for Britain by any means necessary, through subjugation, division and coercion. "
Back when energy was affordable I noted plenty of "green energy" tariffs being marketed. I never understood how that actually worked as everyone receives the same mix of generation at the time of instantaneous supply. Seems those same people on 'green tariffs' are now pretty pissed off to learn that those plans were in fact linked to the price of wholesale gas, just like everyone else's bills.
Its closure was announced five years ago due to safety concerns after the government ended subsidy funding for maintenance and upgrades needed to keep it going. At the time, ministers said its closure would save the UK £750m over 10 years by switching the focus on securing the country's energy needs to different 'cleaner' alternatives, including the importation of liquid gas from the Middle East. However, critics warned the move would leave the UK at the mercy of the potentially volatile global gas market while forcing it to compete with other countries to attract imports.
Just over a year ago, business secretary Kwasi Kwanteng dismissed concerns raised by MPs on a parliamentary select committee over rising gas prices and a reliance on Russian gas. He said he was not convinced by calls for more domestic gas storage and described criticism of the closure of the Rough storage facility as "a bit of a red herring".
Saving of £750m over 10 years LOL
The story is misleading. Rough was failing as a storage facility not just because of topside issues but also reservoir failures. The conservative estimate was that it would cost Centrica (or whoever could be persuaded to pay for it) £1 billion in immediate repairs/stabilisation costs and even then there was a good chance they would fail.
Reopening Rough is a sign of real desperation and I would not be at all surprised to see it close again quite quickly. However long it lasts it will cost a lot more than the £750 million over 10 years mentioned in the article.
The real governmental failure was not trying harder to find alterative sites for gas storage. Someone the other day mentioned on here about an Irish Sea candidate but I had not heard of that one before. Certainly suitable geology is hard to find for these types of facilities.
It is still utterly disgusting that it was closed with the alternative being to import gas from overseas. Just who are the Government meant to be working for?
Coalition stitch up job finished off under May/Hammond. Hard to say when it started but our body politic doesn’t understand the value of strategic resilience.
Interesting analysis by @ShippersUnbound@thetimes on state of the Union. IMO what shld most alarm Unionists throughout UK is English indifference: 42% in 🏴 wld welcome or aren't bothered by 🏴 separation, goes up to 55% re Irish unification @YouGov
Yet only 1 in 7 English voters want Scotland to leave the UK and by a 17% margin English voters would be upset not pleased if Northern Ireland left the UK. Despite England still being the only home nation in the UK without its own parliament.
In any case unless the whole UK gets a vote on the Union in a referendum or England votes for the English Democrats and ultimately English independence, English voters get no say on the Union anyway
One almost feels sorry for them.
If the next general election produces a hung parliament with the Tories most seats but Starmer PM propped up by the SNP then you would start to see that shift to vocal English nationalism and demands for an English parliament like the other 3 home nations at least
we could have cards, and slavery eggs hidden by the slavery bunny, and everything
And then to ensure that we were all suitably respectful and respected we could all be divided into and labelled as different ethnic groupings better to focus on the ills done in the past.
Its closure was announced five years ago due to safety concerns after the government ended subsidy funding for maintenance and upgrades needed to keep it going. At the time, ministers said its closure would save the UK £750m over 10 years by switching the focus on securing the country's energy needs to different 'cleaner' alternatives, including the importation of liquid gas from the Middle East. However, critics warned the move would leave the UK at the mercy of the potentially volatile global gas market while forcing it to compete with other countries to attract imports.
Just over a year ago, business secretary Kwasi Kwanteng dismissed concerns raised by MPs on a parliamentary select committee over rising gas prices and a reliance on Russian gas. He said he was not convinced by calls for more domestic gas storage and described criticism of the closure of the Rough storage facility as "a bit of a red herring".
Saving of £750m over 10 years LOL
The story is misleading. Rough was failing as a storage facility not just because of topside issues but also reservoir failures. The conservative estimate was that it would cost Centrica (or whoever could be persuaded to pay for it) £1 billion in immediate repairs/stabilisation costs and even then there was a good chance they would fail.
Reopening Rough is a sign of real desperation and I would not be at all surprised to see it close again quite quickly. However long it lasts it will cost a lot more than the £750 million over 10 years mentioned in the article.
The real governmental failure was not trying harder to find alterative sites for gas storage. Someone the other day mentioned on here about an Irish Sea candidate but I had not heard of that one before. Certainly suitable geology is hard to find for these types of facilities.
It is still utterly disgusting that it was closed with the alternative being to import gas from overseas. Just who are the Government meant to be working for?
Coalition stitch up job finished off under May/Hammond. Hard to say when it started but our body politic doesn’t understand the value of strategic resilience.
we could have cards, and slavery eggs hidden by the slavery bunny, and everything
I did check to make sure it wasn't a journalistic misinterpretation of something similar to Armistice Day, but yes, the chap does say “If you think about just how important slavery was to Britain and how horrific it was, it should be a national memorial; there should be a day off".
Having some difficulty with that, too, though other states do have things like Veterans' Day in the US which is their Armistice Day but also a public holiday.
Its closure was announced five years ago due to safety concerns after the government ended subsidy funding for maintenance and upgrades needed to keep it going. At the time, ministers said its closure would save the UK £750m over 10 years by switching the focus on securing the country's energy needs to different 'cleaner' alternatives, including the importation of liquid gas from the Middle East. However, critics warned the move would leave the UK at the mercy of the potentially volatile global gas market while forcing it to compete with other countries to attract imports.
Just over a year ago, business secretary Kwasi Kwanteng dismissed concerns raised by MPs on a parliamentary select committee over rising gas prices and a reliance on Russian gas. He said he was not convinced by calls for more domestic gas storage and described criticism of the closure of the Rough storage facility as "a bit of a red herring".
Saving of £750m over 10 years LOL
In the 1990s Transco used to be responsible for Rough before it became Centrica's responsibility. I was then part of a project advising Transco on storage. It was clear to us at the time that the Transco management did not have a clear idea about how to use their slow seasonal storage facility (Rough). They did understand how to use the faster diurnal storage as a smoother of within-the-day fluctuations in demand. Although they sought our advice they were very reluctant to share their data, even weather data, with us. As a result we were somewhat hamstrung in giving practical specific advice as opposed to general hypothetical advice.
I think it should have been a requirement of the gas suppliers who use the distribution network to pay a levy for long-term high pressure storage (i.e. Rough) as compensation to the network owner for keeping it going as a safety net against future disruption of supply. I don't think there was any such arrangement.
The Parliamentary Select Committee on Trade and Industry said this in 2001:
It is in the interests of the gas industry and the country to have clarity as to future regulation or the contractual terms of gas storage as soon as possible and (thereby or otherwise) to enable long-term storage capacity contracts to be developed.
The committee may be aware that planning issues tend currently to be determined according to local concerns rather than national interests. This has recently resulted in an application for a major storage development being turned down.
That will result in a return to office for the cleansed of all sins Boris Johnson. Oh joy, and should that come to pass he will get a landslide. New broom and all that.
I’m not so sure. He would have to remain an MP, and I can’t see him doing that. He can make oodles of real money putting the greasy pole behind him now.
He can make money and remain an MP. Why would he give it up? It's money for nothing.
That will result in a return to office for the cleansed of all sins Boris Johnson. Oh joy, and should that come to pass he will get a landslide. New broom and all that.
I’m not so sure. He would have to remain an MP, and I can’t see him doing that. He can make oodles of real money putting the greasy pole behind him now.
I'll hold you to that.
Would you pay good money for more than one Peppa Pig speech?
We’ve got a reference point in Blair, how the money is made after Downing Street, and it’s not just the speeches where Boris can imagine yanks rolling in the aisles, kerching, it’s the business deals in luxury Mediterranean villas, kerching, ditto in Arabian palaces, Kerching, special advisor to HedgeCorp £xxx,xxx a year for 4 hours work, kerching. You think you know Boris so well he will remain in the game of politics now not chase this money?
Its closure was announced five years ago due to safety concerns after the government ended subsidy funding for maintenance and upgrades needed to keep it going. At the time, ministers said its closure would save the UK £750m over 10 years by switching the focus on securing the country's energy needs to different 'cleaner' alternatives, including the importation of liquid gas from the Middle East. However, critics warned the move would leave the UK at the mercy of the potentially volatile global gas market while forcing it to compete with other countries to attract imports.
Just over a year ago, business secretary Kwasi Kwanteng dismissed concerns raised by MPs on a parliamentary select committee over rising gas prices and a reliance on Russian gas. He said he was not convinced by calls for more domestic gas storage and described criticism of the closure of the Rough storage facility as "a bit of a red herring".
Saving of £750m over 10 years LOL
The story is misleading. Rough was failing as a storage facility not just because of topside issues but also reservoir failures. The conservative estimate was that it would cost Centrica (or whoever could be persuaded to pay for it) £1 billion in immediate repairs/stabilisation costs and even then there was a good chance they would fail.
Reopening Rough is a sign of real desperation and I would not be at all surprised to see it close again quite quickly. However long it lasts it will cost a lot more than the £750 million over 10 years mentioned in the article.
The real governmental failure was not trying harder to find alterative sites for gas storage. Someone the other day mentioned on here about an Irish Sea candidate but I had not heard of that one before. Certainly suitable geology is hard to find for these types of facilities.
It is still utterly disgusting that it was closed with the alternative being to import gas from overseas. Just who are the Government meant to be working for?
Coalition stitch up job finished off under May/Hammond. Hard to say when it started but our body politic doesn’t understand the value of strategic resilience.
Ugh. Knew it would have their grubby little mits all over it. The age of 'dull competence' as Meeks once described it in glowing terms.
And Team Rishi: "Liz is now walking back from her commitment to hold an emergency budget - something she confirmed she would do more than seven times during the campaign. 1/2 https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1562025172814675969
"The question now is whether she will come good on her promise to deliver £50bn worth of immediate tax cuts or whether she now agrees with Rishi that the priority must first be to grip inflation and help people with the cost of living."
Why does nobody question Sunak on the glaring economic illiteracy of this statement? Cancelling tax cuts - yes, that would be a deflationary measure (of course it would help more if the inflation were actually demand led). Giving people money to pay their power bills - that is directly the opposite. It's an inflationary measure. Either Sunak is profoundly stupid or he thinks everyone else is.
This is a man who lit a huge fire under an already well-heated housing market with his stamp duty cut so I’m not giving him any recommendations for being any more economically literate than team Truss TBH.
When Sunak talks of "dangerous" levels of borrowing” in attack on Liz plans what sort of levels is he talking about? It seems to me, this 14 years of Tory rule will now certainly go down into history as willingness to tax rather than borrow?
That will result in a return to office for the cleansed of all sins Boris Johnson. Oh joy, and should that come to pass he will get a landslide. New broom and all that.
I’m not so sure. He would have to remain an MP, and I can’t see him doing that. He can make oodles of real money putting the greasy pole behind him now.
I'll hold you to that.
Would you pay good money for more than one Peppa Pig speech?
We’ve got a reference point in Blair, how the money is made after Downing Street, and it’s not just the speeches where Boris can imagine yanks rolling in the aisles, kerching, it’s the business deals in luxury Mediterranean villas, kerching, ditto in Arabian palaces, Kerching, special advisor to HedgeCorp £xxx,xxx a year for 4 hours work, kerching. You think you know Boris so well he will remain in the game of politics now not chase this money?
There is that. However. One thing about him we do know is that he isn't money oriented. See his tax arrangements. That's why he's always skint. He tries to make enough to get by. He doesn't cut spending. He can make hundreds of thousands a year from a newspaper column or two a month. And still be an MP.
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Really? I thought they used these sort of wheel arrangements, rather than running.
They did try running, or rather walking (ie one foot always on the ground at all times). Though that chap Stephenson did rather better with his wheels only design.
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
we could have cards, and slavery eggs hidden by the slavery bunny, and everything
I did check to make sure it wasn't a journalistic misinterpretation of something similar to Armistice Day, but yes, the chap does say “If you think about just how important slavery was to Britain and how horrific it was, it should be a national memorial; there should be a day off".
Having some difficulty with that, too, though other states do have things like Veterans' Day in the US which is their Armistice Day but also a public holiday.
Why when you have got that you would print the other is anyone's guess, and who the fuck allows themself to be described as "a leading expert on race"?
Stunning statistic, mind that in 1833 40% of the entire UK budget was spent compensating slave owners. that's what I call an exit strategy.
Reading the exchanges here this morning, is it likely that the Covid public enquiry will be conducted in a similar vein: strident voices insisting on definitive judgements whether certain decisions were absolutely right or absolutely wrong? Frankly, I’m not interested whether decision were right or wrong for the simple reason that it’s an impossible question to answer. Much more important is whether our pandemic management capability and capacity were fit for purpose and, most importantly, what capability and capacity needs to be kept in place, by statute if need be, to deal with next time.
I remember that - but hadn't realised it began as a voluntary work thingy. As well as a tune, it had a pome too, I see:
'The newly appointed Poet Laureate, Cecil Day-Lewis, inaugurated his appointment with a poem entitled "Now and Then" supporting the campaign. It was commissioned by the Daily Mail and appeared on the newspaper's front page on 5 January;[44] The poem compared Britain's economic plight in 1968 with the Blitz and ended:
To work then, islanders, as men and women Members one of another, looking beyond Mean rules and rivalries towards the dream you could Make real, of glory, common wealth, and home. — Cecil Day-Lewis, "Now and Then", [45]
Day-Lewis's choice of subject and the content of his poem were criticised. Bernard Levin later wrote that the poem "made many regret their impulsive rejoicing at the death of his predecessor".[46] '
Comments
In any case unless the whole UK gets a vote on the Union in a referendum or England
votes for the English Democrats and ultimately English independence, English voters get no say on the Union anyway
Absolutely I would say that if any parents chose not to let their kids go to school during the pandemic, that should have been their choice. And if any teachers chose not to teach during the pandemic, they absolutely should have the right to quit the jobs too, if that were their choice.
Let the schools be open to teachers who wanted to teach, and children of parents who wanted to send their kids to school. Sacrificing the education of the young was not a price worth paying and should have an extremely high non-monetary equivalent "cost" in any QALY style calculations.
🧐😮
What a time to be alive.
Reopening Rough is a sign of real desperation and I would not be at all surprised to see it close again quite quickly. However long it lasts it will cost a lot more than the £750 million over 10 years mentioned in the article.
The real governmental failure was not trying harder to find alterative sites for gas storage. Someone the other day mentioned on here about an Irish Sea candidate but I had not heard of that one before. Certainly suitable geology is hard to find for these types of facilities.
In my view. patterns are just not there as you claim they are and you are wholly ignoring all the downsides of the restrictions as if they were as nothing. As if there were no downsides.
You look at one side of the ledger.
If you claim 5% as the pre-lockdown figure then at doubling every three days, if we'd avoided locking down for another fortnight then we'd have achieved 100% and the pandemic would have been over, all for the sake of a fortnight. Not two years of lockdown and restrictions. So not "LOADS of doublings left to do", less than a fortnight left to go supposedly.
Alternatively, the doublings wouldn't have continued as the virus would have ran out of hosts and people would have changed behaviour voluntarily even without lockdown, so no we didn't have to have lockdown then either.
Either way, your logic is inconsistent and flawed.
https://www.worldbank.org/en/data/interactive/2020/03/24/world-bank-education-and-covid-19
Almost all of those countries have, to put it mildly, a very limited school system anyway.
But yes, we have to hope the virus doesn't come up with something nasty. Not helped by Mr Johnson's regime's selling off the much touted new vaccine development centre for the UK, as if it was something to be ashamed of instead of being needed sooner or later.
"When somebody tells you who they are, believe them."
Truss has told us who she is and what she wants to do. That events may overtake her and force her hand into offering further support is by the by.
Any further support is likely to be inadequate, off the hoof, and almost certainly aimed at supporting the wrong people through this crisis.
My guess for what will be announced:
- Pensioners will be given increased credits to stay warm using existing mechanisms (winter fuel payment).
- Businesses will be offered loans wholly inadequate to preventing them going under.
- Working people will be told, we've given you a tiny tax cut, what more do you people want? As they freeze. Followed by a hasty "loan" scheme that will, as with businesses, prove wholly inadequate.
- Everyone else - good luck, you feckless, workshy bastards!
Only in the depths of the bleakest of midwinters, when the temperatures are below zero (and so are the Conservatives in the polls), will something adequate to assuage fuel poverty finally be done.
Prepare for a lot of horrifying personal tragedies in the media this winter. The right-wing media will help the Tories, but only up to a certain point. Societal collapse is simply too good a story for anyone with even an iota of journalistic integrity left.
This is another reason why Truss needs to call a snap GE. It is her only chance.
Preserving civil liberties?
Keeping schools open?
Budget deficit?
I'm not sure it works, because it's only really the Conservative faithful who would want it, not the floating voters. And the economy will still be rubbish to 2024 and beyond.
It would be amusing if he does return as the resurrected Messiah and loses bigly to Boring Old Starmer running on a "just make it stop" ticket.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHBFt11zz7U
It wouldn't have been over in a fortnight. And it wouldn't have been exactly the same (because some people would have had to work who didn't in our reality, others would have denied anything was happening until it happened to someone they knew, others would not have cared about passing it on if they were less affected when infected.
I would say your logic is inconsistent and flawed if you were attempting any.
You've consistently failed to provide any facts or numbers. It's a live example of Brandolini's Law - you just have to spout whatever comes into your head whilst the rest of us have to actually go and get the facts.
Oh and Sweden shut their secondary schools.
…. Which is a load of bollocks. I did 3 months continuous travel this spring. 10 days of it was in the EU
https://www.voanews.com/a/covid-19-pandemic_sweden-closes-high-schools-until-early-january-stem-covid-19-infections/6199141.html
Admittedly, they shut them for a shorter time than we did. But they closed year groups more often as well, particularly senior ones.
They kept primary schools open, at the cost of much higher infection rates among teachers and their partners.
Allowing COVID to take its course would have harmed the NHS more.
deal with inflation in a hung parliament, some Tories would
prefer the latter. Assuming Truss gets some bounce next month but not enough to win
They haven't - a huge rise is announced on Friday with forecasts of ever more insanity beyond that.
They will do literally nothing until Truss is entombed in Number 10. So a week and a half of excruciating interviews where at best Trussteam people say "we have to wait and see" and at worst they repeat the "shut up feckless lazy plebs" rhetoric.
When she becomes PM there could be a "here's one I prepared earlier" proposal which nobody has leaked. Unlikely, and would be uncosted and badly thought through as they're focused on the uncosted and badly thought through tax cuts.
More likely she repeats "no handouts", but that Sunak already created coming rebates and isn't that enough and anyway look at my tax cut. Which will be torn apart.
So yes, eventually, she may u-turn and unveil something. But it will be so late that millions have already suffered. And will be presented in the wrong tone and the wrong way as something she has been forced into.
However you cut it, this is political napalm. Voters remember when the government screws up and screws them. Despite the relatively benign recovery delivered by KenClarke the party was not forgiven for Black Wednesday for a decade and a half. Expect the same here.
I wonder if this is anglicised wealthy Italians adopting brooshetta?
Sweden was AFAIK the only country in Europe not to shut its primary schools. For that alone, it did far better than every one of its neighbours.
How many children need to lose their education to justify one fewer excess death in your eyes? What is the QALY value of an excess death, and the QALY value of education in your eyes, or are you just religiously dogmatic about it?
No nerve. Just wrong. I am a stickler for accuracy
Many were saved by timely oxygen, fluids, CPAP, treatment of renal failure etc, before we get into the ICU cases.
Certainly lessons can and should be learnt, but such simplistic ideas of let it rip are callous as well as wrong.
Similarly with economic support. Without this many businesses would have been bankrupt, particularly in the hospitality and retail sectors.
It is not about lockdown* vs nothing, it is about what measures helped and what didn't. Some of those lessons may help with the coming winter crisis too.
*lockdown was very variable, not a single phenomenon. The tightest periods were relatively short in the first wave (EOTHO was just months after the first lockdown, and the winter lockdown in 20-21 was necessary for the vaccination roll out).
All?
Sir John Curtice issues Brexit warning as support for rejoining the EU surges in Scotland
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1658543/john-curtice-brexit-warning-rejoin-eu-scotland-update/amp
Liz Truss 'won't keep Union safe' by copying Boris Johnson stance on independence referendum
- Professor John Curtice told the Record that Liz Truss was "kicking the can down the road" if she refused to engage with SNP demands for an IndyRef2.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/liz-truss-wont-keep-union-27686398.amp
Independence likely regardless of who’s prime minister, new poll reveals
- Britain’s leading analyst Sir John Curtice said: “Simply arguing that another referendum should not be held at all seems unlikely to win many converts. While 44% oppose a referendum in the next five years, 48% are in favour. Ultimately the Union will only be safe if people in Scotland come to believe in it. But it is far from clear that the next prime minister will have the right strategy to achieve that.”
https://winnquick.com/index.php/2022/08/21/independence-likely-regardless-of-whos-prime-minister-new-poll-reveals/
SNP lead = 21 points
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#Scotland
We probably need to nationalise (temporarily?) the power companies to hold prices down (cost to be picked up by the taxpayer over several years - we paid people furlough to sit in their gardens for a year so why not pay now?).
And, dare I say it, because the current situation is caused by there being greater demand for power than available supply, ration it over winter so everyone gets enough and nobody freezes - back to 70s style rolling blackouts.
Grim. But it's a plan - which is more than the Conservatives have got.
Now clearly you, as an advocate of contrived euthanasia have no interest in the ethical and moral questions but even your practical claims are not as black and white as you like to pretend.
I thought you said you were off to cricket today?
Would you pay good money for more than one Peppa Pig speech?
Manufacturing can be quite energy intensive, but then so too can hospitality. Considering Leon's other conversation, making a bruschetta probably doesn't entail too much energy consumption but I imagine keeping a pizza oven at high temperatures for hours at a time probably would.
A lot of small businesses will be looking at their costs and thinking they're quite energy intensive, even if others don't necessarily think the same of them.
https://twitter.com/christopherhope/status/1562049830574297091
1 Refusing to copy other EU governments imposing restrictions on business
2 Paying people to sit at home isn't what Mistress Truss became PM to do
3 The economic impact of shutting chunks of industry and retail down again
Nope. Some people will get a small tax cut. Some bills will have 50p shaved off their rise by scrapping all the green "crap". And the government is giving us all a couple of hundred quid phased over a few months. Thats it. For us at least - I expect she will bung billions to the energy industry who will give some of it back by shaving an additional £1.50 off the increase.
2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it.
3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
ETA: Brooshetta would be spelt bruscietta.
How old is your son? Secondary or primary, if you don't mind me asking. From what I saw, secondary pupils were better able to cope than primary pupils were with distance learning which makes sense considering their relevant stages of development. Being with other children and adults is a critical part of development for young children and can't be entirely displaced onto a computer screen.
Sweden kept their primary schools open while other countries closed theirs. On that metric alone, Sweden undeniably had a superior pandemic to any of its neighbours.
You may prefer other metrics to that one, but that's just your choice. In a free society, we all get to make our own choices, and I value children and their education more highly than just keeping adults alive for longer.
Would you permanently abolish primary schools if it meant 1 year extra life expectancy for adults? I most certainly would not. Education is more important than mere life expectancy.
At least this time people will be able to go out and mingle without the fear of plod arresting them for being more than five miles from their home or standing less than two metres apart.
But still, grim. There will be slim chance of a pint in your favourite pub or a meal out, put it that way.
Was it the Wrexham fans opening back door of the main stand to go to their car getting arrested for holding an illegal gathering in a car park?
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
Not doing a days work since his resignation statement is also not the way to build foundation of a comeback.
I just feel he will move on now.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/23/uk-public-holiday-remember-slave-trade
we could have cards, and slavery eggs hidden by the slavery bunny, and everything
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/23/world-remember-slavery-britain-imperial-history
Extraordinarily interesting and intelligent (as in, agrees exactly with every point I have been making) piece
"This culture war has become a mechanism of distraction that prevents us from discussing the painful legacies of Britain’s colonial past, and examining how this history has entrenched social inequalities in the present day. Instead of intelligent and compassionate conversation about history, there has been a hardening of positions on all sides.
The conversation shouldn’t be about deciding whether the British empire was “good” or “bad”. The purpose of slavery was to build wealth for Britain by any means necessary, through subjugation, division and coercion. "
Seems those same people on 'green tariffs' are now pretty pissed off to learn that those plans were in fact linked to the price of wholesale gas, just like everyone else's bills.
Having some difficulty with that, too, though other states do have things like Veterans' Day in the US which is their Armistice Day but also a public holiday.
I think it should have been a requirement of the gas suppliers who use the distribution network to pay a levy for long-term high pressure storage (i.e. Rough) as compensation to the network owner for keeping it going as a safety net against future disruption of supply. I don't think there was any such arrangement.
The Parliamentary Select Committee on Trade and Industry said this in 2001:
It is in the interests of the gas industry and the country to have clarity as to future regulation or the contractual terms of gas storage as soon as possible and (thereby or otherwise) to enable long-term storage capacity contracts to be developed.
The committee may be aware that planning issues tend currently to be determined according to local concerns rather than national interests. This has recently resulted in an application for a major storage development being turned down.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmselect/cmtrdind/364/364ap10.htm
The full report is worth reading.
However. One thing about him we do know is that he isn't money oriented. See his tax arrangements.
That's why he's always skint. He tries to make enough to get by. He doesn't cut spending. He can make hundreds of thousands a year from a newspaper column or two a month. And still be an MP.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jffVbuUhblc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'm_Backing_Britain
There's even a (rather banging) choon ready to re-release;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT8LsRVN7C4
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/23/world-remember-slavery-britain-imperial-history
Why when you have got that you would print the other is anyone's guess, and who the fuck allows themself to be described as "a leading expert on race"?
Stunning statistic, mind that in 1833 40% of the entire UK budget was spent compensating slave owners. that's what I call an exit strategy.
Much more important is whether our pandemic management capability and capacity were fit for purpose and, most importantly, what capability and capacity needs to be kept in place, by statute if need be, to deal with next time.
'The newly appointed Poet Laureate, Cecil Day-Lewis, inaugurated his appointment with a poem entitled "Now and Then" supporting the campaign. It was commissioned by the Daily Mail and appeared on the newspaper's front page on 5 January;[44] The poem compared Britain's economic plight in 1968 with the Blitz and ended:
To work then, islanders, as men and women
Members one of another, looking beyond
Mean rules and rivalries towards the dream you could
Make real, of glory, common wealth, and home.
— Cecil Day-Lewis, "Now and Then", [45]
Day-Lewis's choice of subject and the content of his poem were criticised. Bernard Levin later wrote that the poem "made many regret their impulsive rejoicing at the death of his predecessor".[46] '