There'll be a huge lag from these massive energy prices. Take glass for instance, it's gas intensive process for both capital and production, it'll roll out in the price of plonk, pop and windows for buildings eventually. Same for aluminium cans..
Most glass comes from China doesn't it? They have plenty of cheap gas. Though the price has been rising due to shortages for other reasons.
Which points out the scale of the problem - any industry that is energy intensive has big problems at the moment and that includes a lot of small local such as the local pub, and chippy / takeaway..
I wonder whether we will soon be seeing deflation?
The inflation earlier in this crisis will in a few months be rolling out of the figures, but other than gas for this winter the futures contracts for many commodities seem to be stabilising or coming back down.
Similarly prices on things in the shops seem to be stabilising or coming back down. Yesterday I saw a litre or unleaded at 161.9 which is still higher than twelve months ago, but is significant deflation from a few months ago. Some other stuff that had gone up in the shops seem to be coming back down now too. A 24 case of Coke Zero used to always cost us £7 on promotion (virtually always on promotion, like DFS), last few months it's been £8 on promotion. Today saw it back at £7 again.
In a few months time once the initial hike rolls out of the system, we might start seeing some rapid falls in inflation, or even deflation?
Promo prices have got zero to do with cost price inflation. Its just (a) how much £ the manufacturer wants to invest and (b) what promo mechanic the retailer wants to focus on in any given promotional period.
I have just read a post from @NickPalmer calling lockdown "a minor inconvenience". I am as much of a fan or Dr Nick as the next man, but this de trop satire simply jumps the shark I'm afraid Nick!
Quite, It wasnt particularly minor for some of us.
Maybe daughters failing their 11+ is not the end of the world.
Well I think I see your point, but daughter failing her 11+ would make us more likely to consider going private! Three-and-a-half weeks to go...
EDIT: My expectation is that the big fall is caused by an unwind of private schools massive outperformance of state school during covid.
Private schools used the Covid situation to massively take the piss in terms of predicted grades. That has now been unwound.
Well, yes, also they provided considerably more education. Both factors were important.
I doubt they provided more education than they did pre-Covid, but grades increased massively once they were no longer being independently assessed by external examination. Sure, they had more resources than state schools, but that was true before Covid and home schooling happened. Lots of state schools were pretty good during lockdown, too, my kids' schools included. Private schools already take the piss with inflated predicted grades, doing easier exams etc. Their entire purpose is to game the system to the advantage of the wealthy. Covid just supercharged that. I'm glad to see that that particular scam is over.
I have just read a post from @NickPalmer calling lockdown "a minor inconvenience". I am as much of a fan or Dr Nick as the next man, but this de trop satire simply jumps the shark I'm afraid Nick!
A minor inconvenience is a fifteen minute queue at the pharmacy, or having to get your second pair of glasses fixed.
No-one with kids would call lockdown a minor inconvenience. Show me the parent who didn't find himself sat at the top of the stairs, crying. Show me the parent who didn't wake up with the hollow dread of another empty day; or, worse, another day in which he was required to do both his own job, from home, and also his kids' teachers job, and also cook, clean and look after the house. Show me the parent who would describe a lost 18 months of his children's life opportunities as a 'minor inconvenience'.
I wonder whether we will soon be seeing deflation?
The inflation earlier in this crisis will in a few months be rolling out of the figures, but other than gas for this winter the futures contracts for many commodities seem to be stabilising or coming back down.
Similarly prices on things in the shops seem to be stabilising or coming back down. Yesterday I saw a litre or unleaded at 161.9 which is still higher than twelve months ago, but is significant deflation from a few months ago. Some other stuff that had gone up in the shops seem to be coming back down now too. A 24 case of Coke Zero used to always cost us £7 on promotion (virtually always on promotion, like DFS), last few months it's been £8 on promotion. Today saw it back at £7 again.
In a few months time once the initial hike rolls out of the system, we might start seeing some rapid falls in inflation, or even deflation?
Promo prices have got zero to do with cost price inflation. Its just (a) how much £ the manufacturer wants to invest and (b) what promo mechanic the retailer wants to focus on in any given promotional period.
I am on Bart’s side of the bet here. The Fed / BoE were far too loose with their monetary policy for years and it was topped up by fiscal incontinence. They are now going too far the other way. Central banks tend to accentuate swings in the cycle rather than smooth them I reckon.
I’d wager by mid 2023 that no one is going to be much talking about inflation.
Embarrassingly slanted "survey" - really from the same mindset as the authors of LibDem barcharts, but from our own Government. Even if I agreed with the objective, my toes would curl if I had anything to do with it.
It could be in the Sun or the Daily Express. But they have no shame.
It's scary. If Truss gives Leavers their pounds and inches back, few of them will call her Remainy-face any more. Next on the list for reversal could be the bill their patron saint made a speech against in 1968.
Interesting timing for that "survey".
"3a. If you had a choice, would you want to purchase items (i) in imperial units? (ii) in imperial units alongside a metric equivalent?"
No metric only option.
iii) relegate imperial units to the status of quaint historical relic.
Which tbf is where they already are for the vast majority of people.
Eh? Are they? I prefer metric but don't recall ever ordering half a litre of bitter or reading road signage in km.
wine is in metric ...
No it isn't, not really. No-one buys wine by the litre nowadays. Wine comes in bottles, and the fact there is three quarters of a litre is neither here nor there. Occasionally wine is bought in bigger or smaller bottles, but that just means ratios of a standard bottle, which as we've just established is not a litre but three quarters of a litre.
I have just read a post from @NickPalmer calling lockdown "a minor inconvenience". I am as much of a fan or Dr Nick as the next man, but this de trop satire simply jumps the shark I'm afraid Nick!
A minor inconvenience is a fifteen minute queue at the pharmacy, or having to get your second pair of glasses fixed.
No-one with kids would call lockdown a minor inconvenience. Show me the parent who didn't find himself sat at the top of the stairs, crying. Show me the parent who didn't wake up with the hollow dread of another empty day; or, worse, another day in which he was required to do both his own job, from home, and also his kids' teachers job, and also cook, clean and look after the house. Show me the parent who would describe a lost 18 months of his children's life opportunities as a 'minor inconvenience'.
It still makes me shudder to think of it.
It smacks of 'I found it a minor inconvenience, so fuck everyone elses lived experience'
Embarrassingly slanted "survey" - really from the same mindset as the authors of LibDem barcharts, but from our own Government. Even if I agreed with the objective, my toes would curl if I had anything to do with it.
It could be in the Sun or the Daily Express. But they have no shame.
It's scary. If Truss gives Leavers their pounds and inches back, few of them will call her Remainy-face any more. Next on the list for reversal could be the bill their patron saint made a speech against in 1968.
Interesting timing for that "survey".
"3a. If you had a choice, would you want to purchase items (i) in imperial units? (ii) in imperial units alongside a metric equivalent?"
No metric only option.
iii) relegate imperial units to the status of quaint historical relic.
Which tbf is where they already are for the vast majority of people.
Eh? Are they? I prefer metric but don't recall ever ordering half a litre of bitter or reading road signage in km.
wine is in metric ...
No it isn't, not really. No-one buys wine by the litre nowadays. Wine comes in bottles, and the fact there is three quarters of a litre is neither here nor there. Occasionally wine is bought in bigger or smaller bottles, but that just means ratios of a standard bottle, which as we've just established is not a litre but three quarters of a litre.
And a litre is inherently more metric than .75 of a litre?
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
I fully accept that people would die if I had my way. I looked at both sides of the ledger and have decided that some extras dying of natural causes is not as bad a problem as ten million children's education being harmed and the one million plus deaths alone due to lockdown.
You however refuse to look at or even admit there are two sides of the ledger. For you there is COVID fatalities and absolutely nothing else counts whatsoever.
It is your side that is infantile. When you're willing to admit that liberty, life and education has a value and not just preventing death, then we can have a grown up conversation.
The statistician Jamie Jones says people should look this in lost years rather than lost lives.
For example lockdown may have stopped an 80-year from contracting covid pre-vaccination but caused a 40-year old to miss a diagnosis for life-threatening cancer.
You may be saving 10-years on the one hand, you may be losing 40 on the other. Obviously the variables are enormous, but it is an example.
I have just read a post from @NickPalmer calling lockdown "a minor inconvenience". I am as much of a fan or Dr Nick as the next man, but this de trop satire simply jumps the shark I'm afraid Nick!
A minor inconvenience is a fifteen minute queue at the pharmacy, or having to get your second pair of glasses fixed.
No-one with kids would call lockdown a minor inconvenience. Show me the parent who didn't find himself sat at the top of the stairs, crying. Show me the parent who didn't wake up with the hollow dread of another empty day; or, worse, another day in which he was required to do both his own job, from home, and also his kids' teachers job, and also cook, clean and look after the house. Show me the parent who would describe a lost 18 months of his children's life opportunities as a 'minor inconvenience'.
It still makes me shudder to think of it.
It smacks of 'I found it a minor inconvenience, so fuck everyone elses lived experience'
Yes, but so does the opposite view that lockdown is as bad as dying.
Embarrassingly slanted "survey" - really from the same mindset as the authors of LibDem barcharts, but from our own Government. Even if I agreed with the objective, my toes would curl if I had anything to do with it.
It could be in the Sun or the Daily Express. But they have no shame.
It's scary. If Truss gives Leavers their pounds and inches back, few of them will call her Remainy-face any more. Next on the list for reversal could be the bill their patron saint made a speech against in 1968.
Interesting timing for that "survey".
"3a. If you had a choice, would you want to purchase items (i) in imperial units? (ii) in imperial units alongside a metric equivalent?"
No metric only option.
iii) relegate imperial units to the status of quaint historical relic.
Which tbf is where they already are for the vast majority of people.
Eh? Are they? I prefer metric but don't recall ever ordering half a litre of bitter or reading road signage in km.
wine is in metric ...
No it isn't, not really. No-one buys wine by the litre nowadays. Wine comes in bottles, and the fact there is three quarters of a litre is neither here nor there. Occasionally wine is bought in bigger or smaller bottles, but that just means ratios of a standard bottle, which as we've just established is not a litre but three quarters of a litre.
750 ml sounds pretty like a metric unit to me ... it's 1.6519823 pints. Just as metric as 12oz is imperial.
I have just read a post from @NickPalmer calling lockdown "a minor inconvenience". I am as much of a fan or Dr Nick as the next man, but this de trop satire simply jumps the shark I'm afraid Nick!
A minor inconvenience is a fifteen minute queue at the pharmacy, or having to get your second pair of glasses fixed.
No-one with kids would call lockdown a minor inconvenience. Show me the parent who didn't find himself sat at the top of the stairs, crying. Show me the parent who didn't wake up with the hollow dread of another empty day; or, worse, another day in which he was required to do both his own job, from home, and also his kids' teachers job, and also cook, clean and look after the house. Show me the parent who would describe a lost 18 months of his children's life opportunities as a 'minor inconvenience'.
It still makes me shudder to think of it.
Quite a shocking post from Nick Palmer. But this view was all too prevalent. In truth for many of us we had a couple of years of life simply scrubbed out. And I know quite a few whose minds have still not got over it.
I have just read a post from @NickPalmer calling lockdown "a minor inconvenience". I am as much of a fan or Dr Nick as the next man, but this de trop satire simply jumps the shark I'm afraid Nick!
A minor inconvenience is a fifteen minute queue at the pharmacy, or having to get your second pair of glasses fixed.
No-one with kids would call lockdown a minor inconvenience. Show me the parent who didn't find himself sat at the top of the stairs, crying. Show me the parent who didn't wake up with the hollow dread of another empty day; or, worse, another day in which he was required to do both his own job, from home, and also his kids' teachers job, and also cook, clean and look after the house. Show me the parent who would describe a lost 18 months of his children's life opportunities as a 'minor inconvenience'.
It still makes me shudder to think of it.
I’ve grown to amiably tolerate @NickPalmer over the years, but “minor inconvenience” is bloody insulting. It’s probably true in his case - elderly affluent bachelor, Surrey, no kids - but it’s tin-eared to the point of idiocy
It’s like someone in Cornwall telling Londoners the Blitz was “mildly annoying”
Maybe daughters failing their 11+ is not the end of the world.
Well I think I see your point, but daughter failing her 11+ would make us more likely to consider going private! Three-and-a-half weeks to go...
EDIT: My expectation is that the big fall is caused by an unwind of private schools massive outperformance of state school during covid.
Private schools used the Covid situation to massively take the piss in terms of predicted grades. That has now been unwound.
Well, yes, also they provided considerably more education. Both factors were important.
I doubt they provided more education than they did pre-Covid, but grades increased massively once they were no longer being independently assessed by external examination. Sure, they had more resources than state schools, but that was true before Covid and home schooling happened. Lots of state schools were pretty good during lockdown, too, my kids' schools included. Private schools already take the piss with inflated predicted grades, doing easier exams etc. Their entire purpose is to game the system to the advantage of the wealthy. Covid just supercharged that. I'm glad to see that that particular scam is over.
The more effective teaching / less disruption thing ought to keep showing up for a while, as kids who did KS3 under lockdown start GCSE. The more effective taking the piss (and getting away with it a bit better because of how things were done) factor has dropped out now.
I'm pretty sure that there was a bit of both, but quite a lot more of one than the other.
I wonder whether we will soon be seeing deflation?
The inflation earlier in this crisis will in a few months be rolling out of the figures, but other than gas for this winter the futures contracts for many commodities seem to be stabilising or coming back down.
Similarly prices on things in the shops seem to be stabilising or coming back down. Yesterday I saw a litre or unleaded at 161.9 which is still higher than twelve months ago, but is significant deflation from a few months ago. Some other stuff that had gone up in the shops seem to be coming back down now too. A 24 case of Coke Zero used to always cost us £7 on promotion (virtually always on promotion, like DFS), last few months it's been £8 on promotion. Today saw it back at £7 again.
In a few months time once the initial hike rolls out of the system, we might start seeing some rapid falls in inflation, or even deflation?
Where the hell are the falls coming from with the energy bills heading in ?
Bart is an anecdotal amateur economist he knows these things. If the only items in the basket of goods was a case of Coke Zero and a DFS sofa inflation would be way under control.
Ha ha ha.
I specifically mentioned other things like futures for commodities but all you picked up on was the Coke Zero? How droll.
While cans of Coke Zero coming down by 1/8th of their price from a few months ago may seek like an odd anecdote alone, the more serious point is what has happened to the aluminium market in that time.
Check the 1 year chart for the price of aluminium and you'll see why cans of Coke Zero shot up in price a few months ago, and why they're coming back down in price now.
Right now we are getting inflation figures comparing against prior to Putin's invasion. Next March onwards that rolls out and we start comparing inflation with this year. Many commodities will be cheaper in March 2023 than March 2022.
Unless the price of aluminium goes back up again, in March 2023 it will be 37% cheaper than March 2022.
What's true for aluminium is true for many other commodities too.
The problem you have next year when the inflation figure falls from 18% from the first quarter to 12% for the second quarter steadying itself by second half of the year to 5% the effects have nonetheless been cumulative.
Your voters won't be saying to themselves "fantastic, the headline figure is only 2%", they will be thinking"blimey, I'm still two repayments in arrears on the mortgage and I've had to return the lease car, it's going to be a while before I'm on my feet again."
Will they blame and punish the incumbent Government?
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
I fully accept that people would die if I had my way. I looked at both sides of the ledger and have decided that some extras dying of natural causes is not as bad a problem as ten million children's education being harmed and the one million plus deaths alone due to lockdown.
You however refuse to look at or even admit there are two sides of the ledger. For you there is COVID fatalities and absolutely nothing else counts whatsoever.
It is your side that is infantile. When you're willing to admit that liberty, life and education has a value and not just preventing death, then we can have a grown up conversation.
The statistician Jamie Jones says people should look this in lost years rather than lost lives.
For example lockdown may have stopped an 80-year from contracting covid pre-vaccination but caused a 40-year old to miss a diagnosis for life-threatening cancer.
You may be saving 10-years on the one hand, you may be losing 40 on the other. Obviously the variables are enormous, but it is an example.
Er, no. The reason for missed cancer diagnoses was not lockdown but massively reduced hospital capacity owing to the covid pandemic. If lockdown limited covid spread, it will have meant fewer missed cancer cases.
I wonder whether we will soon be seeing deflation?
The inflation earlier in this crisis will in a few months be rolling out of the figures, but other than gas for this winter the futures contracts for many commodities seem to be stabilising or coming back down.
Similarly prices on things in the shops seem to be stabilising or coming back down. Yesterday I saw a litre or unleaded at 161.9 which is still higher than twelve months ago, but is significant deflation from a few months ago. Some other stuff that had gone up in the shops seem to be coming back down now too. A 24 case of Coke Zero used to always cost us £7 on promotion (virtually always on promotion, like DFS), last few months it's been £8 on promotion. Today saw it back at £7 again.
In a few months time once the initial hike rolls out of the system, we might start seeing some rapid falls in inflation, or even deflation?
Promo prices have got zero to do with cost price inflation. Its just (a) how much £ the manufacturer wants to invest and (b) what promo mechanic the retailer wants to focus on in any given promotional period.
I am on Bart’s side of the bet here. The Fed / BoE were far too loose with their monetary policy for years and it was topped up by fiscal incontinence. They are now going too far the other way. Central banks tend to accentuate swings in the cycle rather than smooth them I reckon.
I’d wager by mid 2023 that no one is going to be much talking about inflation.
I tend to agree but then there is history. The last time inflation was a really serious problem, Fed Chairman Paul Volcker put rates up to 20% in 1980.
I have just read a post from @NickPalmer calling lockdown "a minor inconvenience". I am as much of a fan or Dr Nick as the next man, but this de trop satire simply jumps the shark I'm afraid Nick!
A minor inconvenience is a fifteen minute queue at the pharmacy, or having to get your second pair of glasses fixed.
No-one with kids would call lockdown a minor inconvenience. Show me the parent who didn't find himself sat at the top of the stairs, crying. Show me the parent who didn't wake up with the hollow dread of another empty day; or, worse, another day in which he was required to do both his own job, from home, and also his kids' teachers job, and also cook, clean and look after the house. Show me the parent who would describe a lost 18 months of his children's life opportunities as a 'minor inconvenience'.
It still makes me shudder to think of it.
It smacks of 'I found it a minor inconvenience, so fuck everyone elses lived experience'
Yes, but so does the opposite view that lockdown is as bad as dying.
Not really because you cannot quantify the death toll or misery index of the roads not travelled.
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
Curiously, you’ve told us many times how much you enjoyed lockdown
And here you are. Pro lockdown
Lockdown killed people too.
One of the most audacious arguments at the time - since many people would only listen to arguments phrased in terms of how many people would die - was that lockdown would cause more deaths than let-it-rip covid would. Now obviously in the long term this is true, since lockdown made us poorer, resulting in less money to spend on health, and more poor people who have worse health outcomes. But we also tried the argument that in the short term it was also true, due to taking the health focus off anything that wasn't covid. Karol Sikora was one of the strongest proponents of this argument. But the evidence we are seeing now - with excess deaths higher than during covid - suggests he was right. Lockdown led to poorer health outcomes than no-lockdown would have done.
Again, obvious caveat here that there are degrees of lockdown and almost no-one is in reality arguing for let-it-rip - just rather less single-mindedness than we saw.
Andy Cooke's point ( I think) is that poorer health outcomes are not happening post lockdown in other countries, ergo lockdowns cannot be responsible for poorer health outcomes anywhere.
There is always great danger when comparing national statistics. All through COVID different measures have been used and misused. I would not be surprised if our exposed health service issues are causing an elevated death rate. Or if lockdown contributed by missing diagnosis or bad diet or no exercise. But I'd be cautious about whether international comparisons are fully valid without some pretty rigourous checking.
I have just read a post from @NickPalmer calling lockdown "a minor inconvenience". I am as much of a fan or Dr Nick as the next man, but this de trop satire simply jumps the shark I'm afraid Nick!
A minor inconvenience is a fifteen minute queue at the pharmacy, or having to get your second pair of glasses fixed.
No-one with kids would call lockdown a minor inconvenience. Show me the parent who didn't find himself sat at the top of the stairs, crying. Show me the parent who didn't wake up with the hollow dread of another empty day; or, worse, another day in which he was required to do both his own job, from home, and also his kids' teachers job, and also cook, clean and look after the house. Show me the parent who would describe a lost 18 months of his children's life opportunities as a 'minor inconvenience'.
It still makes me shudder to think of it.
I think you've slightly misunderstood my post. The point I was making was that Bart's simple comparison of lives lost with lockdown on a 1 year=1 year basis was dependent on the relative weighting that people give to a % risk of dying vs a restriction on movements, and I was giving myself as an extreme example (as someone who was fine with lockdown) to balance Bart's apparent assumption that a year of lockdown was rather like being dead. Looking at the country as a whole, the average weighting must be somewhere in between, and one can't just equate a year of lockdown with dying a year early.
I do know parents who positively welcomed lockdown, as it meant they switched to working from home and got to see much more of their kids.I also know parents who were utterly miserable throughout. We just can't assume that's everyone's like ourselves.
(1) Gas production (2) Liquefaction capacity (3) Transport capacity
(There is also gas import - or regasification capacity - but that isn't such a big deal.)
Of these, the biggest short to medium term issue is transport capacity, as there are only a limited number of LNG vessels.
Worse, diversion of cargoes from Asia and towards Europe has actually cut capacity. Let me explain: a lot of the cargoes going to Asia come from Australasia - the North West Shelf of Australia or Gorgon or Papua New Guinea LNG. An LNG vessel might take 10 to 12 days to get Tokyo or Seoul from Gorgon. So, you can get 1.0-to-1.5 cargoes a month. If you divert that ship to Milford Haven LNG, then suddenly it's taking 25 or 30 days. You are now only getting 0.5 cargoes per month from that single LNG vessel.
New sources of LNG are coming on stream nearer to Europe - Qatar is not running at full capacity (and Pearl GTL is still taking gas), plus there is Israel (Leviathan) and Mozambique. Plus there is more coming out of the US.
But this takes time: rejigging global LNG shipping to maximise capacity is no simple task, given basically every ship is precontracted. (New vessels are coming, but we're probably 12 to 18 months from them making a significant difference.)
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
I fully accept that people would die if I had my way. I looked at both sides of the ledger and have decided that some extras dying of natural causes is not as bad a problem as ten million children's education being harmed and the one million plus deaths alone due to lockdown.
You however refuse to look at or even admit there are two sides of the ledger. For you there is COVID fatalities and absolutely nothing else counts whatsoever.
It is your side that is infantile. When you're willing to admit that liberty, life and education has a value and not just preventing death, then we can have a grown up conversation.
The statistician Jamie Jones says people should look this in lost years rather than lost lives.
For example lockdown may have stopped an 80-year from contracting covid pre-vaccination but caused a 40-year old to miss a diagnosis for life-threatening cancer.
You may be saving 10-years on the one hand, you may be losing 40 on the other. Obviously the variables are enormous, but it is an example.
On the other hand, maybe you should look at percentage of remaining life lost?
So, losing a year when you're seven and have eighty years ahead of you if no big deal, but if you're seventy, it's much more significant.
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
I fully accept that people would die if I had my way. I looked at both sides of the ledger and have decided that some extras dying of natural causes is not as bad a problem as ten million children's education being harmed and the one million plus deaths alone due to lockdown.
You however refuse to look at or even admit there are two sides of the ledger. For you there is COVID fatalities and absolutely nothing else counts whatsoever.
It is your side that is infantile. When you're willing to admit that liberty, life and education has a value and not just preventing death, then we can have a grown up conversation.
The statistician Jamie Jones says people should look this in lost years rather than lost lives.
For example lockdown may have stopped an 80-year from contracting covid pre-vaccination but caused a 40-year old to miss a diagnosis for life-threatening cancer.
You may be saving 10-years on the one hand, you may be losing 40 on the other. Obviously the variables are enormous, but it is an example.
Er, no. The reason for missed cancer diagnoses was not lockdown but massively reduced hospital capacity owing to the covid pandemic. If lockdown limited covid spread, it will have meant fewer missed cancer cases.
I don't think I ever heard anybody in the health service say that they were too busy with covid to bother with giving people cancer diagnoses. That people who wanted cancer diagnoses would have to wait.
I think we'll be seeing prices lower than they are now, yes. I absolutely don't think we'll get back to where we were a year ago, and I don't think we'll get long-term deflation, but I think we will see quite a dip before things start tracking more slowly up again. Longer term inflation rate of closer to 5% or so?
Yes, that's right - and the reason Truss will go long rather than call a snap election. "Inflation was up to 18% when I took over and it's now down to less than a third, now let me finish the job". I don't think it'll work, but I can see why she may reckon it's her best shot.
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
I fully accept that people would die if I had my way. I looked at both sides of the ledger and have decided that some extras dying of natural causes is not as bad a problem as ten million children's education being harmed and the one million plus deaths alone due to lockdown.
You however refuse to look at or even admit there are two sides of the ledger. For you there is COVID fatalities and absolutely nothing else counts whatsoever.
It is your side that is infantile. When you're willing to admit that liberty, life and education has a value and not just preventing death, then we can have a grown up conversation.
The statistician Jamie Jones says people should look this in lost years rather than lost lives.
For example lockdown may have stopped an 80-year from contracting covid pre-vaccination but caused a 40-year old to miss a diagnosis for life-threatening cancer.
You may be saving 10-years on the one hand, you may be losing 40 on the other. Obviously the variables are enormous, but it is an example.
Er, no. The reason for missed cancer diagnoses was not lockdown but massively reduced hospital capacity owing to the covid pandemic. If lockdown limited covid spread, it will have meant fewer missed cancer cases.
I don't think I ever heard anybody in the health service say that they were too busy with covid to bother with giving people cancer diagnoses. That people who wanted cancer diagnoses would have to wait.
Ever.
Are you sure?
I think hospitals suffered massively reduced capacity due to people being diverted to Covid work. @Foxy and others were taken off routine work and made ready to help with Covid.
I have just read a post from @NickPalmer calling lockdown "a minor inconvenience". I am as much of a fan or Dr Nick as the next man, but this de trop satire simply jumps the shark I'm afraid Nick!
A minor inconvenience is a fifteen minute queue at the pharmacy, or having to get your second pair of glasses fixed.
No-one with kids would call lockdown a minor inconvenience. Show me the parent who didn't find himself sat at the top of the stairs, crying. Show me the parent who didn't wake up with the hollow dread of another empty day; or, worse, another day in which he was required to do both his own job, from home, and also his kids' teachers job, and also cook, clean and look after the house. Show me the parent who would describe a lost 18 months of his children's life opportunities as a 'minor inconvenience'.
It still makes me shudder to think of it.
I think you've slightly misunderstood my post. The point I was making was that Bart's simple comparison of lives lost with lockdown on a 1 year=1 year basis was dependent on the relative weighting that people give to a % risk of dying vs a restriction on movements, and I was giving myself as an extreme example (as someone who was fine with lockdown) to balance Bart's apparent assumption that a year of lockdown was rather like being dead. Looking at the country as a whole, the average weighting must be somewhere in between, and one can't just equate a year of lockdown with dying a year early.
I do know parents who positively welcomed lockdown, as it meant they switched to working from home and got to see much more of their kids.I also know parents who were utterly miserable throughout. We just can't assume that's everyone's like ourselves.
It is hard to know what a year of being dead is like. Would be easier to assign a value if we knew if it was some version of heaven, hell or just nothingness. Based on the brochures 1 year in heaven > lockdown > hell.
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
I fully accept that people would die if I had my way. I looked at both sides of the ledger and have decided that some extras dying of natural causes is not as bad a problem as ten million children's education being harmed and the one million plus deaths alone due to lockdown.
You however refuse to look at or even admit there are two sides of the ledger. For you there is COVID fatalities and absolutely nothing else counts whatsoever.
It is your side that is infantile. When you're willing to admit that liberty, life and education has a value and not just preventing death, then we can have a grown up conversation.
The statistician Jamie Jones says people should look this in lost years rather than lost lives.
For example lockdown may have stopped an 80-year from contracting covid pre-vaccination but caused a 40-year old to miss a diagnosis for life-threatening cancer.
You may be saving 10-years on the one hand, you may be losing 40 on the other. Obviously the variables are enormous, but it is an example.
On the other hand, maybe you should look at percentage of remaining life lost?
So, losing a year when you're seven and have eighty years ahead of you if no big deal, but if you're seventy, it's much more significant.
We're talking about losing your life though, not a year.
IF you are a 7-year old who missed a serious illness diagnosis because the NHS was too busy with covid, that could be potentially life threatening.
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
It's very subjective. For my wife and I, WFH, nice house, garden, edge of the country, no kids. Generally don't go out overmuch, especially in winter. So lockdown was ok. For a lot of people it must have been hell. But we've also not been affected by COVID in our family and friends either.
I think we'll be seeing prices lower than they are now, yes. I absolutely don't think we'll get back to where we were a year ago, and I don't think we'll get long-term deflation, but I think we will see quite a dip before things start tracking more slowly up again. Longer term inflation rate of closer to 5% or so?
Yes, that's right - and the reason Truss will go long rather than call a snap election. "Inflation was up to 18% when I took over and it's now down to less than a third, now let me finish the job". I don't think it'll work, but I can see why she may reckon it's her best shot.
It got very close to working for Callaghan - before the Unions screwed him.
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
An appalling point. I voluntarily spend 8 hours out of every 24 pretty much immobile in my bedroom. If that got multiplied by 6 to 48 consecutive hours, would it be qualitatively different do you think, or just more of the same?
I have just read a post from @NickPalmer calling lockdown "a minor inconvenience". I am as much of a fan or Dr Nick as the next man, but this de trop satire simply jumps the shark I'm afraid Nick!
A minor inconvenience is a fifteen minute queue at the pharmacy, or having to get your second pair of glasses fixed.
No-one with kids would call lockdown a minor inconvenience. Show me the parent who didn't find himself sat at the top of the stairs, crying. Show me the parent who didn't wake up with the hollow dread of another empty day; or, worse, another day in which he was required to do both his own job, from home, and also his kids' teachers job, and also cook, clean and look after the house. Show me the parent who would describe a lost 18 months of his children's life opportunities as a 'minor inconvenience'.
It still makes me shudder to think of it.
I think you've slightly misunderstood my post. The point I was making was that Bart's simple comparison of lives lost with lockdown on a 1 year=1 year basis was dependent on the relative weighting that people give to a % risk of dying vs a restriction on movements, and I was giving myself as an extreme example (as someone who was fine with lockdown) to balance Bart's apparent assumption that a year of lockdown was rather like being dead. Looking at the country as a whole, the average weighting must be somewhere in between, and one can't just equate a year of lockdown with dying a year early.
I do know parents who positively welcomed lockdown, as it meant they switched to working from home and got to see much more of their kids.I also know parents who were utterly miserable throughout. We just can't assume that's everyone's like ourselves.
It is hard to know what a year of being dead is like. Would be easier to assign a value if we knew if it was some version of heaven, hell or just nothingness. Based on the brochures 1 year in heaven > lockdown > hell.
Lockdown 3 was, for me, pretty close to hellish. Bitter loneliness and grief without the comfort of friends and family. And trapped in a 1 bed flat in bleak wintry London, unable to do ANYTHING
One of the less severe circles of Dante’s Inferno, perhaps. Worse than Purgatory
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
Its not revisionism. For some people it was bloody marvellous. Not everyone needs to be out seeing friends and family to have a fulfilling life.
I am not saying that those people should be considered the norm but to try and claim that there are not plenty of people out there like that is revisionism and denial of the worst kind.
I have just read a post from @NickPalmer calling lockdown "a minor inconvenience". I am as much of a fan or Dr Nick as the next man, but this de trop satire simply jumps the shark I'm afraid Nick!
A minor inconvenience is a fifteen minute queue at the pharmacy, or having to get your second pair of glasses fixed.
No-one with kids would call lockdown a minor inconvenience. Show me the parent who didn't find himself sat at the top of the stairs, crying. Show me the parent who didn't wake up with the hollow dread of another empty day; or, worse, another day in which he was required to do both his own job, from home, and also his kids' teachers job, and also cook, clean and look after the house. Show me the parent who would describe a lost 18 months of his children's life opportunities as a 'minor inconvenience'.
It still makes me shudder to think of it.
I think you've slightly misunderstood my post. The point I was making was that Bart's simple comparison of lives lost with lockdown on a 1 year=1 year basis was dependent on the relative weighting that people give to a % risk of dying vs a restriction on movements, and I was giving myself as an extreme example (as someone who was fine with lockdown) to balance Bart's apparent assumption that a year of lockdown was rather like being dead. Looking at the country as a whole, the average weighting must be somewhere in between, and one can't just equate a year of lockdown with dying a year early.
I do know parents who positively welcomed lockdown, as it meant they switched to working from home and got to see much more of their kids.I also know parents who were utterly miserable throughout. We just can't assume that's everyone's like ourselves.
It is hard to know what a year of being dead is like. Would be easier to assign a value if we knew if it was some version of heaven, hell or just nothingness. Based on the brochures 1 year in heaven > lockdown > hell.
Lockdown 3 was, for me, pretty close to hellish. Bitter loneliness and grief without the comfort of friends and family. And trapped in a 1 bed flat in bleak wintry London, unable to do ANYTHING
One of the less severe circles of Dante’s Inferno, perhaps. Worse than Purgatory
Have you been there on your travels too? Do they drive on the left or right?
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
Those that were ok insist we were all therefore ok. 'Kids are bored? Teach them macramé or write and perform a short play. Mental health suffering? Its a price i'm prepared for you to pay for the common good' A great many let them eat cakers.
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
I fully accept that people would die if I had my way. I looked at both sides of the ledger and have decided that some extras dying of natural causes is not as bad a problem as ten million children's education being harmed and the one million plus deaths alone due to lockdown.
You however refuse to look at or even admit there are two sides of the ledger. For you there is COVID fatalities and absolutely nothing else counts whatsoever.
It is your side that is infantile. When you're willing to admit that liberty, life and education has a value and not just preventing death, then we can have a grown up conversation.
The statistician Jamie Jones says people should look this in lost years rather than lost lives.
For example lockdown may have stopped an 80-year from contracting covid pre-vaccination but caused a 40-year old to miss a diagnosis for life-threatening cancer.
You may be saving 10-years on the one hand, you may be losing 40 on the other. Obviously the variables are enormous, but it is an example.
Er, no. The reason for missed cancer diagnoses was not lockdown but massively reduced hospital capacity owing to the covid pandemic. If lockdown limited covid spread, it will have meant fewer missed cancer cases.
But lockdown didn't limit the time that Covid spread, it dragged it out.
That was explicitly the entire point of lockdown, as said by Boris at the start, to "flatten the sombrero".
Had Covid spread unchecked, then based upon the supposed claim of doubling every 3 days and 5% infected by lockdown 1 then it would have doubled to 100% infected within a fortnight if no lockdown.
Either that, or doubling would have stopped, in which case the premise used is not true.
Having more infections in a shorter time would have meant less could be done for those infected by Covid (as limited availability of resources at the same time) but more could have done for cancer diagnoses etc as Covid surge wouldn't have been dragged out for years.
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
Its not revisionism. For some people it was bloody marvellous. Not everyone needs to be out seeing friends and family to have a fulfilling life.
I am not saying that those people should be considered the norm but to try and claim that there are not plenty of people out there like that is revisionism and denial of the worst kind.
So I hope your blood is suitably boiling.
One day in that third lockdown I went out in my car. And I wondered what would happen if I drove as fast as could into a tree. Luckily I had the presence of mind to snap out of it.
Your smugness about how life was so wonderful for you in lockdown and everyone else should quit going on about it makes me feel physically sick.
I think we'll be seeing prices lower than they are now, yes. I absolutely don't think we'll get back to where we were a year ago, and I don't think we'll get long-term deflation, but I think we will see quite a dip before things start tracking more slowly up again. Longer term inflation rate of closer to 5% or so?
Yes, that's right - and the reason Truss will go long rather than call a snap election. "Inflation was up to 18% when I took over and it's now down to less than a third, now let me finish the job". I don't think it'll work, but I can see why she may reckon it's her best shot.
It got very close to working for Callaghan - before the Unions screwed him.
Isn't that like the Greek farmer who tried to teach his donkeys to live without food, and time after time when he had 98% cracked it they died on him?
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
Curiously, you’ve told us many times how much you enjoyed lockdown
And here you are. Pro lockdown
Indeed I did enjoy it. That doesn't mean it should be inflicted on people unnecessarily. My dispute is with those who claim it wasn't necessary and who then use false arguments and decide whole groups of people are less important and should just die so that they can get on with their lives without hindrance.
And yes Bart I am looking right at you.
By the way Leon, I should point out that given your histrionics during the pandemic you are the last one to criticise those of us who thought lockdown was necessary.
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
Its not revisionism. For some people it was bloody marvellous. Not everyone needs to be out seeing friends and family to have a fulfilling life.
I am not saying that those people should be considered the norm but to try and claim that there are not plenty of people out there like that is revisionism and denial of the worst kind.
So I hope your blood is suitably boiling.
Why on earth would you gloat about something like lockdown? It’s great for you that you loved it, but for millions it was cruel torture and we are still paying an unknown and grievous price
So: shut the fuck up. Stop exulting in something which caused untold misery
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
I fully accept that people would die if I had my way. I looked at both sides of the ledger and have decided that some extras dying of natural causes is not as bad a problem as ten million children's education being harmed and the one million plus deaths alone due to lockdown.
You however refuse to look at or even admit there are two sides of the ledger. For you there is COVID fatalities and absolutely nothing else counts whatsoever.
It is your side that is infantile. When you're willing to admit that liberty, life and education has a value and not just preventing death, then we can have a grown up conversation.
The statistician Jamie Jones says people should look this in lost years rather than lost lives.
For example lockdown may have stopped an 80-year from contracting covid pre-vaccination but caused a 40-year old to miss a diagnosis for life-threatening cancer.
You may be saving 10-years on the one hand, you may be losing 40 on the other. Obviously the variables are enormous, but it is an example.
Er, no. The reason for missed cancer diagnoses was not lockdown but massively reduced hospital capacity owing to the covid pandemic. If lockdown limited covid spread, it will have meant fewer missed cancer cases.
I don't think I ever heard anybody in the health service say that they were too busy with covid to bother with giving people cancer diagnoses. That people who wanted cancer diagnoses would have to wait.
Ever.
Are you sure?
I think hospitals suffered massively reduced capacity due to people being diverted to Covid work. @Foxy and others were taken off routine work and made ready to help with Covid.
The best thing for the hospitals was that people suddenly didn't want to come in any more. My girlfriend is currently dealing with bad hangovers and light headaches in A&E again.
Of course, that means that lots of people with weird lumps or unexplained weight loss also didn't come in. Not good.
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
I fully accept that people would die if I had my way. I looked at both sides of the ledger and have decided that some extras dying of natural causes is not as bad a problem as ten million children's education being harmed and the one million plus deaths alone due to lockdown.
You however refuse to look at or even admit there are two sides of the ledger. For you there is COVID fatalities and absolutely nothing else counts whatsoever.
It is your side that is infantile. When you're willing to admit that liberty, life and education has a value and not just preventing death, then we can have a grown up conversation.
The statistician Jamie Jones says people should look this in lost years rather than lost lives.
For example lockdown may have stopped an 80-year from contracting covid pre-vaccination but caused a 40-year old to miss a diagnosis for life-threatening cancer.
You may be saving 10-years on the one hand, you may be losing 40 on the other. Obviously the variables are enormous, but it is an example.
Er, no. The reason for missed cancer diagnoses was not lockdown but massively reduced hospital capacity owing to the covid pandemic. If lockdown limited covid spread, it will have meant fewer missed cancer cases.
But lockdown didn't limit the time that Covid spread, it dragged it out.
That was explicitly the entire point of lockdown, as said by Boris at the start, to "flatten the sombrero".
Had Covid spread unchecked, then based upon the supposed claim of doubling every 3 days and 5% infected by lockdown 1 then it would have doubled to 100% infected within a fortnight if no lockdown.
Either that, or doubling would have stopped, in which case the premise used is not true.
Having more infections in a shorter time would have meant less could be done for those infected by Covid (as limited availability of resources at the same time) but more could have done for cancer diagnoses etc as Covid surge wouldn't have been dragged out for years.
Is the last part true, that if everyone had covid in the first few weeks there would no longer be any covid?
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
I fully accept that people would die if I had my way. I looked at both sides of the ledger and have decided that some extras dying of natural causes is not as bad a problem as ten million children's education being harmed and the one million plus deaths alone due to lockdown.
You however refuse to look at or even admit there are two sides of the ledger. For you there is COVID fatalities and absolutely nothing else counts whatsoever.
It is your side that is infantile. When you're willing to admit that liberty, life and education has a value and not just preventing death, then we can have a grown up conversation.
The statistician Jamie Jones says people should look this in lost years rather than lost lives.
For example lockdown may have stopped an 80-year from contracting covid pre-vaccination but caused a 40-year old to miss a diagnosis for life-threatening cancer.
You may be saving 10-years on the one hand, you may be losing 40 on the other. Obviously the variables are enormous, but it is an example.
On the other hand, maybe you should look at percentage of remaining life lost?
So, losing a year when you're seven and have eighty years ahead of you if no big deal, but if you're seventy, it's much more significant.
As someone in the middle, opposite for me. Lockdown suited older people more than younger people for lots of reasons. Worst age for lockdown must be 18-30s, not just for the lack of beach holidays either.
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
I fully accept that people would die if I had my way. I looked at both sides of the ledger and have decided that some extras dying of natural causes is not as bad a problem as ten million children's education being harmed and the one million plus deaths alone due to lockdown.
You however refuse to look at or even admit there are two sides of the ledger. For you there is COVID fatalities and absolutely nothing else counts whatsoever.
It is your side that is infantile. When you're willing to admit that liberty, life and education has a value and not just preventing death, then we can have a grown up conversation.
The statistician Jamie Jones says people should look this in lost years rather than lost lives.
For example lockdown may have stopped an 80-year from contracting covid pre-vaccination but caused a 40-year old to miss a diagnosis for life-threatening cancer.
You may be saving 10-years on the one hand, you may be losing 40 on the other. Obviously the variables are enormous, but it is an example.
Er, no. The reason for missed cancer diagnoses was not lockdown but massively reduced hospital capacity owing to the covid pandemic. If lockdown limited covid spread, it will have meant fewer missed cancer cases.
But lockdown didn't limit the time that Covid spread, it dragged it out.
That was explicitly the entire point of lockdown, as said by Boris at the start, to "flatten the sombrero".
Had Covid spread unchecked, then based upon the supposed claim of doubling every 3 days and 5% infected by lockdown 1 then it would have doubled to 100% infected within a fortnight if no lockdown.
Either that, or doubling would have stopped, in which case the premise used is not true.
Having more infections in a shorter time would have meant less could be done for those infected by Covid (as limited availability of resources at the same time) but more could have done for cancer diagnoses etc as Covid surge wouldn't have been dragged out for years.
Slight problem with that. People got covid again and again, esp. before the vaccines. And lots more people would have been incapacitated with long covid. Ergo fewer people in the health service to do other things, as already pointed out.
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
Its not revisionism. For some people it was bloody marvellous. Not everyone needs to be out seeing friends and family to have a fulfilling life.
I am not saying that those people should be considered the norm but to try and claim that there are not plenty of people out there like that is revisionism and denial of the worst kind.
So I hope your blood is suitably boiling.
One day in that third lockdown I went out in my car. And I wondered what would happen if I drove as fast as could into a tree. Luckily I had the presence of mind to snap out of it.
Your smugness about how life was so wonderful for you in lockdown and everyone else should quit going on about it makes me feel physically sick.
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
Curiously, you’ve told us many times how much you enjoyed lockdown
And here you are. Pro lockdown
Lockdown killed people too.
One of the most audacious arguments at the time - since many people would only listen to arguments phrased in terms of how many people would die - was that lockdown would cause more deaths than let-it-rip covid would. Now obviously in the long term this is true, since lockdown made us poorer, resulting in less money to spend on health, and more poor people who have worse health outcomes. But we also tried the argument that in the short term it was also true, due to taking the health focus off anything that wasn't covid. Karol Sikora was one of the strongest proponents of this argument. But the evidence we are seeing now - with excess deaths higher than during covid - suggests he was right. Lockdown led to poorer health outcomes than no-lockdown would have done.
Again, obvious caveat here that there are degrees of lockdown and almost no-one is in reality arguing for let-it-rip - just rather less single-mindedness than we saw.
Andy Cooke's point ( I think) is that poorer health outcomes are not happening post lockdown in other countries, ergo lockdowns cannot be responsible for poorer health outcomes anywhere.
Not exactly. It is: if lockdowns were to cause excess deaths a year or two later, then why only here and not France, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, etc?
If we suggest A causes B and A is common everywhere but B is only found in one place, it makes the suggestion look very questionable and need to be explained.
Contrariwise, the other causes that the deep dives have found (not just the FT, but the Covid Actuaries Group) are ones that have been warned for over many months.
Sikora, as it happens, never explained how further crowding out any capacity in hospitals to do anything other than covid (as, obviously, if you get more and more covid patients in, you'll have less and less in the way of ability to treat anything else) would help to treat other things. (More covid patients and more sickness in doctors and nurses actually equals less capacity to treat anything else - as Whitty patiently explained at the time. To preserve as much capacity to do other healthcare, they needed to reduces the wave of covid patients flooding in. I have a friend who was (successfully) treated for cancer during 2020 thanks to this)
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
I fully accept that people would die if I had my way. I looked at both sides of the ledger and have decided that some extras dying of natural causes is not as bad a problem as ten million children's education being harmed and the one million plus deaths alone due to lockdown.
You however refuse to look at or even admit there are two sides of the ledger. For you there is COVID fatalities and absolutely nothing else counts whatsoever.
It is your side that is infantile. When you're willing to admit that liberty, life and education has a value and not just preventing death, then we can have a grown up conversation.
The statistician Jamie Jones says people should look this in lost years rather than lost lives.
For example lockdown may have stopped an 80-year from contracting covid pre-vaccination but caused a 40-year old to miss a diagnosis for life-threatening cancer.
You may be saving 10-years on the one hand, you may be losing 40 on the other. Obviously the variables are enormous, but it is an example.
Er, no. The reason for missed cancer diagnoses was not lockdown but massively reduced hospital capacity owing to the covid pandemic. If lockdown limited covid spread, it will have meant fewer missed cancer cases.
But lockdown didn't limit the time that Covid spread, it dragged it out.
That was explicitly the entire point of lockdown, as said by Boris at the start, to "flatten the sombrero".
Had Covid spread unchecked, then based upon the supposed claim of doubling every 3 days and 5% infected by lockdown 1 then it would have doubled to 100% infected within a fortnight if no lockdown.
Either that, or doubling would have stopped, in which case the premise used is not true.
Having more infections in a shorter time would have meant less could be done for those infected by Covid (as limited availability of resources at the same time) but more could have done for cancer diagnoses etc as Covid surge wouldn't have been dragged out for years.
Is the last part true, that if everyone had covid in the first few weeks there would no longer be any covid?
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
It's very subjective. For my wife and I, WFH, nice house, garden, edge of the country, no kids. Generally don't go out overmuch, especially in winter. So lockdown was ok. For a lot of people it must have been hell. But we've also not been affected by COVID in our family and friends either.
It was a year of hell for me. Living alone in a one bed flat, I went from being an occasional social drinker in good health who went to the gym three times a week to being fat, depressed and drunk most if not all of the time. My social support networks completely gone. It was essentially months on end in solitary confinement.
I remember finishing an entire bottle of vodka after having not had any interaction with another human being in real life for almost two months, sitting on my bathroom floor crying, unable to sleep, punching myself in the face until I passed out.
I'm better now - off the sauce, back down the gym, a healthy body weight. But I wonder how many months or even years that year of hell took off my life. And I wonder how many people never came back from the same sort of decline I had. People still overweight, suffering mental health, substance abuse, etc, because they went into a downward spiral they couldn't lift themselves out of.
Lockdown was hell for some of us, including me, and I'll never forget the bastards that forced it on us.
Truss has so many big problems I wonder if her team know which to deny first? Not supported by most Tory MPs Cost of Living catastrophe where the solutions are politically or economically untenable A coterie of the wort members of Johnson's government plus a choice of 2019 mince to promote
If they seriously try and market themselves as a "new" government I expect the response will get pretty brutal. No government would get through this winter without scars. None. But across Europe governments are showing voters they understand the crisis, they are prepared to do whatever it takes, and are putting lots of money into it.
The only money Trussteam are putting up is new debt to give themselves a tax cut, and opening a credit line in the Fetlife store.
*googles Fetlife* ... the things one learns on PB. "FetLife is the Social Network for the BDSM, Fetish & Kinky Community. Like Facebook, but run by kinksters like you and me. We think it is more fun that way."
And there was me thinking it was a harmless website for lovers of feta cheese...
Indeed. The expertise and knowledge of of PBers is impressive, from moths downward.
Intelligent people are often incredibly thick in the real world. Any truly clever person wouldn’t come near an obscure querulous blog.
And young people are a bit dim
I just watched this hilarious but terrifying video of American Gen Zs failing to answer the most basic questions
Perhaps the best is the girl who is asked “if you drive at 60mph for an hour, how far will you go?”
First she says “that’s fast” then she says “I don’t drive”
They exhibit mental retardation. Yet seem apparently normal. We are doomed (part 739)
Silly question, because without defining the type of road and what is meant by 'how far' the answer is unknowable.
If (for example) you do 60mph for one hour round a mile long circuit, the correct answer is 'no distance.'
I did one of those motorway awareness courses just recently, and one of the questions they ask you to guess is, if someone who normally drives at 80mph and their journey takes them an hour, how much longer will it take it they drive at 70mph? The group all guessed various numbers of minutes but the official course answer is apparently 86 seconds. How they arrived at that answer, I do not know.
Eh ? I make it 8 minutes 34 seconds.
I said 8 mins. But it wasn’t worth arguing about on the course, the object just being to get it to finish.
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
Its not revisionism. For some people it was bloody marvellous. Not everyone needs to be out seeing friends and family to have a fulfilling life.
I am not saying that those people should be considered the norm but to try and claim that there are not plenty of people out there like that is revisionism and denial of the worst kind.
So I hope your blood is suitably boiling.
One day in that third lockdown I went out in my car. And I wondered what would happen if I drove as fast as could into a tree. Luckily I had the presence of mind to snap out of it.
Your smugness about how life was so wonderful for you in lockdown and everyone else should quit going on about it makes me feel physically sick.
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
I fully accept that people would die if I had my way. I looked at both sides of the ledger and have decided that some extras dying of natural causes is not as bad a problem as ten million children's education being harmed and the one million plus deaths alone due to lockdown.
You however refuse to look at or even admit there are two sides of the ledger. For you there is COVID fatalities and absolutely nothing else counts whatsoever.
It is your side that is infantile. When you're willing to admit that liberty, life and education has a value and not just preventing death, then we can have a grown up conversation.
The statistician Jamie Jones says people should look this in lost years rather than lost lives.
For example lockdown may have stopped an 80-year from contracting covid pre-vaccination but caused a 40-year old to miss a diagnosis for life-threatening cancer.
You may be saving 10-years on the one hand, you may be losing 40 on the other. Obviously the variables are enormous, but it is an example.
Er, no. The reason for missed cancer diagnoses was not lockdown but massively reduced hospital capacity owing to the covid pandemic. If lockdown limited covid spread, it will have meant fewer missed cancer cases.
I don't think I ever heard anybody in the health service say that they were too busy with covid to bother with giving people cancer diagnoses. That people who wanted cancer diagnoses would have to wait.
Ever.
Are you sure?
I think hospitals suffered massively reduced capacity due to people being diverted to Covid work. @Foxy and others were taken off routine work and made ready to help with Covid.
Yes I am sure.
We were told to 'stay at home to save lives'. Contact with fellow human beings was, at times, restricted and regulated. Including contact with doctors. And dentists, which were entirely shut, prompting some awful events.
You couldn't see them because we were locked down. No health official ever said 'keep your medical emergency on hold because we are too busy with covid to see you'.
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
I fully accept that people would die if I had my way. I looked at both sides of the ledger and have decided that some extras dying of natural causes is not as bad a problem as ten million children's education being harmed and the one million plus deaths alone due to lockdown.
You however refuse to look at or even admit there are two sides of the ledger. For you there is COVID fatalities and absolutely nothing else counts whatsoever.
It is your side that is infantile. When you're willing to admit that liberty, life and education has a value and not just preventing death, then we can have a grown up conversation.
The statistician Jamie Jones says people should look this in lost years rather than lost lives.
For example lockdown may have stopped an 80-year from contracting covid pre-vaccination but caused a 40-year old to miss a diagnosis for life-threatening cancer.
You may be saving 10-years on the one hand, you may be losing 40 on the other. Obviously the variables are enormous, but it is an example.
Er, no. The reason for missed cancer diagnoses was not lockdown but massively reduced hospital capacity owing to the covid pandemic. If lockdown limited covid spread, it will have meant fewer missed cancer cases.
But lockdown didn't limit the time that Covid spread, it dragged it out.
That was explicitly the entire point of lockdown, as said by Boris at the start, to "flatten the sombrero".
Had Covid spread unchecked, then based upon the supposed claim of doubling every 3 days and 5% infected by lockdown 1 then it would have doubled to 100% infected within a fortnight if no lockdown.
Either that, or doubling would have stopped, in which case the premise used is not true.
Having more infections in a shorter time would have meant less could be done for those infected by Covid (as limited availability of resources at the same time) but more could have done for cancer diagnoses etc as Covid surge wouldn't have been dragged out for years.
Is the last part true, that if everyone had covid in the first few weeks there would no longer be any covid?
No. For the same reason that people have had it multiple times. It mutates.
Very interesting broadcast by Prof. O'Brien. He didn't rate the German response as being that effective. Could they become a drag on the EU? Mama Merkel did her best to help Putin.
I wonder whether we will soon be seeing deflation?
The inflation earlier in this crisis will in a few months be rolling out of the figures, but other than gas for this winter the futures contracts for many commodities seem to be stabilising or coming back down.
Similarly prices on things in the shops seem to be stabilising or coming back down. Yesterday I saw a litre or unleaded at 161.9 which is still higher than twelve months ago, but is significant deflation from a few months ago. Some other stuff that had gone up in the shops seem to be coming back down now too. A 24 case of Coke Zero used to always cost us £7 on promotion (virtually always on promotion, like DFS), last few months it's been £8 on promotion. Today saw it back at £7 again.
In a few months time once the initial hike rolls out of the system, we might start seeing some rapid falls in inflation, or even deflation?
Promo prices have got zero to do with cost price inflation. Its just (a) how much £ the manufacturer wants to invest and (b) what promo mechanic the retailer wants to focus on in any given promotional period.
The reality is that all this data on inflation/deflation is pretty questionable, given the historically unprecedented amount of choice that people have. So much of the time you can adjust to inflation by making different consumer choices. There are few things that are really constant in all of this. But rising costs of food (raw materials), fuel and electricity etc have an unavoidable and disproportionate impact on people with low incomes, so this is where intervention should occur.
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
I fully accept that people would die if I had my way. I looked at both sides of the ledger and have decided that some extras dying of natural causes is not as bad a problem as ten million children's education being harmed and the one million plus deaths alone due to lockdown.
You however refuse to look at or even admit there are two sides of the ledger. For you there is COVID fatalities and absolutely nothing else counts whatsoever.
It is your side that is infantile. When you're willing to admit that liberty, life and education has a value and not just preventing death, then we can have a grown up conversation.
The statistician Jamie Jones says people should look this in lost years rather than lost lives.
For example lockdown may have stopped an 80-year from contracting covid pre-vaccination but caused a 40-year old to miss a diagnosis for life-threatening cancer.
You may be saving 10-years on the one hand, you may be losing 40 on the other. Obviously the variables are enormous, but it is an example.
Er, no. The reason for missed cancer diagnoses was not lockdown but massively reduced hospital capacity owing to the covid pandemic. If lockdown limited covid spread, it will have meant fewer missed cancer cases.
I don't think I ever heard anybody in the health service say that they were too busy with covid to bother with giving people cancer diagnoses. That people who wanted cancer diagnoses would have to wait.
Ever.
OK, but how many did you hear saying I can't give you a cancer diagnosis because of lockdown? No health professional was ever prevented by the rules from going to work and no patient was prevented from going out to see them
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
Its not revisionism. For some people it was bloody marvellous. Not everyone needs to be out seeing friends and family to have a fulfilling life.
I am not saying that those people should be considered the norm but to try and claim that there are not plenty of people out there like that is revisionism and denial of the worst kind.
So I hope your blood is suitably boiling.
Exactly. I was very conscious of people like @Leon living in a one bed flat, particularly if there is no garden. It must have been hell. But for me, both my children and girlfriend of of one of my children came to live with us having all been kicked out of Uni. I have a large house and a large garden. It was great. Loneliness was never going to be an issue. Same for getting outside. I had to set up the internet for coping with 5 simultaneous conference calls and there was the worry of our other home being abandoned, but frankly in the great scheme of things we were very very lucky compared to most.
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
Its not revisionism. For some people it was bloody marvellous. Not everyone needs to be out seeing friends and family to have a fulfilling life.
I am not saying that those people should be considered the norm but to try and claim that there are not plenty of people out there like that is revisionism and denial of the worst kind.
So I hope your blood is suitably boiling.
Why on earth would you gloat about something like lockdown? It’s great for you that you loved it, but for millions it was cruel torture and we are still paying an unknown and grievous price
So: shut the fuck up. Stop exulting in something which caused untold misery
Says the man (and I use that term only very loosely) who was wailing about how we were all going to die and complaining that the government were not doing enough to keep us all safe. Perhaps if you had had more balls back when we were at the start of the pandemic you would have a right to say that. You didn't. You were a coward thrashing about and wailing about the end of the world.
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
I fully accept that people would die if I had my way. I looked at both sides of the ledger and have decided that some extras dying of natural causes is not as bad a problem as ten million children's education being harmed and the one million plus deaths alone due to lockdown.
You however refuse to look at or even admit there are two sides of the ledger. For you there is COVID fatalities and absolutely nothing else counts whatsoever.
It is your side that is infantile. When you're willing to admit that liberty, life and education has a value and not just preventing death, then we can have a grown up conversation.
The statistician Jamie Jones says people should look this in lost years rather than lost lives.
For example lockdown may have stopped an 80-year from contracting covid pre-vaccination but caused a 40-year old to miss a diagnosis for life-threatening cancer.
You may be saving 10-years on the one hand, you may be losing 40 on the other. Obviously the variables are enormous, but it is an example.
Er, no. The reason for missed cancer diagnoses was not lockdown but massively reduced hospital capacity owing to the covid pandemic. If lockdown limited covid spread, it will have meant fewer missed cancer cases.
But lockdown didn't limit the time that Covid spread, it dragged it out.
That was explicitly the entire point of lockdown, as said by Boris at the start, to "flatten the sombrero".
Had Covid spread unchecked, then based upon the supposed claim of doubling every 3 days and 5% infected by lockdown 1 then it would have doubled to 100% infected within a fortnight if no lockdown.
Either that, or doubling would have stopped, in which case the premise used is not true.
Having more infections in a shorter time would have meant less could be done for those infected by Covid (as limited availability of resources at the same time) but more could have done for cancer diagnoses etc as Covid surge wouldn't have been dragged out for years.
The "flatten the sombrero" was the original "Sweden-type" strategy. It was pursued for about three weeks or so before it was realised that this wouldn't work. Because the IFR and especially the IHR were way too high.
Lockdowns/restrictions meant that only 10% of people had had covid by the time December 2020 rolled around and the first vaccines were on the way.
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
Its not revisionism. For some people it was bloody marvellous. Not everyone needs to be out seeing friends and family to have a fulfilling life.
I am not saying that those people should be considered the norm but to try and claim that there are not plenty of people out there like that is revisionism and denial of the worst kind.
So I hope your blood is suitably boiling.
One day in that third lockdown I went out in my car. And I wondered what would happen if I drove as fast as could into a tree. Luckily I had the presence of mind to snap out of it.
Your smugness about how life was so wonderful for you in lockdown and everyone else should quit going on about it makes me feel physically sick.
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
I fully accept that people would die if I had my way. I looked at both sides of the ledger and have decided that some extras dying of natural causes is not as bad a problem as ten million children's education being harmed and the one million plus deaths alone due to lockdown.
You however refuse to look at or even admit there are two sides of the ledger. For you there is COVID fatalities and absolutely nothing else counts whatsoever.
It is your side that is infantile. When you're willing to admit that liberty, life and education has a value and not just preventing death, then we can have a grown up conversation.
The statistician Jamie Jones says people should look this in lost years rather than lost lives.
For example lockdown may have stopped an 80-year from contracting covid pre-vaccination but caused a 40-year old to miss a diagnosis for life-threatening cancer.
You may be saving 10-years on the one hand, you may be losing 40 on the other. Obviously the variables are enormous, but it is an example.
Er, no. The reason for missed cancer diagnoses was not lockdown but massively reduced hospital capacity owing to the covid pandemic. If lockdown limited covid spread, it will have meant fewer missed cancer cases.
I don't think I ever heard anybody in the health service say that they were too busy with covid to bother with giving people cancer diagnoses. That people who wanted cancer diagnoses would have to wait.
Ever.
Are you sure?
I think hospitals suffered massively reduced capacity due to people being diverted to Covid work. @Foxy and others were taken off routine work and made ready to help with Covid.
Yes I am sure.
We were told to 'stay at home to save lives'. Contact with fellow human beings was, at times, restricted and regulated. Including contact with doctors. And dentists, which were entirely shut, prompting some awful events.
You couldn't see them because we were locked down. No health official ever said 'keep your medical emergency on hold because we are too busy with covid to see you'.
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
It's very subjective. For my wife and I, WFH, nice house, garden, edge of the country, no kids. Generally don't go out overmuch, especially in winter. So lockdown was ok. For a lot of people it must have been hell. But we've also not been affected by COVID in our family and friends either.
It was a year of hell for me. Living alone in a one bed flat, I went from being an occasional social drinker in good health who went to the gym three times a week to being fat, depressed and drunk most if not all of the time. My social support networks completely gone. It was essentially months on end in solitary confinement.
I remember finishing an entire bottle of vodka after having not had any interaction with another human being in real life for almost two months, sitting on my bathroom floor crying, unable to sleep, punching myself in the face until I passed out.
I'm better now - off the sauce, back down the gym, a healthy body weight. But I wonder how many months or even years that year of hell took off my life. And I wonder how many people never came back from the same sort of decline I had. People still overweight, suffering mental health, substance abuse, etc, because they went into a downward spiral they couldn't lift themselves out of.
Lockdown was hell for some of us, including me, and I'll never forget the bastards that forced it on us.
Not to worry. @NickPalmer assures us lockdown was a “minor inconvenience” and @Richard_Tyndall says it was “bloody marvellous” so you can quit your bitching
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
Its not revisionism. For some people it was bloody marvellous. Not everyone needs to be out seeing friends and family to have a fulfilling life.
I am not saying that those people should be considered the norm but to try and claim that there are not plenty of people out there like that is revisionism and denial of the worst kind.
So I hope your blood is suitably boiling.
One day in that third lockdown I went out in my car. And I wondered what would happen if I drove as fast as could into a tree. Luckily I had the presence of mind to snap out of it.
Your smugness about how life was so wonderful for you in lockdown and everyone else should quit going on about it makes me feel physically sick.
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
Its not revisionism. For some people it was bloody marvellous. Not everyone needs to be out seeing friends and family to have a fulfilling life.
I am not saying that those people should be considered the norm but to try and claim that there are not plenty of people out there like that is revisionism and denial of the worst kind.
So I hope your blood is suitably boiling.
One day in that third lockdown I went out in my car. And I wondered what would happen if I drove as fast as could into a tree. Luckily I had the presence of mind to snap out of it.
Your smugness about how life was so wonderful for you in lockdown and everyone else should quit going on about it makes me feel physically sick.
Good you deserve it for being so fecking selfish.
The point is you can have your chill, lockdown friendly life and no one cares. Good for you. Happy for you.
It's when people selfishly impose their own view on people in very different circumstances that is so frustrating. I'd have happily swapped my lockdown existence with yours.
I still remember that radio phone in where someone in Edinburgh wanted to ban under 30s from pubs as it made them feel unsafe when they went out for a drink. Fuck off.
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
Its not revisionism. For some people it was bloody marvellous. Not everyone needs to be out seeing friends and family to have a fulfilling life.
I am not saying that those people should be considered the norm but to try and claim that there are not plenty of people out there like that is revisionism and denial of the worst kind.
So I hope your blood is suitably boiling.
One day in that third lockdown I went out in my car. And I wondered what would happen if I drove as fast as could into a tree. Luckily I had the presence of mind to snap out of it.
Your smugness about how life was so wonderful for you in lockdown and everyone else should quit going on about it makes me feel physically sick.
Good you deserve it for being so fecking selfish.
There's no inherent moral virtue in either position. It's no more inherently selfish to be pro lockdown than anti lockdown. Both approaches have losers. We are just arguing over wht the utilotairan solution is. My view is that the utilotarian solution would have been rather less lockdown.
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
I fully accept that people would die if I had my way. I looked at both sides of the ledger and have decided that some extras dying of natural causes is not as bad a problem as ten million children's education being harmed and the one million plus deaths alone due to lockdown.
You however refuse to look at or even admit there are two sides of the ledger. For you there is COVID fatalities and absolutely nothing else counts whatsoever.
It is your side that is infantile. When you're willing to admit that liberty, life and education has a value and not just preventing death, then we can have a grown up conversation.
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
Its not revisionism. For some people it was bloody marvellous. Not everyone needs to be out seeing friends and family to have a fulfilling life.
I am not saying that those people should be considered the norm but to try and claim that there are not plenty of people out there like that is revisionism and denial of the worst kind.
So I hope your blood is suitably boiling.
One day in that third lockdown I went out in my car. And I wondered what would happen if I drove as fast as could into a tree. Luckily I had the presence of mind to snap out of it.
Your smugness about how life was so wonderful for you in lockdown and everyone else should quit going on about it makes me feel physically sick.
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
Its not revisionism. For some people it was bloody marvellous. Not everyone needs to be out seeing friends and family to have a fulfilling life.
I am not saying that those people should be considered the norm but to try and claim that there are not plenty of people out there like that is revisionism and denial of the worst kind.
So I hope your blood is suitably boiling.
One day in that third lockdown I went out in my car. And I wondered what would happen if I drove as fast as could into a tree. Luckily I had the presence of mind to snap out of it.
Your smugness about how life was so wonderful for you in lockdown and everyone else should quit going on about it makes me feel physically sick.
Good you deserve it for being so fecking selfish.
There's no inherent moral virtue in either position. It's no more inherently selfish to be pro lockdown than anti lockdown. Both approaches have losers. We are just arguing over wht the utilotairan solution is. My view is that the utilotarian solution would have been rather less lockdown.
Quite. Most of us manage to have, or at least try to have, own-gender-independent views on eg abortion. It shouldn't be too much of a reach to see that Lockdown is fine in my personal circumstances is not mature moral thinking.
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
Its not revisionism. For some people it was bloody marvellous. Not everyone needs to be out seeing friends and family to have a fulfilling life.
I am not saying that those people should be considered the norm but to try and claim that there are not plenty of people out there like that is revisionism and denial of the worst kind.
So I hope your blood is suitably boiling.
One day in that third lockdown I went out in my car. And I wondered what would happen if I drove as fast as could into a tree. Luckily I had the presence of mind to snap out of it.
Your smugness about how life was so wonderful for you in lockdown and everyone else should quit going on about it makes me feel physically sick.
Good you deserve it for being so fecking selfish.
Shut up, c*nt
Why, what will you do? Cry again?
I’ll look forward to the next pandemic which will hopefully be better aimed at weird fat friendless freaks in Lincolnshire who positively enjoy the suffering of others. I’ll try not to clap when you double over and cough up a lung you obese creepaloid
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
Its not revisionism. For some people it was bloody marvellous. Not everyone needs to be out seeing friends and family to have a fulfilling life.
I am not saying that those people should be considered the norm but to try and claim that there are not plenty of people out there like that is revisionism and denial of the worst kind.
So I hope your blood is suitably boiling.
One day in that third lockdown I went out in my car. And I wondered what would happen if I drove as fast as could into a tree. Luckily I had the presence of mind to snap out of it.
Your smugness about how life was so wonderful for you in lockdown and everyone else should quit going on about it makes me feel physically sick.
Good you deserve it for being so fecking selfish.
The point is you can have your chill, lockdown friendly life and no one cares. Good for you. Happy for you.
It's when people selfishly impose their own view on people in very different circumstances that is so frustrating. I'd have happily swapped my lockdown existence with yours.
I still remember that radio phone in where someone in Edinburgh wanted to ban under 30s from pubs as it made them feel unsafe when they went out for a drink. Fuck off.
If you take a step back the comment that triggered this was the claim that some of us claiming that for us it wasn't so bad was 'revisionism'. A genuinely stupid comment from someone who refuses to accept anything but their own blinkered world view.
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
I fully accept that people would die if I had my way. I looked at both sides of the ledger and have decided that some extras dying of natural causes is not as bad a problem as ten million children's education being harmed and the one million plus deaths alone due to lockdown.
You however refuse to look at or even admit there are two sides of the ledger. For you there is COVID fatalities and absolutely nothing else counts whatsoever.
It is your side that is infantile. When you're willing to admit that liberty, life and education has a value and not just preventing death, then we can have a grown up conversation.
The statistician Jamie Jones says people should look this in lost years rather than lost lives.
For example lockdown may have stopped an 80-year from contracting covid pre-vaccination but caused a 40-year old to miss a diagnosis for life-threatening cancer.
You may be saving 10-years on the one hand, you may be losing 40 on the other. Obviously the variables are enormous, but it is an example.
Er, no. The reason for missed cancer diagnoses was not lockdown but massively reduced hospital capacity owing to the covid pandemic. If lockdown limited covid spread, it will have meant fewer missed cancer cases.
I don't think I ever heard anybody in the health service say that they were too busy with covid to bother with giving people cancer diagnoses. That people who wanted cancer diagnoses would have to wait.
Ever.
OK, but how many did you hear saying I can't give you a cancer diagnosis because of lockdown? No health professional was ever prevented by the rules from going to work and no patient was prevented from going out to see them
Ever.
Why do the NHS run adverts to this day saying that 'your NHS wants to see you' if you have symptoms of a serious illness?
It can only be because it was implied in the past that the opposite was the case. For me, the implication was made by lockdown. Quarantine. Stay indoors. Don't see people. Save lives.
OK, this is all getting a bit heated. We actually all agree (I think) that:
1. For some people (M%), lockdown was absolute hell, and it damaged schooling in particular as well as in many cases having a major impact on mental health. 2. For some people (N%), lockdown was unproblematic, and even had benefits in terms of seeing more of the family than in a normal working pattern 3. For many people (100-M-N) it was unpleasant but not hell. 3. Lockdown probably led to a reduction in premature death (compared to no lockdown) by X years for Y people.
We can argue what M, N, X and Y are, and what the relative importance of them is. But I'm not sure we can ever really reach an objective conclusion that justifies us slagging off people (or even Ministers or scientists) who reached a different conclusion.
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
Its not revisionism. For some people it was bloody marvellous. Not everyone needs to be out seeing friends and family to have a fulfilling life.
I am not saying that those people should be considered the norm but to try and claim that there are not plenty of people out there like that is revisionism and denial of the worst kind.
So I hope your blood is suitably boiling.
How are your orchards, Richard? A bit wet to take a turn round them now, I imagine.
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
Its not revisionism. For some people it was bloody marvellous. Not everyone needs to be out seeing friends and family to have a fulfilling life.
I am not saying that those people should be considered the norm but to try and claim that there are not plenty of people out there like that is revisionism and denial of the worst kind.
So I hope your blood is suitably boiling.
One day in that third lockdown I went out in my car. And I wondered what would happen if I drove as fast as could into a tree. Luckily I had the presence of mind to snap out of it.
Your smugness about how life was so wonderful for you in lockdown and everyone else should quit going on about it makes me feel physically sick.
Good you deserve it for being so fecking selfish.
Shut up, c*nt
Why, what will you do? Cry again?
I’ll look forward to the next pandemic which will hopefully be better aimed at weird fat friendless freaks in Lincolnshire who positively enjoy the suffering of others. I’ll try not to clap when you double over and cough up a lung you obese creepaloid
You'll be too busy scurrying off to some secret retreat in Wales whilst screaming about the end of the world. Coward.
I wonder whether we will soon be seeing deflation?
The inflation earlier in this crisis will in a few months be rolling out of the figures, but other than gas for this winter the futures contracts for many commodities seem to be stabilising or coming back down.
Similarly prices on things in the shops seem to be stabilising or coming back down. Yesterday I saw a litre or unleaded at 161.9 which is still higher than twelve months ago, but is significant deflation from a few months ago. Some other stuff that had gone up in the shops seem to be coming back down now too. A 24 case of Coke Zero used to always cost us £7 on promotion (virtually always on promotion, like DFS), last few months it's been £8 on promotion. Today saw it back at £7 again.
In a few months time once the initial hike rolls out of the system, we might start seeing some rapid falls in inflation, or even deflation?
Promo prices have got zero to do with cost price inflation. Its just (a) how much £ the manufacturer wants to invest and (b) what promo mechanic the retailer wants to focus on in any given promotional period.
Even when the promo price is virtually perpetual?
If paying full price for a product is as rare as paying full price for a DFS sofa then surely the "promo price" is simply "the price".
I wonder whether we will soon be seeing deflation?
The inflation earlier in this crisis will in a few months be rolling out of the figures, but other than gas for this winter the futures contracts for many commodities seem to be stabilising or coming back down.
Similarly prices on things in the shops seem to be stabilising or coming back down. Yesterday I saw a litre or unleaded at 161.9 which is still higher than twelve months ago, but is significant deflation from a few months ago. Some other stuff that had gone up in the shops seem to be coming back down now too. A 24 case of Coke Zero used to always cost us £7 on promotion (virtually always on promotion, like DFS), last few months it's been £8 on promotion. Today saw it back at £7 again.
In a few months time once the initial hike rolls out of the system, we might start seeing some rapid falls in inflation, or even deflation?
Promo prices have got zero to do with cost price inflation. Its just (a) how much £ the manufacturer wants to invest and (b) what promo mechanic the retailer wants to focus on in any given promotional period.
Even when the promo price is virtually perpetual?
If paying full price for a product is as rare as paying full price for a DFS sofa then surely the "promo price" is simply "the price".
But the promo price only applies to some shops. You won't get it in, for instance, corner shops.
Edit: and if it is the supermarket loss leader anyway, then the maths are going to be wrong in any case (so to speak).
The only people who really enjoyed lockdown are fat smelly weirdos like @Richard_Tyndall who have zero social life due to their body hygiene issues, and lack of personal wit, and generally live a miserable life due to being friendless
Suddenly during lockdown their grotesque social isolation became a kind of virtue, and their stage 5 obesity was disguised by everyone else getting fat, as well
I genuinely believe this. Lockdown was enjoyed by pungent, repressed, unpopular, warty-faced, hog-like, worm-sucking, anti-social sexual perverts like @Richard_Tyndall
It was the Revenge of the Nerds. It was the Revenge of the Richard Tyndalls. Him and his favourite uncle, the founder of the National Front. I hope they both enjoyed it, they probably spent it together
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
Its not revisionism. For some people it was bloody marvellous. Not everyone needs to be out seeing friends and family to have a fulfilling life.
I am not saying that those people should be considered the norm but to try and claim that there are not plenty of people out there like that is revisionism and denial of the worst kind.
So I hope your blood is suitably boiling.
How are your orchards, Richard? A bit wet to take a turn round them now, I imagine.
Happily yes. We needed the rain badly, particularly as it has been such a good year for fruit so far. I am hoping for a lot more but it seems to have passed now.
OK, this is all getting a bit heated. We actually all agree (I think) that:
1. For some people (M%), lockdown was absolute hell, and it damaged schooling in particular as well as in many cases having a major impact on mental health. 2. For some people (N%), lockdown was unproblematic, and even had benefits in terms of seeing more of the family than in a normal working pattern 3. For many people (100-M-N) it was unpleasant but not hell. 3. Lockdown probably led to a reduction in premature death (compared to no lockdown) by X years for Y people.
We can argue what M, N, X and Y are, and what the relative importance of them is. But I'm not sure we can ever really reach an objective conclusion that justifies us slagging off people (or even Ministers or scientists) who reached a different conclusion.
You miss one out.
5. Lockdown probably led to an increase in premature death (compared to no lockdown) by A years for B people.
Some people want to deny that A/B exists. I believe it does exist.
I wonder whether we will soon be seeing deflation?
The inflation earlier in this crisis will in a few months be rolling out of the figures, but other than gas for this winter the futures contracts for many commodities seem to be stabilising or coming back down.
Similarly prices on things in the shops seem to be stabilising or coming back down. Yesterday I saw a litre or unleaded at 161.9 which is still higher than twelve months ago, but is significant deflation from a few months ago. Some other stuff that had gone up in the shops seem to be coming back down now too. A 24 case of Coke Zero used to always cost us £7 on promotion (virtually always on promotion, like DFS), last few months it's been £8 on promotion. Today saw it back at £7 again.
In a few months time once the initial hike rolls out of the system, we might start seeing some rapid falls in inflation, or even deflation?
Where the hell are the falls coming from with the energy bills heading in ?
Bart is an anecdotal amateur economist he knows these things. If the only items in the basket of goods was a case of Coke Zero and a DFS sofa inflation would be way under control.
Ha ha ha.
I specifically mentioned other things like futures for commodities but all you picked up on was the Coke Zero? How droll.
While cans of Coke Zero coming down by 1/8th of their price from a few months ago may seek like an odd anecdote alone, the more serious point is what has happened to the aluminium market in that time.
Check the 1 year chart for the price of aluminium and you'll see why cans of Coke Zero shot up in price a few months ago, and why they're coming back down in price now.
Right now we are getting inflation figures comparing against prior to Putin's invasion. Next March onwards that rolls out and we start comparing inflation with this year. Many commodities will be cheaper in March 2023 than March 2022.
Unless the price of aluminium goes back up again, in March 2023 it will be 37% cheaper than March 2022.
What's true for aluminium is true for many other commodities too.
The problem you have next year when the inflation figure falls from 18% from the first quarter to 12% for the second quarter steadying itself by second half of the year to 5% the effects have nonetheless been cumulative.
Your voters won't be saying to themselves "fantastic, the headline figure is only 2%", they will be thinking"blimey, I'm still two repayments in arrears on the mortgage and I've had to return the lease car, it's going to be a while before I'm on my feet again."
Will they blame and punish the incumbent Government?
That's not related to what I said though. I never said anything about politics just about whether we might (officially at least) see inflation turn into deflation. 18% inflation followed by 2% deflation still leaves you worse off if you've only had 3% pay rises each year.
If you want an example of where it might feed through into politics, it will be the politicians attempting ratcheting from workers to bon workers via the Triple Lock again.
Pensions to go up by inflation this year, but workers told not to get "inflationary" pay rises. Next year if inflation becomes deflation the triple lock will raise pensions by a metric other than inflation, while no doubt politicians will be arguing that inflation remains a risk and inflationary pay rises shouldn't be granted, again.
The only people who really enjoyed lockdown are fat smelly weirdos like @Richard_Tyndall who have zero social life due to their body hygiene issues, and lack of personal wit, and generally live a miserable life due to being friendless
Suddenly during lockdown their grotesque social isolation became a kind of virtue, and their stage 5 obesity was disguised by everyone else getting fat, as well
I genuinely believe this. Lockdown was enjoyed by pungent, repressed, unpopular, warty-faced, hog-like, worm-sucking, anti-social sexual perverts like @Richard_Tyndall
It was the Revenge of the Nerds. It was the Revenge of the Richard Tyndalls. Him and his favourite uncle, the founder of the National Front. I hope they both enjoyed it, they probably spent it together
Glad to see I touched a nerve Mr Thomas.
I am sure that come the next crisis you will be there on your knees wetting yourself yet again whilst the rest of us just get on with things as best we can.
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
Its not revisionism. For some people it was bloody marvellous. Not everyone needs to be out seeing friends and family to have a fulfilling life.
I am not saying that those people should be considered the norm but to try and claim that there are not plenty of people out there like that is revisionism and denial of the worst kind.
So I hope your blood is suitably boiling.
How are your orchards, Richard? A bit wet to take a turn round them now, I imagine.
Happily yes. We needed the rain badly, particularly as it has been such a good year for fruit so far. I am hoping for a lot more but it seems to have passed now.
You utter *******
There was I making a cheap shot jibe at the fact that for you, as a well off older bloke in a lovely house, having an orchard meant that lockdown was a lot nicer than it was for many, many other people and you go and reply in a charming, engaging manner.
OK, this is all getting a bit heated. We actually all agree (I think) that:
1. For some people (M%), lockdown was absolute hell, and it damaged schooling in particular as well as in many cases having a major impact on mental health. 2. For some people (N%), lockdown was unproblematic, and even had benefits in terms of seeing more of the family than in a normal working pattern 3. For many people (100-M-N) it was unpleasant but not hell. 3. Lockdown probably led to a reduction in premature death (compared to no lockdown) by X years for Y people.
We can argue what M, N, X and Y are, and what the relative importance of them is. But I'm not sure we can ever really reach an objective conclusion that justifies us slagging off people (or even Ministers or scientists) who reached a different conclusion.
Don't worry Nick, you're being trolled here and you didn't say anything wrong.
There would never be an objective conclusion because it is fundamentally about valuing different outcomes with different people placing different weights on the trade-offs.
Most governments acted in the same way once the stats coming out about Covid were realised. It would have crashed the health care systems and would have led many to unnecessarily die of Covid, as well as every other disease. Set against that is the harm to education / liberty. Although getting an education in that sort of climate, might have been challenging.
Most governments went one way, Bart would have done it the other way.
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
Curiously, you’ve told us many times how much you enjoyed lockdown
And here you are. Pro lockdown
Indeed I did enjoy it. That doesn't mean it should be inflicted on people unnecessarily. My dispute is with those who claim it wasn't necessary and who then use false arguments and decide whole groups of people are less important and should just die so that they can get on with their lives without hindrance.
And yes Bart I am looking right at you.
By the way Leon, I should point out that given your histrionics during the pandemic you are the last one to criticise those of us who thought lockdown was necessary.
Yes, the first dozen cycles of the washing machine at the rental property in Penarth would have been set to heavily soiled cottons.
I wonder what bodies piling up outside hospitals would have done for the national mood in Spring 2020.
In any case, Bart has looked at both sides of the ledger, so I'm now satisfied that Covid should have been let rip.
I am Po and I approve of this post
It's not like Let it rip wasn't thoroughly aired as a strategy prior to the first lockdown, I think there was a pic of a Cummings whiteboard? And then there was passionate denials the govt would ever think of such a thing.
But remember that the first set of school closures were meant to last for four weeks: they ended up lasting for six months.
Unless you refer to the Summer and Easter holidays as "School Closures" then that is rather over egging the pudding.
That's not much consolation to those of us who had to keep our kids entertained every day while working, with nothing open.
And with a ban on the kids seeing friends and family under pain of criminal law. The revisionism of “oh it wasn’t so bad” makes my blood boil.
Its not revisionism. For some people it was bloody marvellous. Not everyone needs to be out seeing friends and family to have a fulfilling life.
I am not saying that those people should be considered the norm but to try and claim that there are not plenty of people out there like that is revisionism and denial of the worst kind.
So I hope your blood is suitably boiling.
How are your orchards, Richard? A bit wet to take a turn round them now, I imagine.
Happily yes. We needed the rain badly, particularly as it has been such a good year for fruit so far. I am hoping for a lot more but it seems to have passed now.
You utter *******
There was I making a cheap shot jibe at the fact that for you, as a well off older bloke in a lovely house, having an orchard meant that lockdown was a lot nicer than it was for many, many other people and you go and reply in a charming, engaging manner.
Damn you.
LOL. I must like you too much (and I must be genuinely dense as well) as I took it at face value from a polite poster
Vox pop in Thetford - it's not great for Ms Truss. As always, one wonders about the sampling, but the chap who wants Mr J back does at least suggest some range to it.
My nan spent the final 2.5 years of her life locked down. First in her home due to lockdown, then in a Care Home which never lifted lockdown restrictions even once lockdown was lifted for society.
Two and a half years she was 'alive' but unable to have visits from her loved ones, her Great Grandchildren etc that she loved and lived for pre COVID. Like a million other Britons who died in normal not-excess deaths in that timespan that time taken from her will never be returned to her.
Anyone who multiple years of liberty for people is worthless and an unequivocal price worth paying to evade one single year of risk, knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Years of liberty, years we will never get back to spend with great grandparents/children, had a value too.
What was the price of lockdown? That million deaths on top of the lost education is just the starting point.
And all those hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents who would have died many years early if you had had your way don't count?
Your mind is so twisted and warped against lockdown that you have lost all sense of reason and just want to thrash about shouting at everyone about the unfairness of it all. Yet you would take no responsibility for the deaths you would cause. It is infantile.
I fully accept that people would die if I had my way. I looked at both sides of the ledger and have decided that some extras dying of natural causes is not as bad a problem as ten million children's education being harmed and the one million plus deaths alone due to lockdown.
You however refuse to look at or even admit there are two sides of the ledger. For you there is COVID fatalities and absolutely nothing else counts whatsoever.
It is your side that is infantile. When you're willing to admit that liberty, life and education has a value and not just preventing death, then we can have a grown up conversation.
Liberty, life and education all have a value.
But that value is precisely zero if you are dead.
Of course it is, I don't dispute that. And its non-zero if you're not. If no enforced lockdown people could still voluntarily lockdown and and there would still be far more non-dead people than dead ones.
Simply counting deaths and acting as if they surpass anything else in importance, no matter what, is never valid. Deaths are a factor, but they're just one of many.
At the start of the invasion of Ukraine we kept getting alleged Putinist trolls coming online here saying that Ukraine should swiftly surrender or else Ukrainians would die. I assume, like myself and almost everyone else here, that you disagreed with those trolls? That you considered it right for the Ukrainians to fight if they wanted to, even if there's a higher risk of death?
Having a risk of death is at times acceptable. It isn't beyond the pale or "infantile" to discuss where that line is drawn. It is infantile to say "yeahbut deaths" as if that shuts down the argument on its own unequivocally.
Comments
Private schools already take the piss with inflated predicted grades, doing easier exams etc. Their entire purpose is to game the system to the advantage of the wealthy. Covid just supercharged that. I'm glad to see that that particular scam is over.
No-one with kids would call lockdown a minor inconvenience.
Show me the parent who didn't find himself sat at the top of the stairs, crying. Show me the parent who didn't wake up with the hollow dread of another empty day; or, worse, another day in which he was required to do both his own job, from home, and also his kids' teachers job, and also cook, clean and look after the house. Show me the parent who would describe a lost 18 months of his children's life opportunities as a 'minor inconvenience'.
It still makes me shudder to think of it.
I’d wager by mid 2023 that no one is going to be much talking about inflation.
For example lockdown may have stopped an 80-year from contracting covid pre-vaccination but caused a 40-year old to miss a diagnosis for life-threatening cancer.
You may be saving 10-years on the one hand, you may be losing 40 on the other. Obviously the variables are enormous, but it is an example.
It’s like someone in Cornwall telling Londoners the Blitz was “mildly annoying”
I'm pretty sure that there was a bit of both, but quite a lot more of one than the other.
Your voters won't be saying to themselves "fantastic, the headline figure is only 2%", they will be thinking"blimey, I'm still two repayments in arrears on the mortgage and I've had to return the lease car, it's going to be a while before I'm on my feet again."
Will they blame and punish the incumbent Government?
I tend to agree but then there is history. The last time inflation was a really serious problem, Fed Chairman Paul Volcker put rates up to 20% in 1980.
Ouch.
I do know parents who positively welcomed lockdown, as it meant they switched to working from home and got to see much more of their kids.I also know parents who were utterly miserable throughout. We just can't assume that's everyone's like ourselves.
There are three separate issues:
(1) Gas production
(2) Liquefaction capacity
(3) Transport capacity
(There is also gas import - or regasification capacity - but that isn't such a big deal.)
Of these, the biggest short to medium term issue is transport capacity, as there are only a limited number of LNG vessels.
Worse, diversion of cargoes from Asia and towards Europe has actually cut capacity. Let me explain: a lot of the cargoes going to Asia come from Australasia - the North West Shelf of Australia or Gorgon or Papua New Guinea LNG. An LNG vessel might take 10 to 12 days to get Tokyo or Seoul from Gorgon. So, you can get 1.0-to-1.5 cargoes a month. If you divert that ship to Milford Haven LNG, then suddenly it's taking 25 or 30 days. You are now only getting 0.5 cargoes per month from that single LNG vessel.
New sources of LNG are coming on stream nearer to Europe - Qatar is not running at full capacity (and Pearl GTL is still taking gas), plus there is Israel (Leviathan) and Mozambique. Plus there is more coming out of the US.
But this takes time: rejigging global LNG shipping to maximise capacity is no simple task, given basically every ship is precontracted. (New vessels are coming, but we're probably 12 to 18 months from them making a significant difference.)
So, losing a year when you're seven and have eighty years ahead of you if no big deal, but if you're seventy, it's much more significant.
Ever.
I think hospitals suffered massively reduced capacity due to people being diverted to Covid work. @Foxy and others were taken off routine work and made ready to help with Covid.
IF you are a 7-year old who missed a serious illness diagnosis because the NHS was too busy with covid, that could be potentially life threatening.
So that's 73 years of your life, versus 10.
But we've also not been affected by COVID in our family and friends either.
One of the less severe circles of Dante’s Inferno,
perhaps. Worse than Purgatory
I am not saying that those people should be considered the norm but to try and claim that there are not plenty of people out there like that is revisionism and denial of the worst kind.
So I hope your blood is suitably boiling.
'Kids are bored? Teach them macramé or write and perform a short play. Mental health suffering? Its a price i'm prepared for you to pay for the common good'
A great many let them eat cakers.
That was explicitly the entire point of lockdown, as said by Boris at the start, to "flatten the sombrero".
Had Covid spread unchecked, then based upon the supposed claim of doubling every 3 days and 5% infected by lockdown 1 then it would have doubled to 100% infected within a fortnight if no lockdown.
Either that, or doubling would have stopped, in which case the premise used is not true.
Having more infections in a shorter time would have meant less could be done for those infected by Covid (as limited availability of resources at the same time) but more could have done for cancer diagnoses etc as Covid surge wouldn't have been dragged out for years.
Your smugness about how life was so wonderful for you in lockdown and everyone else should quit going on about it makes me feel physically sick.
And yes Bart I am looking right at you.
By the way Leon, I should point out that given your histrionics during the pandemic you are the last one to criticise those of us who thought lockdown was necessary.
So: shut the fuck up. Stop exulting in something which caused untold misery
Of course, that means that lots of people with weird lumps or unexplained weight loss also didn't come in. Not good.
It is: if lockdowns were to cause excess deaths a year or two later, then why only here and not France, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, etc?
If we suggest A causes B and A is common everywhere but B is only found in one place, it makes the suggestion look very questionable and need to be explained.
Contrariwise, the other causes that the deep dives have found (not just the FT, but the Covid Actuaries Group) are ones that have been warned for over many months.
Sikora, as it happens, never explained how further crowding out any capacity in hospitals to do anything other than covid (as, obviously, if you get more and more covid patients in, you'll have less and less in the way of ability to treat anything else) would help to treat other things.
(More covid patients and more sickness in doctors and nurses actually equals less capacity to treat anything else - as Whitty patiently explained at the time. To preserve as much capacity to do other healthcare, they needed to reduces the wave of covid patients flooding in. I have a friend who was (successfully) treated for cancer during 2020 thanks to this)
I remember finishing an entire bottle of vodka after having not had any interaction with another human being in real life for almost two months, sitting on my bathroom floor crying, unable to sleep, punching myself in the face until I passed out.
I'm better now - off the sauce, back down the gym, a healthy body weight. But I wonder how many months or even years that year of hell took off my life. And I wonder how many people never came back from the same sort of decline I had. People still overweight, suffering mental health, substance abuse, etc, because they went into a downward spiral they couldn't lift themselves out of.
Lockdown was hell for some of us, including me, and I'll never forget the bastards that forced it on us.
We were told to 'stay at home to save lives'. Contact with fellow human beings was, at times, restricted and regulated. Including contact with doctors. And dentists, which were entirely shut, prompting some awful events.
You couldn't see them because we were locked down. No health official ever said 'keep your medical emergency on hold because we are too busy with covid to see you'.
Very interesting broadcast by Prof. O'Brien. He didn't rate the German response as being that effective. Could they become a drag on the EU? Mama Merkel did her best to help Putin.
So much of the time you can adjust to inflation by making different consumer choices.
There are few things that are really constant in all of this.
But rising costs of food (raw materials), fuel and electricity etc have an unavoidable and disproportionate impact on people with low incomes, so this is where intervention should occur.
Ever.
Lockdowns/restrictions meant that only 10% of people had had covid by the time December 2020 rolled around and the first vaccines were on the way.
It's when people selfishly impose their own view on people in very different circumstances that is so frustrating. I'd have happily swapped my lockdown existence with yours.
I still remember that radio phone in where someone in Edinburgh wanted to ban under 30s from pubs as it made them feel unsafe when they went out for a drink. Fuck off.
But that value is precisely zero if you are dead.
It can only be because it was implied in the past that the opposite was the case. For me, the implication was made by lockdown. Quarantine. Stay indoors. Don't see people. Save lives.
1. For some people (M%), lockdown was absolute hell, and it damaged schooling in particular as well as in many cases having a major impact on mental health.
2. For some people (N%), lockdown was unproblematic, and even had benefits in terms of seeing more of the family than in a normal working pattern
3. For many people (100-M-N) it was unpleasant but not hell.
3. Lockdown probably led to a reduction in premature death (compared to no lockdown) by X years for Y people.
We can argue what M, N, X and Y are, and what the relative importance of them is. But I'm not sure we can ever really reach an objective conclusion that justifies us slagging off people (or even Ministers or scientists) who reached a different conclusion.
In any case, Bart has looked at both sides of the ledger, so I'm now satisfied that Covid should have been let rip.
If paying full price for a product is as rare as paying full price for a DFS sofa then surely the "promo price" is simply "the price".
Edit: and if it is the supermarket loss leader anyway, then the maths are going to be wrong in any case (so to speak).
Suddenly during lockdown their grotesque social isolation became a kind of virtue, and their stage 5 obesity was disguised by everyone else getting fat, as well
I genuinely believe this. Lockdown was enjoyed by pungent, repressed, unpopular, warty-faced, hog-like, worm-sucking, anti-social sexual perverts like @Richard_Tyndall
It was the Revenge of the Nerds. It was the Revenge of the Richard Tyndalls. Him and his favourite uncle, the founder of the National Front. I hope they both enjoyed it, they probably spent it together
5. Lockdown probably led to an increase in premature death (compared to no lockdown) by A years for B people.
Some people want to deny that A/B exists. I believe it does exist.
If you want an example of where it might feed through into politics, it will be the politicians attempting ratcheting from workers to bon workers via the Triple Lock again.
Pensions to go up by inflation this year, but workers told not to get "inflationary" pay rises. Next year if inflation becomes deflation the triple lock will raise pensions by a metric other than inflation, while no doubt politicians will be arguing that inflation remains a risk and inflationary pay rises shouldn't be granted, again.
I am sure that come the next crisis you will be there on your knees wetting yourself yet again whilst the rest of us just get on with things as best we can.
There was I making a cheap shot jibe at the fact that for you, as a well off older bloke in a lovely house, having an orchard meant that lockdown was a lot nicer than it was for many, many other people and you go and reply in a charming, engaging manner.
Damn you.
There would never be an objective conclusion because it is fundamentally about valuing different outcomes with different people placing different weights on the trade-offs.
Most governments acted in the same way once the stats coming out about Covid were realised. It would have crashed the health care systems and would have led many to unnecessarily die of Covid, as well as every other disease. Set against that is the harm to education / liberty. Although getting an education in that sort of climate, might have been challenging.
Most governments went one way, Bart would have done it the other way.
It's not like Let it rip wasn't thoroughly aired as a strategy prior to the first lockdown, I think there was a pic of a Cummings whiteboard? And then there was passionate denials the govt would ever think of such a thing.
Labour leads by 9%.
Westminster Voting Intention (24 August):
Labour 42% (-1)
Conservative 33% (+2)
Liberal Democrat 12% (-1)
Green 5% (–)
SNP 4% (-1)
Reform UK 2% (-1)
Other 2% (–)
Changes +/- 21 August
https://t.co/vWKak2jQA7 https://t.co/Ttccdm59lc
I'm assuming you're not another @Leon account, as that would more likely have been Dipsy.
Vox pop in Thetford - it's not great for Ms Truss. As always, one wonders about the sampling, but the chap who wants Mr J back does at least suggest some range to it.
Simply counting deaths and acting as if they surpass anything else in importance, no matter what, is never valid. Deaths are a factor, but they're just one of many.
At the start of the invasion of Ukraine we kept getting alleged Putinist trolls coming online here saying that Ukraine should swiftly surrender or else Ukrainians would die. I assume, like myself and almost everyone else here, that you disagreed with those trolls? That you considered it right for the Ukrainians to fight if they wanted to, even if there's a higher risk of death?
Having a risk of death is at times acceptable. It isn't beyond the pale or "infantile" to discuss where that line is drawn. It is infantile to say "yeahbut deaths" as if that shuts down the argument on its own unequivocally.