BREAKING: Hospital admissions of covid positive patients in England up 48% in a week.
Fourth Covid wave of 2022 now in full effect
At this point the only answer is dark, sardonic laughter, and a stiff scotch before noon
At this point the only answer is to stop worrying about Covid.
I'm not joking when I say if people get sick and die, they get sick and die. We've spent years locked down, we've rolled out is four or five rounds of vaccines now. Seriously, get over it already.
So I only just had it this summer after 3 jabs - the illness itself was a bad flu, I was bedbound for a few days with a high temp, and didn't actually have much in the way of bad lung stuff.
Problem I have now is, a few months after that, I'm still exhausted, I'm having headaches and brainfog, I'm getting muscle aches and chest pain all the time. I used to walk home most days from the office, about 4.5 miles in about an hour depending on weather and if I popped into the shops. I can't do half of that atm without breaking into flopsweats and wheezing.
Even if you think it's fine for people to get sick and die - the long term impact of this won't go away. My doc is assuming it's long covid, but I'm going to go for tests, impacting an already crippled healthcare system. I can't work as efficiently as I have been, my quality of life has dramatically reduced - hell I'm finding doing 30 mins - 1 hour of housework hard. And I'm in my early 30s. We have no idea how long these symptoms will last, or if we can treat them. That's a strain on our healthcare system, a strain on our labour productivity, a strain on society.
And if we keep letting wave after wave hit the populace, the chance people have of getting ill and staying ill gets closer to 1. A nation enfeebled by this is a pretty significant threat, in my view.
I'm sorry you're not feeling good, and hope you're feeling better soon.
Please take what follows as honest discord and not a belittlement of how you're feeling, but with all respect I'm sorry to say that shit happens, viruses exist, and we need to get used to it.
If the healthcare system is crippled, then people will die. If people die, then they come off waiting lists and stop needing pensions, or care, or ... eventually a new equilibrium is found.
Its horrible, and its unpleasant, but its also true. What is the alternative? How do we prevent a rampant virus from spreading? The virus can not be contained or controlled, its hubris to suggest it can be, unless we lockdown for about six months to remove and permanently seal up the borders, permanently prevent international trade and permanently prevent international travel.
Realistically, post-vaccines is as good as it gets.
We can reduce the spread of viruses and other pathogens, and routinely do so. We eradicated smallpox and rinderpest, and are making good progress against polio. We contained SARS and MERS. We work every year to minimise the impact of flu, through vaccinations, through behaviour and through reducing infection in animal populations. We work every year to minimise the impact of HIV/AIDS, through behaviour, testing and contact tracing.
Likewise, there is plenty we can do to reduce COVID-19 cases: good air filtration in buildings, encouraging those with symptoms to not go into work and to wear masks, vaccination campaigns. These methods are effective and they are cost effective. But libertarians like to pretend we’re impotent because they are so allergic* to any form of collective action. Bart’s “let them die in the streets” is perhaps at the extreme end of that…
You're right we do vaccinate against the flu. And I'm all for vaccines for Covid.
I've had 3 vaccines, I doubt I'll have any more but if offered more I would do my bit and get a jab. My grandparents that are still alive have had five vaccines each.
So yes, vaccinated for Covid, like we vaccinate against the flu. Great. But no to masks, or lockdowns, or restrictions or staying at home when you're healthy but a carrier or any other nonsense.
You response seems minimally connected to what I wrote. I didn’t mention a single restriction or lockdowns.
We have public health information campaigns to encourage people to wash their hands after using the toilet. What’s wrong with having public health information campaigns to encourage people to wear a mask and not go into work when they have symptoms of a respiratory infection?
We have sewerage systems to provide clean water (with the occasional outpouring of poo onto beaches under the Conservatives). What’s wrong with having air filtration systems in buildings to provide clean air?
You appear to be ideologically opposed to the mere idea that we can do something about COVID. We have to be impotent to justify your libertarianism, just as others on the right argue that the economy is in such a mess that we are impotent to the markets rather than admit that Truss/Kwarteng got it wrong, just as others on the right argue that there’s nothing we can do to stop Putin, so let’s make Ukraine sue for peace.
Encouraging people to wear a mask is dystopian whereas advising not go into work when you have symptoms of a respiratory infection is common sense. Advising people not to go to work when they have no symptoms yet have bizarrely chosen to take a Covid test (which showed positive) is still an issue I understand. Perhaps Truss could usefully do something about this?
Is it dystopian to encourage people to wear a shirt - cultural norms and societal expectations mean we almost always do wear a shirt, but it is sometimes so warm in my office I'd like to derobe. When conditions change should a different understanding of what is typical, expected or desired also change?
Naughty x2. Covering your face is a deeply unnormal activity for at least our western liberal democracies. It just is.
Will it all become normalised in time with an increase in mask wearing? Probably. Possibly. But as it is today I can understand it being termed dystopian.
A hundred years ago, it was considered unthinkable in the West for an adult to go out without a hat or other head covering (head scarves for working-class women). Even at the time of Kennedy’s election as President, plenty were still shocked at how we went out and about without a hat. He was nicknamed Hatless Jack. I suspect many back then would’ve considered it dystopian to have a future without hat wearing.
Today, hat wearing is much less common. A man wearing a hat is often thought to be a bit of a poseur, maybe a hipster, or one of those people who wears a flat cap to pretend they’re working class when they’re actually an office manager. Women wearing head scarves for religious reasons is actively abhorred by many.
Societies change. No one really knows why hat wearing fell out of style. If there’s a bit more mask wearing in certain contexts and we get a significant reduction in respiratory diseases (old or new ones), I’m not seeing a problem personally.
Seriously?
Hat = cover your hair (or lack of it) plus baseball caps, beanie caps, er, top hats - plenty worn today. Mask = cover your face and all the facial expressions that eg @BartholomewRoberts has explained are so vital for so many reasons.
Are you really equating the social norm of wearing a hat and wearing a mask?
I mean I know we like to argue the toss on here but that is just bizarre.
Interesting thread, which I find slightly more convincing on the pipeline question than the combined opinions of @Leon , @Luckyguy1983 , and @Dura_Ace . FWIW.
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
Or also because they don't trust Europe not to cave to Russia in the Winter and want to cut off that exit. Which would be intolerable.
It IS nonsense. It makes no sense. Whereas it makes perfect sense in every way for Russia to do it.
It may not be true, and I have not even looked at any evidence to endorse or disprove it, but 'nonsense' that 'makes no sense' it aint. They threatened publicly to do it ffs.
Can you point me to where the US threatened to blow up pipelines in the Baltic?
How does US state terrorism in Western Europe keep Europe onside?
How is blowing up the infrastructure in the waters of allied nations something that is in the interests of the US?
Is the US also going to blow up all the other gas pipelines from Russia to Europe?
How does it help the Democrats in the midterms?
But why would russia blow up their own pipeline...remember when you have eliminated the impossible what remains is the truth
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
This is the most likely set of events. However, it holds a mirror up to the Western "Alliance" that few are prepared to look into.
The CDU/CSU Christian Democratic Union suffered defeat in the Bundestag with a proposal to increase military support for Ukraine. In a roll-call vote, 179 MPs voted in favour of the proposal, 476 were against and one abstained, the German public broadcaster ARD reported.
Eliminating any chance of a gas pipeline reduces incentive for more voting along those lines in the Bundestag.
Or increases it.
I mean that vote was after the pipeline sabotage, so doesn't seem to be working...
America’s sabotage is working because you ain’t getting any Russian gas through that pipe ever again
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
This is the most likely set of events. However, it holds a mirror up to the Western "Alliance" that few are prepared to look into.
The CDU/CSU Christian Democratic Union suffered defeat in the Bundestag with a proposal to increase military support for Ukraine. In a roll-call vote, 179 MPs voted in favour of the proposal, 476 were against and one abstained, the German public broadcaster ARD reported.
Eliminating any chance of a gas pipeline reduces incentive for more voting along those lines in the Bundestag.
Or increases it.
I mean that vote was after the pipeline sabotage, so doesn't seem to be working...
With the pipeline operational, the pressure within Germany to do a deal to let the gas flow again would obviously have been a political factor this winter.
Interesting thread, which I find slightly more convincing on the pipeline question than the combined opinions of @Leon , @Luckyguy1983 , and @Dura_Ace . FWIW.
BREAKING: Hospital admissions of covid positive patients in England up 48% in a week.
Fourth Covid wave of 2022 now in full effect
At this point the only answer is dark, sardonic laughter, and a stiff scotch before noon
At this point the only answer is to stop worrying about Covid.
I'm not joking when I say if people get sick and die, they get sick and die. We've spent years locked down, we've rolled out is four or five rounds of vaccines now. Seriously, get over it already.
So I only just had it this summer after 3 jabs - the illness itself was a bad flu, I was bedbound for a few days with a high temp, and didn't actually have much in the way of bad lung stuff.
Problem I have now is, a few months after that, I'm still exhausted, I'm having headaches and brainfog, I'm getting muscle aches and chest pain all the time. I used to walk home most days from the office, about 4.5 miles in about an hour depending on weather and if I popped into the shops. I can't do half of that atm without breaking into flopsweats and wheezing.
Even if you think it's fine for people to get sick and die - the long term impact of this won't go away. My doc is assuming it's long covid, but I'm going to go for tests, impacting an already crippled healthcare system. I can't work as efficiently as I have been, my quality of life has dramatically reduced - hell I'm finding doing 30 mins - 1 hour of housework hard. And I'm in my early 30s. We have no idea how long these symptoms will last, or if we can treat them. That's a strain on our healthcare system, a strain on our labour productivity, a strain on society.
And if we keep letting wave after wave hit the populace, the chance people have of getting ill and staying ill gets closer to 1. A nation enfeebled by this is a pretty significant threat, in my view.
I'm sorry you're not feeling good, and hope you're feeling better soon.
Please take what follows as honest discord and not a belittlement of how you're feeling, but with all respect I'm sorry to say that shit happens, viruses exist, and we need to get used to it.
If the healthcare system is crippled, then people will die. If people die, then they come off waiting lists and stop needing pensions, or care, or ... eventually a new equilibrium is found.
Its horrible, and its unpleasant, but its also true. What is the alternative? How do we prevent a rampant virus from spreading? The virus can not be contained or controlled, its hubris to suggest it can be, unless we lockdown for about six months to remove and permanently seal up the borders, permanently prevent international trade and permanently prevent international travel.
Realistically, post-vaccines is as good as it gets.
We can reduce the spread of viruses and other pathogens, and routinely do so. We eradicated smallpox and rinderpest, and are making good progress against polio. We contained SARS and MERS. We work every year to minimise the impact of flu, through vaccinations, through behaviour and through reducing infection in animal populations. We work every year to minimise the impact of HIV/AIDS, through behaviour, testing and contact tracing.
Likewise, there is plenty we can do to reduce COVID-19 cases: good air filtration in buildings, encouraging those with symptoms to not go into work and to wear masks, vaccination campaigns. These methods are effective and they are cost effective. But libertarians like to pretend we’re impotent because they are so allergic* to any form of collective action. Bart’s “let them die in the streets” is perhaps at the extreme end of that…
You're right we do vaccinate against the flu. And I'm all for vaccines for Covid.
I've had 3 vaccines, I doubt I'll have any more but if offered more I would do my bit and get a jab. My grandparents that are still alive have had five vaccines each.
So yes, vaccinated for Covid, like we vaccinate against the flu. Great. But no to masks, or lockdowns, or restrictions or staying at home when you're healthy but a carrier or any other nonsense.
You response seems minimally connected to what I wrote. I didn’t mention a single restriction or lockdowns.
We have public health information campaigns to encourage people to wash their hands after using the toilet. What’s wrong with having public health information campaigns to encourage people to wear a mask and not go into work when they have symptoms of a respiratory infection?
We have sewerage systems to provide clean water (with the occasional outpouring of poo onto beaches under the Conservatives). What’s wrong with having air filtration systems in buildings to provide clean air?
You appear to be ideologically opposed to the mere idea that we can do something about COVID. We have to be impotent to justify your libertarianism, just as others on the right argue that the economy is in such a mess that we are impotent to the markets rather than admit that Truss/Kwarteng got it wrong, just as others on the right argue that there’s nothing we can do to stop Putin, so let’s make Ukraine sue for peace.
Encouraging people to wear a mask is dystopian whereas advising not go into work when you have symptoms of a respiratory infection is common sense. Advising people not to go to work when they have no symptoms yet have bizarrely chosen to take a Covid test (which showed positive) is still an issue I understand. Perhaps Truss could usefully do something about this?
Is it dystopian to encourage people to wear a shirt - cultural norms and societal expectations mean we almost always do wear a shirt, but it is sometimes so warm in my office I'd like to derobe. When conditions change should a different understanding of what is typical, expected or desired also change?
Naughty x2. Covering your face is a deeply unnormal activity for at least our western liberal democracies. It just is.
Will it all become normalised in time with an increase in mask wearing? Probably. Possibly. But as it is today I can understand it being termed dystopian.
A hundred years ago, it was considered unthinkable in the West for an adult to go out without a hat or other head covering (head scarves for working-class women). Even at the time of Kennedy’s election as President, plenty were still shocked at how we went out and about without a hat. He was nicknamed Hatless Jack. I suspect many back then would’ve considered it dystopian to have a future without hat wearing.
Today, hat wearing is much less common. A man wearing a hat is often thought to be a bit of a poseur, maybe a hipster, or one of those people who wears a flat cap to pretend they’re working class when they’re actually an office manager. Women wearing head scarves for religious reasons is actively abhorred by many.
Societies change. No one really knows why hat wearing fell out of style. If there’s a bit more mask wearing in certain contexts and we get a significant reduction in respiratory diseases (old or new ones), I’m not seeing a problem personally.
DEATH OF KING GEORGE V
('New King arrives in his capital by air' Daily Newspaper)
Spirit of well-shot woodcock, partridge, snipe Flutter and bear him up the Norfolk sky: In that red house in a red mahogany book-case The stamp collection waits with mounts long dry. The big blue eyes are shut which saw wrong clothing And favourite fields and coverts from a horse; Old men in country houses hear clocks ticking Over thick carpets with a deadened force; Old men who never cheated, never doubted, Communicated monthly, sit and stare At the new suburb stretched beyond the runway Where a young man lands hatless from the air.
There was a discussion on here yesterday that the damage to the pipeline might allow Gasprom to claim force majeure under energy supply contracts rather than being in breach. That seems to me to be one of the more plausible explanations.
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
Or also because they don't trust Europe not to cave to Russia in the Winter and want to cut off that exit. Which would be intolerable.
It IS nonsense. It makes no sense. Whereas it makes perfect sense in every way for Russia to do it.
It may not be true, and I have not even looked at any evidence to endorse or disprove it, but 'nonsense' that 'makes no sense' it aint. They threatened publicly to do it ffs.
Can you point me to where the US threatened to blow up pipelines in the Baltic?
How does US state terrorism in Western Europe keep Europe onside?
How is blowing up the infrastructure in the waters of allied nations something that is in the interests of the US?
Is the US also going to blow up all the other gas pipelines from Russia to Europe?
How does it help the Democrats in the midterms?
But why would russia blow up their own pipeline...remember when you have eliminated the impossible what remains is the truth
This is the bunch who blew up apartments buildings in Moscow as a pretext for the Chechen War. With their own citizens inside.
Interesting thread, which I find slightly more convincing on the pipeline question than the combined opinions of @Leon , @Luckyguy1983 , and @Dura_Ace . FWIW.
Interesting thread, which I find slightly more convincing on the pipeline question than the combined opinions of @Leon , @Luckyguy1983 , and @Dura_Ace . FWIW.
Thats the US. We may catch it, yes. The global economy is on the verge of collapsing
22.5% drop? That seems to be volume, not prices.
Hopefully we do get a 50% or so drop in house prices in the UK. Would love to see house prices back at a 3x multiple in the North and a 4x multiple in London, just as it used to be.
Sometimes a bit of pain and disruption is needed to fix the fundamentals. We may need to go through that now.
50% drop in house prices = GFC mark 2, not just a bit of pain and disruption.
Oh well.
Controlled burn-backs are better at preventing rampaging forest fires, but if you don't have them and allow the undergrowth never to be removed then the problems build up until a rampaging forest fire becomes necessary and unpreventable. We're possibly at that point now.
Had we had brief periods of negative equity repeatedly in the past thirty years, then we'd now be in a position where prices were reasonable, as they'd bounced up and down. Unfortunately we've taken a toxic attitude that prices must never fall and they've ratchetted higher and higher to the point it will take a 50% fall to get back to reasonable levels.
Smaller falls more often would have been better, than a major fall at once.
I imagine that even if they do fall it might still be difficult to get a mortgage when your only occupation that you can declare is "amateur keyboard warrior -unpaid"
I find it amusing that you're so invested in my work life balance. I've only been on the site for a few minutes today while I have my lunch, and made fewer posts than many others, but you've still got your hard on for me since I was OK with Brexit and rejected your Europhilia.
Its rather cute you keep trying to make things personal like that, I think you secretly enjoy having people to argue with and maybe just get frustrated that you can't match my intellect or arguments so you just turn personal instead, its a bit like a young boy tugging on a girls pigtails because they like them.
@BartholomewRoberts Can I suggest that you set your intellect on the problem of 'build costs' in the event of the collapse you are hoping for in the housing market. Because no one has ever come up with an adequate response to me on this. The only way for build costs to go down is for the cost of materials and skilled labour to go down. But both are subject to huge inflationary pressure. I think that a collapse in the housing market will lead to housebuilding on the current model to be unviable for many, many years. So you seem to be wanting a future where we have all the problems of a collapse in housebuilding, with no new housing being delivered, whilst household formations increase, and we are also subject to significant inward migration.
Build costs are a fraction of what you quote though.
What you quote seems to be by any independent reporting the all-in cost of a self-built individual home, to personal development standards, without any economies of scale, and incorporating legal costs etc and the cost of land too.
Labour and materials alone are a fraction of that, and can be subject to significant economies of scale.
Its the difference between flatpack furniture costs and custom made oak furniture costs, they're worlds apart.
I am quoting the official figures which are used by chartered surveyors and widely accepted in the industry. They are used in development appraisals which are accepted by planning authorities and the subject of independent reviews when housebuilders put forward major development proposals (ie ones where there are significant economies of scale) These are around the £1.5k - £2k/sqm mark in most parts of England for volume housebuilding, much more for flats. It may be that in Teesside certain builders can get it down to £1000 sqm, but this is most probably due to an abundance of cheap labour (a reflection of comparatively very low living costs) and very basic materials.
On top of this, you have all the costs associated with the service connections, infrastructure, planning costs, sales, developer profit etc.... and of course the land. All this is cheaper in depopulated and poorer regions in the north of the country than in the crowded south.
You are relying on a 'hunch' that this is all nonsense, but without providing any evidence of your own to back this assertion up.
If we have a recession, the evidence is that build prices don't go down that much. If house prices fall dramatically, nothing will get built until confidence returns to the market and end prices rise. Or alternatively, the whole country gets dragged down to point where everything is as cheap as it is now in Teesside, which isn't most peoples idea of the right way forward.
I'm confused why you are so focussed on Teesside. the one house that was mentioned at a particularly low price is that price for multiple reasons - including the fact it's the last house on a fully sold estate...
Other 2/3 bed properties round here are £200,000+
There are housebuilders like Gleeson Homes who sell small estate starter homes starting at £120k. They are about 60-70 sqm so the build cost will be about £1k sqm. I'd guess it is a mix of extremely cheap land, supportive council, no capacity issues with services due to it being a depopulating area, possible grant funding etc, and obviously some economies of scale. But it isn't that representative of the industry as a whole, most housebuilding in these areas will be higher spec and quality and selling well in excess of £200k.
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
Or also because they don't trust Europe not to cave to Russia in the Winter and want to cut off that exit. Which would be intolerable.
It IS nonsense. It makes no sense. Whereas it makes perfect sense in every way for Russia to do it.
It may not be true, and I have not even looked at any evidence to endorse or disprove it, but 'nonsense' that 'makes no sense' it aint. They threatened publicly to do it ffs.
Can you point me to where the US threatened to blow up pipelines in the Baltic?
How does US state terrorism in Western Europe keep Europe onside?
How is blowing up the infrastructure in the waters of allied nations something that is in the interests of the US?
Is the US also going to blow up all the other gas pipelines from Russia to Europe?
How does it help the Democrats in the midterms?
But why would russia blow up their own pipeline...remember when you have eliminated the impossible what remains is the truth
Duh!
a) It's not their pipeline. b) There's no possibility of it ever being used. c) They have increased the price of gas which was otherwise falling. d) They have spread confusion and potential disunity amongst their enemies. I could go on...
When you have eliminated the 'impossible' make sure you've haven't accidentally also eliminated the 'very likely actually'.
Thats the US. We may catch it, yes. The global economy is on the verge of collapsing
22.5% drop? That seems to be volume, not prices.
Hopefully we do get a 50% or so drop in house prices in the UK. Would love to see house prices back at a 3x multiple in the North and a 4x multiple in London, just as it used to be.
Sometimes a bit of pain and disruption is needed to fix the fundamentals. We may need to go through that now.
50% drop in house prices = GFC mark 2, not just a bit of pain and disruption.
Oh well.
Controlled burn-backs are better at preventing rampaging forest fires, but if you don't have them and allow the undergrowth never to be removed then the problems build up until a rampaging forest fire becomes necessary and unpreventable. We're possibly at that point now.
Had we had brief periods of negative equity repeatedly in the past thirty years, then we'd now be in a position where prices were reasonable, as they'd bounced up and down. Unfortunately we've taken a toxic attitude that prices must never fall and they've ratchetted higher and higher to the point it will take a 50% fall to get back to reasonable levels.
Smaller falls more often would have been better, than a major fall at once.
I imagine that even if they do fall it might still be difficult to get a mortgage when your only occupation that you can declare is "amateur keyboard warrior -unpaid"
I find it amusing that you're so invested in my work life balance. I've only been on the site for a few minutes today while I have my lunch, and made fewer posts than many others, but you've still got your hard on for me since I was OK with Brexit and rejected your Europhilia.
Its rather cute you keep trying to make things personal like that, I think you secretly enjoy having people to argue with and maybe just get frustrated that you can't match my intellect or arguments so you just turn personal instead, its a bit like a young boy tugging on a girls pigtails because they like them.
@BartholomewRoberts Can I suggest that you set your intellect on the problem of 'build costs' in the event of the collapse you are hoping for in the housing market. Because no one has ever come up with an adequate response to me on this. The only way for build costs to go down is for the cost of materials and skilled labour to go down. But both are subject to huge inflationary pressure. I think that a collapse in the housing market will lead to housebuilding on the current model to be unviable for many, many years. So you seem to be wanting a future where we have all the problems of a collapse in housebuilding, with no new housing being delivered, whilst household formations increase, and we are also subject to significant inward migration.
Build costs are a fraction of what you quote though.
What you quote seems to be by any independent reporting the all-in cost of a self-built individual home, to personal development standards, without any economies of scale, and incorporating legal costs etc and the cost of land too.
Labour and materials alone are a fraction of that, and can be subject to significant economies of scale.
Its the difference between flatpack furniture costs and custom made oak furniture costs, they're worlds apart.
I am quoting the official figures which are used by chartered surveyors and widely accepted in the industry. They are used in development appraisals which are accepted by planning authorities and the subject of independent reviews when housebuilders put forward major development proposals (ie ones where there are significant economies of scale) These are around the £1.5k - £2k/sqm mark in most parts of England for volume housebuilding, much more for flats. It may be that in Teesside certain builders can get it down to £1000 sqm, but this is most probably due to an abundance of cheap labour (a reflection of comparatively very low living costs) and very basic materials.
On top of this, you have all the costs associated with the service connections, infrastructure, planning costs, sales, developer profit etc.... and of course the land. All this is cheaper in depopulated and poorer regions in the north of the country than in the crowded south.
You are relying on a 'hunch' that this is all nonsense, but without providing any evidence of your own to back this assertion up.
If we have a recession, the evidence is that build prices don't go down that much. If house prices fall dramatically, nothing will get built until confidence returns to the market and end prices rise. Or alternatively, the whole country gets dragged down to point where everything is as cheap as it is now in Teesside, which isn't most peoples idea of the right way forward.
I'm confused why you are so focussed on Teesside. the one house that was mentioned at a particularly low price is that price for multiple reasons - including the fact it's the last house on a fully sold estate...
Other 2/3 bed properties round here are £200,000+
There are housebuilders like Gleeson Homes who sell small estate starter homes starting at £120k. They are about 60-70 sqm so the build cost will be about £1k sqm. I'd guess it is a mix of extremely cheap land, supportive council, no capacity issues with services due to it being a depopulating area, possible grant funding etc, and obviously some economies of scale. But it isn't that representative of the industry as a whole, most housebuilding in these areas will be higher spec and quality and selling well in excess of £200k.
Most of the cost of a house in much of the South of the U.K. is the land. Look at insurance costs for rebuilds…..
- He doesn't say anything about blowing anything up.
- Biden smirking is par for the course when he can't remember the answer he's supposed to give to a question.
- Germany halted Nordstream 2 on 22 February. There was already zero chance of it actually starting any time soon (if ever)
All that has been achieved so far by the sabotage is the price of gas has gone up, and a precedent has been set for destroying western European infrastructure.
The Times came out with the bald assertion. Russia did it. Now? A quiet but definite change of mind, and an article subtly edited
"Update: these claims & quotes (Russia "probably premeditated and planned for" sabotage) have been deleted from the new version of The Times' story, which is a lot more cautious. Original below.
Verdict? Western intelligence agencies and therefore western governments are in little doubt. America did it. But no one will ever say it, and no one will ever "know"
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
Or also because they don't trust Europe not to cave to Russia in the Winter and want to cut off that exit. Which would be intolerable.
It IS nonsense. It makes no sense. Whereas it makes perfect sense in every way for Russia to do it.
It may not be true, and I have not even looked at any evidence to endorse or disprove it, but 'nonsense' that 'makes no sense' it aint. They threatened publicly to do it ffs.
Can you point me to where the US threatened to blow up pipelines in the Baltic?
How does US state terrorism in Western Europe keep Europe onside?
How is blowing up the infrastructure in the waters of allied nations something that is in the interests of the US?
Is the US also going to blow up all the other gas pipelines from Russia to Europe?
How does it help the Democrats in the midterms?
You seem to think something cannot be true, and cannot be happening, simply because you dislike the implications
We saw similar reactions to Brexit and early Covid
Well, of course it could be true. It's just extremely unlikely. Your own reactions to practically everything show that you have a pretty tenuous connection to reality most of the time.
Jawohl, dumbkopf
Check the Biden video. America did it
Why would they do it now? The consensus is that Europe will never again rely on Russian energy, so why destroy the pipeline now?
Seems like madness to me. Imagine if it leaked that the US had destroyed a Russian/German pipeline. it just seems like pretext for the Russians to look at NATO cables and pipelines.
Is this really an action that Biden would agree to? Its actively hostile, conflagratory and makes no difference to European energy policy.
BREAKING: Hospital admissions of covid positive patients in England up 48% in a week.
Fourth Covid wave of 2022 now in full effect
At this point the only answer is dark, sardonic laughter, and a stiff scotch before noon
At this point the only answer is to stop worrying about Covid.
I'm not joking when I say if people get sick and die, they get sick and die. We've spent years locked down, we've rolled out is four or five rounds of vaccines now. Seriously, get over it already.
We haven't "spent years locked down".
Yes we have. They lasted for a period of years and at any time during that period we didn't know when the next one was going to occur.
Please don't let's go down the old, rich blokes in charming houses wondering what the big fuss about lockdown route is again.
Yes i imagine lockdown in a nice house in Hampstead was quite pleasant..a walk on the heath everyday whilst tutting at the covidiots sitting on park benches
Indeed.
But hasn't the opposite been shown? That those most in favour of lockdowns - the young, the precarious and the like - also had the worst experience of lockdown. They just understood that the sacrifice was necessary for society to keep functioning. Whereas a lot of the people moaning the most, and demanding people go into the office asap, are rich old guys who do have mansions, and in many cases, have worked from home as journalists for years...
I don't know I haven't read the breakdowns. I would be amazed (but then PB knowledge is amazing) if the young were in favour of lockdowns when as far as I can tell they almost continuously ignored them throughout the years they were in operation. Or is it one of those survey answer questions to "would you like world peace" or "should there be higher taxes".
I’d have to dig deeper on the question, but we know some predictors of poor adherence to guidelines or regulations across the pandemic. Being young and male were predictive of lower adherence. But also we saw those who struggled with following restrictions were (unsurprisingly) less likely to follow them, so financial distress and having dependent children at home were both predictive of poor adherence.
Meanwhile, the young were, if I remember correctly, also more worried about COVID-19 on average than the middle aged. That may not be the same youngsters who were following regulations less. I’d guess that there was a greater dichotomy: some ignoring the rules, others very worried. We’re working on a paper looking at predictors of worry across the pandemic. Remind me to report back in a few months…
Super interesting yes please do.
My (ANECDOTAL) understanding from every young person I know and have spoken to about it (nephews, neices, sons/daughters of friends) was that there was wholesale attempted circumvention of the rules. This was mainly at universities where I know there were also some pretty hefty compliance measures by the unis eg threatening to chuck them out/report them to the police. It is also a pretty ABC1 kind of demographic so maybe this is a factor.
Would be very interested to hear your findings.
My (equally anecdotal) understanding from young people in my family (cousins, siblings, and their friends) was a big concern for the elder generation in our family (my maternal grandparents are still with us, and my paternal ones managed most of the lockdowns before passing). That may be anomalous though, as my dad and sister lived with my grandmother, and my family is very close and so weekly meals with grandparents became weekly zoom calls. I would say 2/3rds of the under 25s in the family were very strict, the other 3rd masked, tested whenever they went out, but still wanted to go out.
I've contributed to an (as yet unpublished, although I hear it's near submission) study looking indirectly at Covid concern in relation to other things. Patterning is interesting there as the very young and very old were most concerned, with those in 30-50 less concerned. Should note that this was in terms of ranking issues of concern, so it doesn't necessarily mean absolute levels of concern, but perhaps only that 30-50s had other things that concerned them more than Covid.
That matches my anecdotal observations.
I'd say 30-50 year olds best understood the overall and age-related risks and felt less personally threatened. They were right. The oldies were more concerned for obvious reasons. The youngsters (by which I mean 15 - 20 year olds) tended to - kind-of - lazily and confirmedly don the masks and observe other stuff etc with a shrug and didn't understand the moans and objections of their parents to something that they didn't see as a big deal.
The views of the young are concerning in my opinion. Doesn't bode well.
That feels counterintuitive in my mind. The young took a precautionary approach, treating an unknown threat with the seriousness it deserved. That is a pretty mature position. Whereas I would argue the 30-50 year old "meh" reaction is more concerning - a bit of a "I should be fine, so why do I need to worry" position that doesn't think of people in wider society.
The biggest fear of my sister (who was 19 when lockdown started) was going to work (she worked in a nursery and worked all through covid) and brining the virus home and killing our nan. Not that she would get ill and feel bad for a week or so, but real concern for the at risk group. That is what I think the younger people understood better than some middle aged folk.
Yes, re the overall response of us as a society, I was on the whole heartened by it. To me it showed that people care about the common good.
BREAKING: Hospital admissions of covid positive patients in England up 48% in a week.
Fourth Covid wave of 2022 now in full effect
At this point the only answer is dark, sardonic laughter, and a stiff scotch before noon
At this point the only answer is to stop worrying about Covid.
I'm not joking when I say if people get sick and die, they get sick and die. We've spent years locked down, we've rolled out is four or five rounds of vaccines now. Seriously, get over it already.
We haven't "spent years locked down".
Yes we have. They lasted for a period of years and at any time during that period we didn't know when the next one was going to occur.
Please don't let's go down the old, rich blokes in charming houses wondering what the big fuss about lockdown route is again.
Yes i imagine lockdown in a nice house in Hampstead was quite pleasant..a walk on the heath everyday whilst tutting at the covidiots sitting on park benches
Indeed.
But hasn't the opposite been shown? That those most in favour of lockdowns - the young, the precarious and the like - also had the worst experience of lockdown. They just understood that the sacrifice was necessary for society to keep functioning. Whereas a lot of the people moaning the most, and demanding people go into the office asap, are rich old guys who do have mansions, and in many cases, have worked from home as journalists for years...
I don't know I haven't read the breakdowns. I would be amazed (but then PB knowledge is amazing) if the young were in favour of lockdowns when as far as I can tell they almost continuously ignored them throughout the years they were in operation. Or is it one of those survey answer questions to "would you like world peace" or "should there be higher taxes".
I’d have to dig deeper on the question, but we know some predictors of poor adherence to guidelines or regulations across the pandemic. Being young and male were predictive of lower adherence. But also we saw those who struggled with following restrictions were (unsurprisingly) less likely to follow them, so financial distress and having dependent children at home were both predictive of poor adherence.
Meanwhile, the young were, if I remember correctly, also more worried about COVID-19 on average than the middle aged. That may not be the same youngsters who were following regulations less. I’d guess that there was a greater dichotomy: some ignoring the rules, others very worried. We’re working on a paper looking at predictors of worry across the pandemic. Remind me to report back in a few months…
Super interesting yes please do.
My (ANECDOTAL) understanding from every young person I know and have spoken to about it (nephews, neices, sons/daughters of friends) was that there was wholesale attempted circumvention of the rules. This was mainly at universities where I know there were also some pretty hefty compliance measures by the unis eg threatening to chuck them out/report them to the police. It is also a pretty ABC1 kind of demographic so maybe this is a factor.
Would be very interested to hear your findings.
My (equally anecdotal) understanding from young people in my family (cousins, siblings, and their friends) was a big concern for the elder generation in our family (my maternal grandparents are still with us, and my paternal ones managed most of the lockdowns before passing). That may be anomalous though, as my dad and sister lived with my grandmother, and my family is very close and so weekly meals with grandparents became weekly zoom calls. I would say 2/3rds of the under 25s in the family were very strict, the other 3rd masked, tested whenever they went out, but still wanted to go out.
Lockdown means different things to different people. To some being forced to wear a mask to go to the GP means we are still in lockdown (an extreme view). It is undeniable that there was significant disruption to normal life for a long time. Don't forget that during the opening up of 2021, for a long time you could only meet 5 others in the pub, and had to wear masks to go to the loo at said pub, but not while sitting down.
Masks are incredibly divisive. Too some its not an issue and they cannot understand why everyone isn't wearing one, all the time. To others they are a horrific imposition. I think being asked to wear them in healthcare settings is actually reasonable - and may help with other respiratory infections too. But I shy away from asking fit and well people to wear them 'to try to reduce the spread'. Humans are social creatures and the face is the window into the mind.
We should do the other things. Good air filtration is a must in crowded settings. Think about work from home options where applicable. Keep vaccinating.
Long covid is an issue, but it is not, as I saw posted, a game where everyone will eventually end up with long covid. The idea that we will all get covid 6 times a year and each time is rolling the long covid dice is wrong. I still have not had covid (that I know). I teach at Uni, I've not isolated myself, but been lucky so far. The experience of most, if not all, of my colleagues and friends is that not one of them has long covid. Of course it exists, and for those, like you who are suffering, thats awful and I sincerely hope you make a full recovery. But we don't help when catastrophising about the condition.
Interesting thread, which I find slightly more convincing on the pipeline question than the combined opinions of @Leon , @Luckyguy1983 , and @Dura_Ace . FWIW.
Interesting thread, which I find slightly more convincing on the pipeline question than the combined opinions of @Leon , @Luckyguy1983 , and @Dura_Ace . FWIW.
BREAKING: Hospital admissions of covid positive patients in England up 48% in a week.
Fourth Covid wave of 2022 now in full effect
At this point the only answer is dark, sardonic laughter, and a stiff scotch before noon
At this point the only answer is to stop worrying about Covid.
I'm not joking when I say if people get sick and die, they get sick and die. We've spent years locked down, we've rolled out is four or five rounds of vaccines now. Seriously, get over it already.
We haven't "spent years locked down".
Yes we have. They lasted for a period of years and at any time during that period we didn't know when the next one was going to occur.
Please don't let's go down the old, rich blokes in charming houses wondering what the big fuss about lockdown route is again.
Yes i imagine lockdown in a nice house in Hampstead was quite pleasant..a walk on the heath everyday whilst tutting at the covidiots sitting on park benches
Indeed.
But hasn't the opposite been shown? That those most in favour of lockdowns - the young, the precarious and the like - also had the worst experience of lockdown. They just understood that the sacrifice was necessary for society to keep functioning. Whereas a lot of the people moaning the most, and demanding people go into the office asap, are rich old guys who do have mansions, and in many cases, have worked from home as journalists for years...
I don't know I haven't read the breakdowns. I would be amazed (but then PB knowledge is amazing) if the young were in favour of lockdowns when as far as I can tell they almost continuously ignored them throughout the years they were in operation. Or is it one of those survey answer questions to "would you like world peace" or "should there be higher taxes".
I’d have to dig deeper on the question, but we know some predictors of poor adherence to guidelines or regulations across the pandemic. Being young and male were predictive of lower adherence. But also we saw those who struggled with following restrictions were (unsurprisingly) less likely to follow them, so financial distress and having dependent children at home were both predictive of poor adherence.
Meanwhile, the young were, if I remember correctly, also more worried about COVID-19 on average than the middle aged. That may not be the same youngsters who were following regulations less. I’d guess that there was a greater dichotomy: some ignoring the rules, others very worried. We’re working on a paper looking at predictors of worry across the pandemic. Remind me to report back in a few months…
Super interesting yes please do.
My (ANECDOTAL) understanding from every young person I know and have spoken to about it (nephews, neices, sons/daughters of friends) was that there was wholesale attempted circumvention of the rules. This was mainly at universities where I know there were also some pretty hefty compliance measures by the unis eg threatening to chuck them out/report them to the police. It is also a pretty ABC1 kind of demographic so maybe this is a factor.
Would be very interested to hear your findings.
In 2020 our first years had many, many parties on campus. Few repercussions.
Interesting - had you heard of some unis being quite strict (or attempting to be). But your point - party, party, party - fits with my anecdotal experience from them.
We have about 20 security guards across a campus with several thousand students. I don't think these were drunken hedonistic raves, but kids getting together, chatting shit, smoking week and getting drunk. Not unlike PB.
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
This is the most likely set of events. However, it holds a mirror up to the Western "Alliance" that few are prepared to look into.
The CDU/CSU Christian Democratic Union suffered defeat in the Bundestag with a proposal to increase military support for Ukraine. In a roll-call vote, 179 MPs voted in favour of the proposal, 476 were against and one abstained, the German public broadcaster ARD reported.
Eliminating any chance of a gas pipeline reduces incentive for more voting along those lines in the Bundestag.
Or increases it.
I mean that vote was after the pipeline sabotage, so doesn't seem to be working...
America’s sabotage is working because you ain’t getting any Russian gas through that pipe ever again
FFS Is there ever a ridiculous alt-right conspiracy you don't fall for?
Interesting thread, which I find slightly more convincing on the pipeline question than the combined opinions of @Leon , @Luckyguy1983 , and @Dura_Ace . FWIW.
Is he seriously claiming America does not have an obvious motive?! lol
They've got the means. And the means to hide it. The most powerful military the world has ever seen. Plausible deniability with Russia. It's either them or Vlad.
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
Or it could be Russia behaving like the two drivers playing chicken. One (Russia) throws the steering wheel out the window to show how they will not give in forcing the other to take avoiding action.
In this case the pipeline is the steering wheel and they are making it clear that they don’t care about gas, revenue etc etc because they are staying the course so the west better blink.
Or, theory I read somewhere, russia is making the point Look: we have the technical expertise to do this to gas pipes, we can also do it to your undersea internet cables, and where will you be then? Communicating £/$ rates by carrier pigeon.
Maybe WE did it then. State of the pound, that would really help us out right now.
3) Truss wanted to answer every question about the energy package for which she has derived almost no political credit. And that's because she changed the conversation by having the tax cuts along side it. It's too late to change it back.
Perceived (and indeed actual) incoherence is her problem everywhere right now. With voters on relationship between energy package, tax cuts, inflation and mortgage rates and with the markets which, do not buy the idea of fiscal policy and monetary policy working so at odds.
For her own political sake (and for our economic one) Truss needs better answers to this incoherence and these questions and quickly. And she’ll have to do it whilst not being able to do much about problem (1) something she herself as acknowledged and attempted to make an asset.
Wrong. Truss wanted to answer every question about the energy package because the economic advisors around her and in treasury now wish to lead that “goat of a package” up the hill for a sacrificial ”haircut” - she is currently resisting that must happen leaving her with a smaller more complicated package to own.
But the market and IMF hath spoken, thems the breaks. As the goat makes up 88.04% the cost of the shopping trolley we tried to check out but had our credit declined, that goat is getting a haircut. Soon enough. Watch this space.
Think of the goat as a cucumber, getting cut in half as we didn’t really need the whole cucumber.
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
Or also because they don't trust Europe not to cave to Russia in the Winter and want to cut off that exit. Which would be intolerable.
It IS nonsense. It makes no sense. Whereas it makes perfect sense in every way for Russia to do it.
It may not be true, and I have not even looked at any evidence to endorse or disprove it, but 'nonsense' that 'makes no sense' it aint. They threatened publicly to do it ffs.
Can you point me to where the US threatened to blow up pipelines in the Baltic?
How does US state terrorism in Western Europe keep Europe onside?
How is blowing up the infrastructure in the waters of allied nations something that is in the interests of the US?
Is the US also going to blow up all the other gas pipelines from Russia to Europe?
How does it help the Democrats in the midterms?
You seem to think something cannot be true, and cannot be happening, simply because you dislike the implications
We saw similar reactions to Brexit and early Covid
Well, of course it could be true. It's just extremely unlikely. Your own reactions to practically everything show that you have a pretty tenuous connection to reality most of the time.
Jawohl, dumbkopf
Check the Biden video. America did it
Why would they do it now? The consensus is that Europe would never again rely on Russian energy, so why destroy the pipeline now?
Seems like madness to me. Imagine if it leaked that the US had destroyed a Russian/German pipeline. it just seems like pretext for the Russians to look at NATO cables and pipelines.
Is this really an action that Biden would agree to? Its actively hostile, conflagratory and makes no difference to European energy policy.
Biden literally said he would do this, in February. Biden said out loud "I will do this". Biden also smirked as he gave the answer that he would do it - as in, oh boy, my guys can do this, don't you worry, we will do it and it will be done - and then Biden went and did it
So, I'm having a wild guess that Yes, Biden did it
BREAKING: Hospital admissions of covid positive patients in England up 48% in a week.
Fourth Covid wave of 2022 now in full effect
At this point the only answer is dark, sardonic laughter, and a stiff scotch before noon
At this point the only answer is to stop worrying about Covid.
I'm not joking when I say if people get sick and die, they get sick and die. We've spent years locked down, we've rolled out is four or five rounds of vaccines now. Seriously, get over it already.
We haven't "spent years locked down".
Yes we have. They lasted for a period of years and at any time during that period we didn't know when the next one was going to occur.
Please don't let's go down the old, rich blokes in charming houses wondering what the big fuss about lockdown route is again.
Yes i imagine lockdown in a nice house in Hampstead was quite pleasant..a walk on the heath everyday whilst tutting at the covidiots sitting on park benches
Indeed.
But hasn't the opposite been shown? That those most in favour of lockdowns - the young, the precarious and the like - also had the worst experience of lockdown. They just understood that the sacrifice was necessary for society to keep functioning. Whereas a lot of the people moaning the most, and demanding people go into the office asap, are rich old guys who do have mansions, and in many cases, have worked from home as journalists for years...
I don't know I haven't read the breakdowns. I would be amazed (but then PB knowledge is amazing) if the young were in favour of lockdowns when as far as I can tell they almost continuously ignored them throughout the years they were in operation. Or is it one of those survey answer questions to "would you like world peace" or "should there be higher taxes".
I’d have to dig deeper on the question, but we know some predictors of poor adherence to guidelines or regulations across the pandemic. Being young and male were predictive of lower adherence. But also we saw those who struggled with following restrictions were (unsurprisingly) less likely to follow them, so financial distress and having dependent children at home were both predictive of poor adherence.
Meanwhile, the young were, if I remember correctly, also more worried about COVID-19 on average than the middle aged. That may not be the same youngsters who were following regulations less. I’d guess that there was a greater dichotomy: some ignoring the rules, others very worried. We’re working on a paper looking at predictors of worry across the pandemic. Remind me to report back in a few months…
Super interesting yes please do.
My (ANECDOTAL) understanding from every young person I know and have spoken to about it (nephews, neices, sons/daughters of friends) was that there was wholesale attempted circumvention of the rules. This was mainly at universities where I know there were also some pretty hefty compliance measures by the unis eg threatening to chuck them out/report them to the police. It is also a pretty ABC1 kind of demographic so maybe this is a factor.
Would be very interested to hear your findings.
My (equally anecdotal) understanding from young people in my family (cousins, siblings, and their friends) was a big concern for the elder generation in our family (my maternal grandparents are still with us, and my paternal ones managed most of the lockdowns before passing). That may be anomalous though, as my dad and sister lived with my grandmother, and my family is very close and so weekly meals with grandparents became weekly zoom calls. I would say 2/3rds of the under 25s in the family were very strict, the other 3rd masked, tested whenever they went out, but still wanted to go out.
I've contributed to an (as yet unpublished, although I hear it's near submission) study looking indirectly at Covid concern in relation to other things. Patterning is interesting there as the very young and very old were most concerned, with those in 30-50 less concerned. Should note that this was in terms of ranking issues of concern, so it doesn't necessarily mean absolute levels of concern, but perhaps only that 30-50s had other things that concerned them more than Covid.
That matches my anecdotal observations.
I'd say 30-50 year olds best understood the overall and age-related risks and felt less personally threatened. They were right. The oldies were more concerned for obvious reasons. The youngsters (by which I mean 15 - 20 year olds) tended to - kind-of - lazily and confirmedly don the masks and observe other stuff etc with a shrug and didn't understand the moans and objections of their parents to something that they didn't see as a big deal.
The views of the young are concerning in my opinion. Doesn't bode well.
That feels counterintuitive in my mind. The young took a precautionary approach, treating an unknown threat with the seriousness it deserved. That is a pretty mature position. Whereas I would argue the 30-50 year old "meh" reaction is more concerning - a bit of a "I should be fine, so why do I need to worry" position that doesn't think of people in wider society.
The biggest fear of my sister (who was 19 when lockdown started) was going to work (she worked in a nursery and worked all through covid) and brining the virus home and killing our nan. Not that she would get ill and feel bad for a week or so, but real concern for the at risk group. That is what I think the younger people understood better than some middle aged folk.
Yes, re the overall response of us as a society, I was on the whole heartened by it. To me it showed that people care about the common good.
Rubbish...take away the free money and the freedom to wfh and you would have seen how many really cared about the common good...most supported lockdowns for selfish reasons either for the free money or the wfh skive
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
This is the most likely set of events. However, it holds a mirror up to the Western "Alliance" that few are prepared to look into.
The CDU/CSU Christian Democratic Union suffered defeat in the Bundestag with a proposal to increase military support for Ukraine. In a roll-call vote, 179 MPs voted in favour of the proposal, 476 were against and one abstained, the German public broadcaster ARD reported.
Eliminating any chance of a gas pipeline reduces incentive for more voting along those lines in the Bundestag.
Or increases it.
I mean that vote was after the pipeline sabotage, so doesn't seem to be working...
America’s sabotage is working because you ain’t getting any Russian gas through that pipe ever again
FFS Is there ever a ridiculous alt-right conspiracy you don't fall for?
Lab leak? Oh, no, wait, that one was right and I believed it and told you from the start, when you were all moaning about it being a racist conspiracy theory
Thats the US. We may catch it, yes. The global economy is on the verge of collapsing
22.5% drop? That seems to be volume, not prices.
Hopefully we do get a 50% or so drop in house prices in the UK. Would love to see house prices back at a 3x multiple in the North and a 4x multiple in London, just as it used to be.
Sometimes a bit of pain and disruption is needed to fix the fundamentals. We may need to go through that now.
50% drop in house prices = GFC mark 2, not just a bit of pain and disruption.
Oh well.
Controlled burn-backs are better at preventing rampaging forest fires, but if you don't have them and allow the undergrowth never to be removed then the problems build up until a rampaging forest fire becomes necessary and unpreventable. We're possibly at that point now.
Had we had brief periods of negative equity repeatedly in the past thirty years, then we'd now be in a position where prices were reasonable, as they'd bounced up and down. Unfortunately we've taken a toxic attitude that prices must never fall and they've ratchetted higher and higher to the point it will take a 50% fall to get back to reasonable levels.
Smaller falls more often would have been better, than a major fall at once.
I imagine that even if they do fall it might still be difficult to get a mortgage when your only occupation that you can declare is "amateur keyboard warrior -unpaid"
I find it amusing that you're so invested in my work life balance. I've only been on the site for a few minutes today while I have my lunch, and made fewer posts than many others, but you've still got your hard on for me since I was OK with Brexit and rejected your Europhilia.
Its rather cute you keep trying to make things personal like that, I think you secretly enjoy having people to argue with and maybe just get frustrated that you can't match my intellect or arguments so you just turn personal instead, its a bit like a young boy tugging on a girls pigtails because they like them.
@BartholomewRoberts Can I suggest that you set your intellect on the problem of 'build costs' in the event of the collapse you are hoping for in the housing market. Because no one has ever come up with an adequate response to me on this. The only way for build costs to go down is for the cost of materials and skilled labour to go down. But both are subject to huge inflationary pressure. I think that a collapse in the housing market will lead to housebuilding on the current model to be unviable for many, many years. So you seem to be wanting a future where we have all the problems of a collapse in housebuilding, with no new housing being delivered, whilst household formations increase, and we are also subject to significant inward migration.
Build costs are a fraction of what you quote though.
What you quote seems to be by any independent reporting the all-in cost of a self-built individual home, to personal development standards, without any economies of scale, and incorporating legal costs etc and the cost of land too.
Labour and materials alone are a fraction of that, and can be subject to significant economies of scale.
Its the difference between flatpack furniture costs and custom made oak furniture costs, they're worlds apart.
I am quoting the official figures which are used by chartered surveyors and widely accepted in the industry. They are used in development appraisals which are accepted by planning authorities and the subject of independent reviews when housebuilders put forward major development proposals (ie ones where there are significant economies of scale) These are around the £1.5k - £2k/sqm mark in most parts of England for volume housebuilding, much more for flats. It may be that in Teesside certain builders can get it down to £1000 sqm, but this is most probably due to an abundance of cheap labour (a reflection of comparatively very low living costs) and very basic materials.
On top of this, you have all the costs associated with the service connections, infrastructure, planning costs, sales, developer profit etc.... and of course the land. All this is cheaper in depopulated and poorer regions in the north of the country than in the crowded south.
You are relying on a 'hunch' that this is all nonsense, but without providing any evidence of your own to back this assertion up.
If we have a recession, the evidence is that build prices don't go down that much. If house prices fall dramatically, nothing will get built until confidence returns to the market and end prices rise. Or alternatively, the whole country gets dragged down to point where everything is as cheap as it is now in Teesside, which isn't most peoples idea of the right way forward.
I'm confused why you are so focussed on Teesside. the one house that was mentioned at a particularly low price is that price for multiple reasons - including the fact it's the last house on a fully sold estate...
Other 2/3 bed properties round here are £200,000+
There are housebuilders like Gleeson Homes who sell small estate starter homes starting at £120k. They are about 60-70 sqm so the build cost will be about £1k sqm. I'd guess it is a mix of extremely cheap land, supportive council, no capacity issues with services due to it being a depopulating area, possible grant funding etc, and obviously some economies of scale. But it isn't that representative of the industry as a whole, most housebuilding in these areas will be higher spec and quality and selling well in excess of £200k.
Most of the cost of a house in much of the South of the U.K. is the land. Look at insurance costs for rebuilds…..
I am not sure I agree. In many cases, in the South East, the rebuilding cost exceeds the market value of the property. I am in the process of insuring a converted block of 3 flats. The rebuilding cost, even before the uplift, is £900k which exceeds the sum of the market valuation of the three flats.
3) Truss wanted to answer every question about the energy package for which she has derived almost no political credit. And that's because she changed the conversation by having the tax cuts along side it. It's too late to change it back.
Perceived (and indeed actual) incoherence is her problem everywhere right now. With voters on relationship between energy package, tax cuts, inflation and mortgage rates and with the markets which, do not buy the idea of fiscal policy and monetary policy working so at odds.
For her own political sake (and for our economic one) Truss needs better answers to this incoherence and these questions and quickly. And she’ll have to do it whilst not being able to do much about problem (1) something she herself as acknowledged and attempted to make an asset.
Wrong. Truss wanted to answer every question about the energy package because the economic advisors around her and in treasury now wish to lead that “goat of a package” up the hill for a sacrificial ”haircut” - she is currently resisting that must happen leaving her with a smaller more complicated package to own.
But the market and IMF hath spoken, thems the breaks. As the goat makes up 88.04% the cost of the shopping trolley we tried to check out but had our credit declined, that goat is getting a haircut. Soon enough. Watch this space.
Think of the goat as a cucumber, getting cut in half as we didn’t really need the whole cucumber.
An intriguing analogy but anyone with a fridge knows only too well what will happen to the other half of the cucumber.
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
Or also because they don't trust Europe not to cave to Russia in the Winter and want to cut off that exit. Which would be intolerable.
It IS nonsense. It makes no sense. Whereas it makes perfect sense in every way for Russia to do it.
It may not be true, and I have not even looked at any evidence to endorse or disprove it, but 'nonsense' that 'makes no sense' it aint. They threatened publicly to do it ffs.
Can you point me to where the US threatened to blow up pipelines in the Baltic?
How does US state terrorism in Western Europe keep Europe onside?
How is blowing up the infrastructure in the waters of allied nations something that is in the interests of the US?
Is the US also going to blow up all the other gas pipelines from Russia to Europe?
How does it help the Democrats in the midterms?
You seem to think something cannot be true, and cannot be happening, simply because you dislike the implications
We saw similar reactions to Brexit and early Covid
Well, of course it could be true. It's just extremely unlikely. Your own reactions to practically everything show that you have a pretty tenuous connection to reality most of the time.
Jawohl, dumbkopf
Check the Biden video. America did it
Why would they do it now? The consensus is that Europe would never again rely on Russian energy, so why destroy the pipeline now?
Seems like madness to me. Imagine if it leaked that the US had destroyed a Russian/German pipeline. it just seems like pretext for the Russians to look at NATO cables and pipelines.
Is this really an action that Biden would agree to? Its actively hostile, conflagratory and makes no difference to European energy policy.
Biden literally said he would do this, in February. Biden said out loud "I will do this". Biden also smirked as he gave the answer that he would do it - as in, oh boy, my guys can do this, don't you worry, we will do it and it will be done - and then Biden went and did it
So, I'm having a wild guess that Yes, Biden did it
If Russia did do it (Which is very plausible) Biden's actions create the perfect "Must have been the USA" story.
Thats the US. We may catch it, yes. The global economy is on the verge of collapsing
22.5% drop? That seems to be volume, not prices.
Hopefully we do get a 50% or so drop in house prices in the UK. Would love to see house prices back at a 3x multiple in the North and a 4x multiple in London, just as it used to be.
Sometimes a bit of pain and disruption is needed to fix the fundamentals. We may need to go through that now.
50% drop in house prices = GFC mark 2, not just a bit of pain and disruption.
Oh well.
Controlled burn-backs are better at preventing rampaging forest fires, but if you don't have them and allow the undergrowth never to be removed then the problems build up until a rampaging forest fire becomes necessary and unpreventable. We're possibly at that point now.
Had we had brief periods of negative equity repeatedly in the past thirty years, then we'd now be in a position where prices were reasonable, as they'd bounced up and down. Unfortunately we've taken a toxic attitude that prices must never fall and they've ratchetted higher and higher to the point it will take a 50% fall to get back to reasonable levels.
Smaller falls more often would have been better, than a major fall at once.
Do you believe a house price crash was the deliberate policy of Truss and Kwarteng, or is it a surprise to them?
If it’s a deliberate policy, they’ve been lying to people because they never admitted this. If it was unintended, then you must agree that they’re incompetent.
My guess would be neither.
I would think its not something they deliberately wanted to engineer for its own sake, but they would have known its a possible consequence of their actions and they'd be OK with that. Which would be a huge improvement if so on the past thirty years of "prices must never fall" orthodoxy if so.
That's neither lying, nor incompetent. There are always byproducts or consequences or opportunity costs for any decision made and there's no reason to trumpet them or to avoid them.
When a “byproduct” is of a very significant nature, as a substantial house price fall is, then you should definitely acknowledge them, or seek to avoid them. If Liz and Kwasi thought this was a possible consequence but not worth mentioning or trying to avoid, then they are grossly incompetent.
No, they're not.
Interest rates needing to go up was mentioned and discussed during the leadership campaign. We even had this conversation at the time.
Trying to prevent prices going down would sound better if the same hysteria and action was taken to prevent them going up. Where was the tackling of house price inflation in the past quarter of a century?
What goes up must come down. Prices reaching their appropriate levels rather than being overly inflated due to a one way ratchet is not incompetent, its long overdue.
Provide me a quote from Truss in the leadership campaign saying house prices will fall substantially.
First you provide me a quote by any campaign ever saying that house prices would have rampant and uncontrolled inflation to unaffordable levels.
You seem to be of the attitude that rampant inflation is the natural order of things and not a problem? Or that ending or reversing the rampant inflation of the past is what is problematic instead?
No, Bart, that's all nonsense. I have never, for example, expressed the attitude that rampant inflation is the natural order of things. I have often said I would be happy to see house prices fall.
But that's all your usual approach of moving the goalposts. The question is about the (non-)budget and the competence of Truss and Kwarteng. If they planned to crash house prices, they didn't say they'd do that and have misled the voters and the public. If they didn't plan to crash house prices, then they're incompetent.
If you are arguing that this was the plan, provide me a quote from Truss in the leadership campaign saying house prices will fall substantially.
Ed Davey must be excited about being the official Leader of the Opposition after the election.
Sir Ed v Sir Keir, sounds very Game of Thrones.
If there was to be a non Tory leader of the Opposition to a Starmer government it would be led by Farage not Davey, if the Tories completely collapsed Canada 1993 style and were replaced by RefUK
You will know more than I do how many seats the LD’s are second to the Tories in so I am possibly wrong but surely if the Tories haemorrhage votes a lot will go to the Lib Dems as things stand (West Country, Winchester type seats).
If there is a Farage party up and running ahead of the next election they will indeed attract a lump of Tory votes but of the Tory vote gets split three ways (Farage, Tory hold-outs and LD) then the Tories will be wiped and Faragists unlikely to pick up many seats at the election.
Added to those seats that will go from Tory to Labour I can easily see a way for Ed Davey to be next leader of the opposition.
No, if the Tory vote collapsed completely ie to about 10% most of that would go to Farage as in the European elections who would then win most of the remaining Tory safe seats while Labour picked up most of the marginals. Even if the LDs picked up a few Tory home counties seats
I know this is completely academic as the Tories won't go down to 10% (I know European elections, but people protest there, not so a GE), but if the Tories did go to 10% I disagree with your prediction (although my views are entirely a gut reaction so I accept I might be entirely wrong). I would predict that if the Tories were on 10% (and the LDs on a decent percentage) the LDs would sweep much of the South and South West and take a significant number of affluent or rural seats elsewhere (Harrogate, Hereford, etc). I agree there would be a Farage boom turning the remaining previously safe Tory seats which didn't go LD in Kent and Essex and such like into Labour/Farage marginals (Clacton and such like). I also think there would be a lot of Labour/Farage marginals in the Redwall.
So I could see a Labour landslide with a LD opposition and a handful of Farage if the Tories went to 10%. Of course we will never know as I think the Tories have the most stable highest core of all the main parties.
PS actually on re-reading your post I realise I only partly disagree and agree with some of it.
Farage and his parties benefit from PR systems - I don't know how well Reform or any new vehicle would do in FPTP.
This is why I think Tories going down to 15-20% in a GE would probably lead to Lab and LDs gaining almost all, with a Faragist party maybe picking up a handful of seats.
I agree. The premise though was 10%.
But 10% is unlikely - GE squeeze is different to PR squeeze. I think 15-20% is more reasonable.
Lets look at the next election.
Labour need 320+ seats - they used to get 50 in Scotland but are going to get about 4 max .
That means as a Tory voter you have 2 options at the next election - vote Tory for a hung Parliament or lend Labour your vote and ensure they get a decent majority that allows them to do something...
A lot of sane voters are going to be giving SKS the benefit of the doubt because the other option is complete and utter chaos...
Maybe. But if Truss is a short-term aberration and is quickly replaced by somebody like Wallace, who is seen as an entirely pragmatic Tory with no interest in any -ism but in getting the country through the international market traumas, then it depends on what he actually delivers.
If he reinstates Sunak as his Chancellor (perhaps with a quiet private assurance that he really doesn't want to be PM for very long and would happily endorse Rishi as his successor), then it is not so clear cut.
The Doomcasting for the Conservatives is predicated on Truss staying in place to the election. A Wallace-Sunak ticket for 18 months might well shoot most of Labour's foxes.
See Stocky's post of a few minutes ago.
Somehow the 1922 committee needs to manoeuvre things otherwise Truss is safely in place until September next year...
Ed Davey must be excited about being the official Leader of the Opposition after the election.
Sir Ed v Sir Keir, sounds very Game of Thrones.
If there was to be a non Tory leader of the Opposition to a Starmer government it would be led by Farage not Davey, if the Tories completely collapsed Canada 1993 style and were replaced by RefUK
You will know more than I do how many seats the LD’s are second to the Tories in so I am possibly wrong but surely if the Tories haemorrhage votes a lot will go to the Lib Dems as things stand (West Country, Winchester type seats).
If there is a Farage party up and running ahead of the next election they will indeed attract a lump of Tory votes but of the Tory vote gets split three ways (Farage, Tory hold-outs and LD) then the Tories will be wiped and Faragists unlikely to pick up many seats at the election.
Added to those seats that will go from Tory to Labour I can easily see a way for Ed Davey to be next leader of the opposition.
No, if the Tory vote collapsed completely ie to about 10% most of that would go to Farage as in the European elections who would then win most of the remaining Tory safe seats while Labour picked up most of the marginals. Even if the LDs picked up a few Tory home counties seats
I know this is completely academic as the Tories won't go down to 10% (I know European elections, but people protest there, not so a GE), but if the Tories did go to 10% I disagree with your prediction (although my views are entirely a gut reaction so I accept I might be entirely wrong). I would predict that if the Tories were on 10% (and the LDs on a decent percentage) the LDs would sweep much of the South and South West and take a significant number of affluent or rural seats elsewhere (Harrogate, Hereford, etc). I agree there would be a Farage boom turning the remaining previously safe Tory seats which didn't go LD in Kent and Essex and such like into Labour/Farage marginals (Clacton and such like). I also think there would be a lot of Labour/Farage marginals in the Redwall.
So I could see a Labour landslide with a LD opposition and a handful of Farage if the Tories went to 10%. Of course we will never know as I think the Tories have the most stable highest core of all the main parties.
PS actually on re-reading your post I realise I only partly disagree and agree with some of it.
Farage and his parties benefit from PR systems - I don't know how well Reform or any new vehicle would do in FPTP.
This is why I think Tories going down to 15-20% in a GE would probably lead to Lab and LDs gaining almost all, with a Faragist party maybe picking up a handful of seats.
I agree. The premise though was 10%.
But 10% is unlikely - GE squeeze is different to PR squeeze. I think 15-20% is more reasonable.
Lets look at the next election.
Labour need 320+ seats - they used to get 50 in Scotland but are going to get about 4 max .
That means as a Tory voter you have 2 options at the next election - vote Tory for a hung Parliament or lend Labour your vote and ensure they get a decent majority that allows them to do something...
A lot of sane voters are going to be giving SKS the benefit of the doubt because the other option is complete and utter chaos...
Maybe. But if Truss is a short-term aberration and is quickly replaced by somebody like Wallace, who is seen as an entirely pragmatic Tory with no interest in any -ism but in getting the country through the international market traumas, then it depends on what he actually delivers.
If he reinstates Sunak as his Chancellor (perhaps with a quiet private assurance that he really doesn't want to be PM for very long and would happily endorse Rishi as his successor), then it is not so clear cut.
The Doomcasting for the Conservatives is predicated on Truss staying in place to the election. A Wallace-Sunak ticket for 18 months might well shoot most of Labour's foxes.
See Stocky's post of a few minutes ago.
Somehow the 1922 committee needs to manoeuvre things otherwise Truss is safely in place until September next year...
Ed Davey must be excited about being the official Leader of the Opposition after the election.
Sir Ed v Sir Keir, sounds very Game of Thrones.
If there was to be a non Tory leader of the Opposition to a Starmer government it would be led by Farage not Davey, if the Tories completely collapsed Canada 1993 style and were replaced by RefUK
You will know more than I do how many seats the LD’s are second to the Tories in so I am possibly wrong but surely if the Tories haemorrhage votes a lot will go to the Lib Dems as things stand (West Country, Winchester type seats).
If there is a Farage party up and running ahead of the next election they will indeed attract a lump of Tory votes but of the Tory vote gets split three ways (Farage, Tory hold-outs and LD) then the Tories will be wiped and Faragists unlikely to pick up many seats at the election.
Added to those seats that will go from Tory to Labour I can easily see a way for Ed Davey to be next leader of the opposition.
No, if the Tory vote collapsed completely ie to about 10% most of that would go to Farage as in the European elections who would then win most of the remaining Tory safe seats while Labour picked up most of the marginals. Even if the LDs picked up a few Tory home counties seats
I know this is completely academic as the Tories won't go down to 10% (I know European elections, but people protest there, not so a GE), but if the Tories did go to 10% I disagree with your prediction (although my views are entirely a gut reaction so I accept I might be entirely wrong). I would predict that if the Tories were on 10% (and the LDs on a decent percentage) the LDs would sweep much of the South and South West and take a significant number of affluent or rural seats elsewhere (Harrogate, Hereford, etc). I agree there would be a Farage boom turning the remaining previously safe Tory seats which didn't go LD in Kent and Essex and such like into Labour/Farage marginals (Clacton and such like). I also think there would be a lot of Labour/Farage marginals in the Redwall.
So I could see a Labour landslide with a LD opposition and a handful of Farage if the Tories went to 10%. Of course we will never know as I think the Tories have the most stable highest core of all the main parties.
PS actually on re-reading your post I realise I only partly disagree and agree with some of it.
Farage and his parties benefit from PR systems - I don't know how well Reform or any new vehicle would do in FPTP.
This is why I think Tories going down to 15-20% in a GE would probably lead to Lab and LDs gaining almost all, with a Faragist party maybe picking up a handful of seats.
I agree. The premise though was 10%.
But 10% is unlikely - GE squeeze is different to PR squeeze. I think 15-20% is more reasonable.
Lets look at the next election.
Labour need 320+ seats - they used to get 50 in Scotland but are going to get about 4 max .
That means as a Tory voter you have 2 options at the next election - vote Tory for a hung Parliament or lend Labour your vote and ensure they get a decent majority that allows them to do something...
A lot of sane voters are going to be giving SKS the benefit of the doubt because the other option is complete and utter chaos...
Maybe. But if Truss is a short-term aberration and is quickly replaced by somebody like Wallace, who is seen as an entirely pragmatic Tory with no interest in any -ism but in getting the country through the international market traumas, then it depends on what he actually delivers.
If he reinstates Sunak as his Chancellor (perhaps with a quiet private assurance that he really doesn't want to be PM for very long and would happily endorse Rishi as his successor), then it is not so clear cut.
The Doomcasting for the Conservatives is predicated on Truss staying in place to the election. A Wallace-Sunak ticket for 18 months might well shoot most of Labour's foxes.
See Stocky's post of a few minutes ago.
Somehow the 1922 committee needs to manoeuvre things otherwise Truss is safely in place until September next year...
If she loses enough support among the MPs she will go, the details of rules won't matter.
OK - so we are back to a Johnson-era speculation that the 1922 will change the rules on a sitting leader. Possible I grant you but I can't see it myself.
If those who voted Rishi and those who voted Mordaunt put in letters, they would have to change.
Thats the US. We may catch it, yes. The global economy is on the verge of collapsing
22.5% drop? That seems to be volume, not prices.
Hopefully we do get a 50% or so drop in house prices in the UK. Would love to see house prices back at a 3x multiple in the North and a 4x multiple in London, just as it used to be.
Sometimes a bit of pain and disruption is needed to fix the fundamentals. We may need to go through that now.
50% drop in house prices = GFC mark 2, not just a bit of pain and disruption.
Oh well.
Controlled burn-backs are better at preventing rampaging forest fires, but if you don't have them and allow the undergrowth never to be removed then the problems build up until a rampaging forest fire becomes necessary and unpreventable. We're possibly at that point now.
Had we had brief periods of negative equity repeatedly in the past thirty years, then we'd now be in a position where prices were reasonable, as they'd bounced up and down. Unfortunately we've taken a toxic attitude that prices must never fall and they've ratchetted higher and higher to the point it will take a 50% fall to get back to reasonable levels.
Smaller falls more often would have been better, than a major fall at once.
I imagine that even if they do fall it might still be difficult to get a mortgage when your only occupation that you can declare is "amateur keyboard warrior -unpaid"
I find it amusing that you're so invested in my work life balance. I've only been on the site for a few minutes today while I have my lunch, and made fewer posts than many others, but you've still got your hard on for me since I was OK with Brexit and rejected your Europhilia.
Its rather cute you keep trying to make things personal like that, I think you secretly enjoy having people to argue with and maybe just get frustrated that you can't match my intellect or arguments so you just turn personal instead, its a bit like a young boy tugging on a girls pigtails because they like them.
@BartholomewRoberts Can I suggest that you set your intellect on the problem of 'build costs' in the event of the collapse you are hoping for in the housing market. Because no one has ever come up with an adequate response to me on this. The only way for build costs to go down is for the cost of materials and skilled labour to go down. But both are subject to huge inflationary pressure. I think that a collapse in the housing market will lead to housebuilding on the current model to be unviable for many, many years. So you seem to be wanting a future where we have all the problems of a collapse in housebuilding, with no new housing being delivered, whilst household formations increase, and we are also subject to significant inward migration.
Build costs are a fraction of what you quote though.
What you quote seems to be by any independent reporting the all-in cost of a self-built individual home, to personal development standards, without any economies of scale, and incorporating legal costs etc and the cost of land too.
Labour and materials alone are a fraction of that, and can be subject to significant economies of scale.
Its the difference between flatpack furniture costs and custom made oak furniture costs, they're worlds apart.
I am quoting the official figures which are used by chartered surveyors and widely accepted in the industry. They are used in development appraisals which are accepted by planning authorities and the subject of independent reviews when housebuilders put forward major development proposals (ie ones where there are significant economies of scale) These are around the £1.5k - £2k/sqm mark in most parts of England for volume housebuilding, much more for flats. It may be that in Teesside certain builders can get it down to £1000 sqm, but this is most probably due to an abundance of cheap labour (a reflection of comparatively very low living costs) and very basic materials.
On top of this, you have all the costs associated with the service connections, infrastructure, planning costs, sales, developer profit etc.... and of course the land. All this is cheaper in depopulated and poorer regions in the north of the country than in the crowded south.
You are relying on a 'hunch' that this is all nonsense, but without providing any evidence of your own to back this assertion up.
If we have a recession, the evidence is that build prices don't go down that much. If house prices fall dramatically, nothing will get built until confidence returns to the market and end prices rise. Or alternatively, the whole country gets dragged down to point where everything is as cheap as it is now in Teesside, which isn't most peoples idea of the right way forward.
I'm confused why you are so focussed on Teesside. the one house that was mentioned at a particularly low price is that price for multiple reasons - including the fact it's the last house on a fully sold estate...
Other 2/3 bed properties round here are £200,000+
There are housebuilders like Gleeson Homes who sell small estate starter homes starting at £120k. They are about 60-70 sqm so the build cost will be about £1k sqm. I'd guess it is a mix of extremely cheap land, supportive council, no capacity issues with services due to it being a depopulating area, possible grant funding etc, and obviously some economies of scale. But it isn't that representative of the industry as a whole, most housebuilding in these areas will be higher spec and quality and selling well in excess of £200k.
Most of the cost of a house in much of the South of the U.K. is the land. Look at insurance costs for rebuilds…..
Irrelevant because they are a function of cost of rebuild x likelihood of rebuild being needed
Thats the US. We may catch it, yes. The global economy is on the verge of collapsing
22.5% drop? That seems to be volume, not prices.
Hopefully we do get a 50% or so drop in house prices in the UK. Would love to see house prices back at a 3x multiple in the North and a 4x multiple in London, just as it used to be.
Sometimes a bit of pain and disruption is needed to fix the fundamentals. We may need to go through that now.
50% drop in house prices = GFC mark 2, not just a bit of pain and disruption.
Oh well.
Controlled burn-backs are better at preventing rampaging forest fires, but if you don't have them and allow the undergrowth never to be removed then the problems build up until a rampaging forest fire becomes necessary and unpreventable. We're possibly at that point now.
Had we had brief periods of negative equity repeatedly in the past thirty years, then we'd now be in a position where prices were reasonable, as they'd bounced up and down. Unfortunately we've taken a toxic attitude that prices must never fall and they've ratchetted higher and higher to the point it will take a 50% fall to get back to reasonable levels.
Smaller falls more often would have been better, than a major fall at once.
I imagine that even if they do fall it might still be difficult to get a mortgage when your only occupation that you can declare is "amateur keyboard warrior -unpaid"
I find it amusing that you're so invested in my work life balance. I've only been on the site for a few minutes today while I have my lunch, and made fewer posts than many others, but you've still got your hard on for me since I was OK with Brexit and rejected your Europhilia.
Its rather cute you keep trying to make things personal like that, I think you secretly enjoy having people to argue with and maybe just get frustrated that you can't match my intellect or arguments so you just turn personal instead, its a bit like a young boy tugging on a girls pigtails because they like them.
Hahahaha. I just got back from lunch. Nice one Barty. "match your intellect"? I most certainly can't and wouldn't want to "match your intellect" as it appears to be lower than a slightly imbecilic amoeba. Your posts (and those of your previous incarnation) indicate you are one of the lowest intellect contributors on this site. There are some posters who have wacky and far fetched ideas and they are nonetheless amusing. Yours are neither credible or amusing, and your metaphors are cringingly poor, all indicating your status as the dullest of dullards.
You are indeed a curious phenomenon though. If one carries on your amusingly unimaginative playground theme you are like the child that desperately wants to play with the big boys and just makes himself a figure of fun because he can't keep up. As for enjoying arguing with you, I don't because it is too easy. I am not arguing with you I am simply pointing out that not only are you dumb, you are a very sick saddo. One of the few people on here who is so callous that were it not for the fact that I know you to be relatively young, I would imagine you to be an old fart of such horrifically twisted personality that even Dickens would think you too unrealistic to be one of his most revolting caricatures. Am I being unfair or unkind? No, you are someone who seems to get a kick out of stating that it is OK for a surplus of the population to get on and die, and for another part of the population, those with families and mortgages (that you are clearly envious of) to fall into destitution. You are a very unpleasant far right little oik.
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
Or it could be Russia behaving like the two drivers playing chicken. One (Russia) throws the steering wheel out the window to show how they will not give in forcing the other to take avoiding action.
In this case the pipeline is the steering wheel and they are making it clear that they don’t care about gas, revenue etc etc because they are staying the course so the west better blink.
Or, theory I read somewhere, russia is making the point Look: we have the technical expertise to do this to gas pipes, we can also do it to your undersea internet cables, and where will you be then? Communicating £/$ rates by carrier pigeon.
Maybe WE did it then. State of the pound, that would really help us out right now.
BREAKING: Hospital admissions of covid positive patients in England up 48% in a week.
Fourth Covid wave of 2022 now in full effect
At this point the only answer is dark, sardonic laughter, and a stiff scotch before noon
At this point the only answer is to stop worrying about Covid.
I'm not joking when I say if people get sick and die, they get sick and die. We've spent years locked down, we've rolled out is four or five rounds of vaccines now. Seriously, get over it already.
We haven't "spent years locked down".
Yes we have. They lasted for a period of years and at any time during that period we didn't know when the next one was going to occur.
Please don't let's go down the old, rich blokes in charming houses wondering what the big fuss about lockdown route is again.
Yes i imagine lockdown in a nice house in Hampstead was quite pleasant..a walk on the heath everyday whilst tutting at the covidiots sitting on park benches
Indeed.
But hasn't the opposite been shown? That those most in favour of lockdowns - the young, the precarious and the like - also had the worst experience of lockdown. They just understood that the sacrifice was necessary for society to keep functioning. Whereas a lot of the people moaning the most, and demanding people go into the office asap, are rich old guys who do have mansions, and in many cases, have worked from home as journalists for years...
I don't know I haven't read the breakdowns. I would be amazed (but then PB knowledge is amazing) if the young were in favour of lockdowns when as far as I can tell they almost continuously ignored them throughout the years they were in operation. Or is it one of those survey answer questions to "would you like world peace" or "should there be higher taxes".
I’d have to dig deeper on the question, but we know some predictors of poor adherence to guidelines or regulations across the pandemic. Being young and male were predictive of lower adherence. But also we saw those who struggled with following restrictions were (unsurprisingly) less likely to follow them, so financial distress and having dependent children at home were both predictive of poor adherence.
Meanwhile, the young were, if I remember correctly, also more worried about COVID-19 on average than the middle aged. That may not be the same youngsters who were following regulations less. I’d guess that there was a greater dichotomy: some ignoring the rules, others very worried. We’re working on a paper looking at predictors of worry across the pandemic. Remind me to report back in a few months…
Super interesting yes please do.
My (ANECDOTAL) understanding from every young person I know and have spoken to about it (nephews, neices, sons/daughters of friends) was that there was wholesale attempted circumvention of the rules. This was mainly at universities where I know there were also some pretty hefty compliance measures by the unis eg threatening to chuck them out/report them to the police. It is also a pretty ABC1 kind of demographic so maybe this is a factor.
Would be very interested to hear your findings.
My (equally anecdotal) understanding from young people in my family (cousins, siblings, and their friends) was a big concern for the elder generation in our family (my maternal grandparents are still with us, and my paternal ones managed most of the lockdowns before passing). That may be anomalous though, as my dad and sister lived with my grandmother, and my family is very close and so weekly meals with grandparents became weekly zoom calls. I would say 2/3rds of the under 25s in the family were very strict, the other 3rd masked, tested whenever they went out, but still wanted to go out.
I've contributed to an (as yet unpublished, although I hear it's near submission) study looking indirectly at Covid concern in relation to other things. Patterning is interesting there as the very young and very old were most concerned, with those in 30-50 less concerned. Should note that this was in terms of ranking issues of concern, so it doesn't necessarily mean absolute levels of concern, but perhaps only that 30-50s had other things that concerned them more than Covid.
That matches my anecdotal observations.
I'd say 30-50 year olds best understood the overall and age-related risks and felt less personally threatened. They were right. The oldies were more concerned for obvious reasons. The youngsters (by which I mean 15 - 20 year olds) tended to - kind-of - lazily and confirmedly don the masks and observe other stuff etc with a shrug and didn't understand the moans and objections of their parents to something that they didn't see as a big deal.
The views of the young are concerning in my opinion. Doesn't bode well.
That feels counterintuitive in my mind. The young took a precautionary approach, treating an unknown threat with the seriousness it deserved. That is a pretty mature position. Whereas I would argue the 30-50 year old "meh" reaction is more concerning - a bit of a "I should be fine, so why do I need to worry" position that doesn't think of people in wider society.
The biggest fear of my sister (who was 19 when lockdown started) was going to work (she worked in a nursery and worked all through covid) and brining the virus home and killing our nan. Not that she would get ill and feel bad for a week or so, but real concern for the at risk group. That is what I think the younger people understood better than some middle aged folk.
Yes, re the overall response of us as a society, I was on the whole heartened by it. To me it showed that people care about the common good.
Rubbish...take away the free money and the freedom to wfh and you would have seen how many really cared about the common good...most supported lockdowns for selfish reasons either for the free money or the wfh skive
Perhaps that is your view, but most people I know were keen to avoid spreading the plague and took precautions without any fuss.
Of course, there were the "toddlers" who had tantrums and jumped up and down screaming about how masks were an infraction of their freedom to spread the non-existent virus. Some of them even wound up on video laying on their death-beds croaking "Oh my god - it is real. I wish I had listened"
Thats the US. We may catch it, yes. The global economy is on the verge of collapsing
22.5% drop? That seems to be volume, not prices.
Hopefully we do get a 50% or so drop in house prices in the UK. Would love to see house prices back at a 3x multiple in the North and a 4x multiple in London, just as it used to be.
Sometimes a bit of pain and disruption is needed to fix the fundamentals. We may need to go through that now.
50% drop in house prices = GFC mark 2, not just a bit of pain and disruption.
Oh well.
Controlled burn-backs are better at preventing rampaging forest fires, but if you don't have them and allow the undergrowth never to be removed then the problems build up until a rampaging forest fire becomes necessary and unpreventable. We're possibly at that point now.
Had we had brief periods of negative equity repeatedly in the past thirty years, then we'd now be in a position where prices were reasonable, as they'd bounced up and down. Unfortunately we've taken a toxic attitude that prices must never fall and they've ratchetted higher and higher to the point it will take a 50% fall to get back to reasonable levels.
Smaller falls more often would have been better, than a major fall at once.
Do you believe a house price crash was the deliberate policy of Truss and Kwarteng, or is it a surprise to them?
If it’s a deliberate policy, they’ve been lying to people because they never admitted this. If it was unintended, then you must agree that they’re incompetent.
My guess would be neither.
I would think its not something they deliberately wanted to engineer for its own sake, but they would have known its a possible consequence of their actions and they'd be OK with that. Which would be a huge improvement if so on the past thirty years of "prices must never fall" orthodoxy if so.
That's neither lying, nor incompetent. There are always byproducts or consequences or opportunity costs for any decision made and there's no reason to trumpet them or to avoid them.
When a “byproduct” is of a very significant nature, as a substantial house price fall is, then you should definitely acknowledge them, or seek to avoid them. If Liz and Kwasi thought this was a possible consequence but not worth mentioning or trying to avoid, then they are grossly incompetent.
No, they're not.
Interest rates needing to go up was mentioned and discussed during the leadership campaign. We even had this conversation at the time.
Trying to prevent prices going down would sound better if the same hysteria and action was taken to prevent them going up. Where was the tackling of house price inflation in the past quarter of a century?
What goes up must come down. Prices reaching their appropriate levels rather than being overly inflated due to a one way ratchet is not incompetent, its long overdue.
Provide me a quote from Truss in the leadership campaign saying house prices will fall substantially.
First you provide me a quote by any campaign ever saying that house prices would have rampant and uncontrolled inflation to unaffordable levels.
You seem to be of the attitude that rampant inflation is the natural order of things and not a problem? Or that ending or reversing the rampant inflation of the past is what is problematic instead?
No, Bart, that's all nonsense. I have never, for example, expressed the attitude that rampant inflation is the natural order of things. I have often said I would be happy to see house prices fall.
But that's all your usual approach of moving the goalposts. The question is about the (non-)budget and the competence of Truss and Kwarteng. If they planned to crash house prices, they didn't say they'd do that and have misled the voters and the public. If they didn't plan to crash house prices, then they're incompetent.
If you are arguing that this was the plan, provide me a quote from Truss in the leadership campaign saying house prices will fall substantially.
Its not moving the goalposts, because if you're saying that they need to be saying up front that prices will fall, then there should have been equally statements up front saying there'd be uncontrolled inflation in house prices under the past five Prime Ministers.
How many of the past five Prime Ministers said they'd encourage rampant inflation? If zero, then you're holding Truss to a standard you never held any prior PM.
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
This is the most likely set of events. However, it holds a mirror up to the Western "Alliance" that few are prepared to look into.
The CDU/CSU Christian Democratic Union suffered defeat in the Bundestag with a proposal to increase military support for Ukraine. In a roll-call vote, 179 MPs voted in favour of the proposal, 476 were against and one abstained, the German public broadcaster ARD reported.
Eliminating any chance of a gas pipeline reduces incentive for more voting along those lines in the Bundestag.
Or increases it.
I mean that vote was after the pipeline sabotage, so doesn't seem to be working...
America’s sabotage is working because you ain’t getting any Russian gas through that pipe ever again
FFS Is there ever a ridiculous alt-right conspiracy you don't fall for?
Lab leak? Oh, no, wait, that one was right and I believed it and told you from the start, when you were all moaning about it being a racist conspiracy theory
Plausible, not proven. I know you think it is proven, but its as likely to have been natural origin. Do you consider that all the other viruses that spread from animals to man must have been lab leaks too? Mers? Swine flu? Avian flu? I think a lot of scientists thougt it plausible and tried to discredit the idea. I'm less convinced that they knew it was a lab leak and tried to cover it up.
BREAKING: Hospital admissions of covid positive patients in England up 48% in a week.
Fourth Covid wave of 2022 now in full effect
At this point the only answer is dark, sardonic laughter, and a stiff scotch before noon
At this point the only answer is to stop worrying about Covid.
I'm not joking when I say if people get sick and die, they get sick and die. We've spent years locked down, we've rolled out is four or five rounds of vaccines now. Seriously, get over it already.
We haven't "spent years locked down".
Yes we have. They lasted for a period of years and at any time during that period we didn't know when the next one was going to occur.
Please don't let's go down the old, rich blokes in charming houses wondering what the big fuss about lockdown route is again.
Yes i imagine lockdown in a nice house in Hampstead was quite pleasant..a walk on the heath everyday whilst tutting at the covidiots sitting on park benches
Indeed.
But hasn't the opposite been shown? That those most in favour of lockdowns - the young, the precarious and the like - also had the worst experience of lockdown. They just understood that the sacrifice was necessary for society to keep functioning. Whereas a lot of the people moaning the most, and demanding people go into the office asap, are rich old guys who do have mansions, and in many cases, have worked from home as journalists for years...
I don't know I haven't read the breakdowns. I would be amazed (but then PB knowledge is amazing) if the young were in favour of lockdowns when as far as I can tell they almost continuously ignored them throughout the years they were in operation. Or is it one of those survey answer questions to "would you like world peace" or "should there be higher taxes".
I’d have to dig deeper on the question, but we know some predictors of poor adherence to guidelines or regulations across the pandemic. Being young and male were predictive of lower adherence. But also we saw those who struggled with following restrictions were (unsurprisingly) less likely to follow them, so financial distress and having dependent children at home were both predictive of poor adherence.
Meanwhile, the young were, if I remember correctly, also more worried about COVID-19 on average than the middle aged. That may not be the same youngsters who were following regulations less. I’d guess that there was a greater dichotomy: some ignoring the rules, others very worried. We’re working on a paper looking at predictors of worry across the pandemic. Remind me to report back in a few months…
Super interesting yes please do.
My (ANECDOTAL) understanding from every young person I know and have spoken to about it (nephews, neices, sons/daughters of friends) was that there was wholesale attempted circumvention of the rules. This was mainly at universities where I know there were also some pretty hefty compliance measures by the unis eg threatening to chuck them out/report them to the police. It is also a pretty ABC1 kind of demographic so maybe this is a factor.
Would be very interested to hear your findings.
My (equally anecdotal) understanding from young people in my family (cousins, siblings, and their friends) was a big concern for the elder generation in our family (my maternal grandparents are still with us, and my paternal ones managed most of the lockdowns before passing). That may be anomalous though, as my dad and sister lived with my grandmother, and my family is very close and so weekly meals with grandparents became weekly zoom calls. I would say 2/3rds of the under 25s in the family were very strict, the other 3rd masked, tested whenever they went out, but still wanted to go out.
I've contributed to an (as yet unpublished, although I hear it's near submission) study looking indirectly at Covid concern in relation to other things. Patterning is interesting there as the very young and very old were most concerned, with those in 30-50 less concerned. Should note that this was in terms of ranking issues of concern, so it doesn't necessarily mean absolute levels of concern, but perhaps only that 30-50s had other things that concerned them more than Covid.
That matches my anecdotal observations.
I'd say 30-50 year olds best understood the overall and age-related risks and felt less personally threatened. They were right. The oldies were more concerned for obvious reasons. The youngsters (by which I mean 15 - 20 year olds) tended to - kind-of - lazily and confirmedly don the masks and observe other stuff etc with a shrug and didn't understand the moans and objections of their parents to something that they didn't see as a big deal.
The views of the young are concerning in my opinion. Doesn't bode well.
That feels counterintuitive in my mind. The young took a precautionary approach, treating an unknown threat with the seriousness it deserved. That is a pretty mature position. Whereas I would argue the 30-50 year old "meh" reaction is more concerning - a bit of a "I should be fine, so why do I need to worry" position that doesn't think of people in wider society.
The biggest fear of my sister (who was 19 when lockdown started) was going to work (she worked in a nursery and worked all through covid) and brining the virus home and killing our nan. Not that she would get ill and feel bad for a week or so, but real concern for the at risk group. That is what I think the younger people understood better than some middle aged folk.
Yes, re the overall response of us as a society, I was on the whole heartened by it. To me it showed that people care about the common good.
Rubbish...take away the free money and the freedom to wfh and you would have seen how many really cared about the common good...most supported lockdowns for selfish reasons either for the free money or the wfh skive
Our favourite Hampstead and so nearly but not in the end Richmond resident is retired and hence it is a mystery to him why everyone oughtn't to find lockdown utterly lovely.
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
Or also because they don't trust Europe not to cave to Russia in the Winter and want to cut off that exit. Which would be intolerable.
It IS nonsense. It makes no sense. Whereas it makes perfect sense in every way for Russia to do it.
It may not be true, and I have not even looked at any evidence to endorse or disprove it, but 'nonsense' that 'makes no sense' it aint. They threatened publicly to do it ffs.
Can you point me to where the US threatened to blow up pipelines in the Baltic?
How does US state terrorism in Western Europe keep Europe onside?
How is blowing up the infrastructure in the waters of allied nations something that is in the interests of the US?
Is the US also going to blow up all the other gas pipelines from Russia to Europe?
How does it help the Democrats in the midterms?
You seem to think something cannot be true, and cannot be happening, simply because you dislike the implications
We saw similar reactions to Brexit and early Covid
Well, of course it could be true. It's just extremely unlikely. Your own reactions to practically everything show that you have a pretty tenuous connection to reality most of the time.
Jawohl, dumbkopf
Check the Biden video. America did it
Why would they do it now? The consensus is that Europe will never again rely on Russian energy, so why destroy the pipeline now?
Seems like madness to me. Imagine if it leaked that the US had destroyed a Russian/German pipeline. it just seems like pretext for the Russians to look at NATO cables and pipelines.
Is this really an action that Biden would agree to? Its actively hostile, conflagratory and makes no difference to European energy policy.
BREAKING: Hospital admissions of covid positive patients in England up 48% in a week.
Fourth Covid wave of 2022 now in full effect
At this point the only answer is dark, sardonic laughter, and a stiff scotch before noon
At this point the only answer is to stop worrying about Covid.
I'm not joking when I say if people get sick and die, they get sick and die. We've spent years locked down, we've rolled out is four or five rounds of vaccines now. Seriously, get over it already.
So I only just had it this summer after 3 jabs - the illness itself was a bad flu, I was bedbound for a few days with a high temp, and didn't actually have much in the way of bad lung stuff.
Problem I have now is, a few months after that, I'm still exhausted, I'm having headaches and brainfog, I'm getting muscle aches and chest pain all the time. I used to walk home most days from the office, about 4.5 miles in about an hour depending on weather and if I popped into the shops. I can't do half of that atm without breaking into flopsweats and wheezing.
Even if you think it's fine for people to get sick and die - the long term impact of this won't go away. My doc is assuming it's long covid, but I'm going to go for tests, impacting an already crippled healthcare system. I can't work as efficiently as I have been, my quality of life has dramatically reduced - hell I'm finding doing 30 mins - 1 hour of housework hard. And I'm in my early 30s. We have no idea how long these symptoms will last, or if we can treat them. That's a strain on our healthcare system, a strain on our labour productivity, a strain on society.
And if we keep letting wave after wave hit the populace, the chance people have of getting ill and staying ill gets closer to 1. A nation enfeebled by this is a pretty significant threat, in my view.
I'm sorry you're not feeling good, and hope you're feeling better soon.
Please take what follows as honest discord and not a belittlement of how you're feeling, but with all respect I'm sorry to say that shit happens, viruses exist, and we need to get used to it.
If the healthcare system is crippled, then people will die. If people die, then they come off waiting lists and stop needing pensions, or care, or ... eventually a new equilibrium is found.
Its horrible, and its unpleasant, but its also true. What is the alternative? How do we prevent a rampant virus from spreading? The virus can not be contained or controlled, its hubris to suggest it can be, unless we lockdown for about six months to remove and permanently seal up the borders, permanently prevent international trade and permanently prevent international travel.
Realistically, post-vaccines is as good as it gets.
We can reduce the spread of viruses and other pathogens, and routinely do so. We eradicated smallpox and rinderpest, and are making good progress against polio. We contained SARS and MERS. We work every year to minimise the impact of flu, through vaccinations, through behaviour and through reducing infection in animal populations. We work every year to minimise the impact of HIV/AIDS, through behaviour, testing and contact tracing.
Likewise, there is plenty we can do to reduce COVID-19 cases: good air filtration in buildings, encouraging those with symptoms to not go into work and to wear masks, vaccination campaigns. These methods are effective and they are cost effective. But libertarians like to pretend we’re impotent because they are so allergic* to any form of collective action. Bart’s “let them die in the streets” is perhaps at the extreme end of that…
You're right we do vaccinate against the flu. And I'm all for vaccines for Covid.
I've had 3 vaccines, I doubt I'll have any more but if offered more I would do my bit and get a jab. My grandparents that are still alive have had five vaccines each.
So yes, vaccinated for Covid, like we vaccinate against the flu. Great. But no to masks, or lockdowns, or restrictions or staying at home when you're healthy but a carrier or any other nonsense.
You response seems minimally connected to what I wrote. I didn’t mention a single restriction or lockdowns.
We have public health information campaigns to encourage people to wash their hands after using the toilet. What’s wrong with having public health information campaigns to encourage people to wear a mask and not go into work when they have symptoms of a respiratory infection?
We have sewerage systems to provide clean water (with the occasional outpouring of poo onto beaches under the Conservatives). What’s wrong with having air filtration systems in buildings to provide clean air?
You appear to be ideologically opposed to the mere idea that we can do something about COVID. We have to be impotent to justify your libertarianism, just as others on the right argue that the economy is in such a mess that we are impotent to the markets rather than admit that Truss/Kwarteng got it wrong, just as others on the right argue that there’s nothing we can do to stop Putin, so let’s make Ukraine sue for peace.
Encouraging people to wear a mask is dystopian whereas advising not go into work when you have symptoms of a respiratory infection is common sense. Advising people not to go to work when they have no symptoms yet have bizarrely chosen to take a Covid test (which showed positive) is still an issue I understand. Perhaps Truss could usefully do something about this?
Is it dystopian to encourage people to wear a shirt - cultural norms and societal expectations mean we almost always do wear a shirt, but it is sometimes so warm in my office I'd like to derobe. When conditions change should a different understanding of what is typical, expected or desired also change?
Naughty x2. Covering your face is a deeply unnormal activity for at least our western liberal democracies. It just is.
Will it all become normalised in time with an increase in mask wearing? Probably. Possibly. But as it is today I can understand it being termed dystopian.
A hundred years ago, it was considered unthinkable in the West for an adult to go out without a hat or other head covering (head scarves for working-class women). Even at the time of Kennedy’s election as President, plenty were still shocked at how we went out and about without a hat. He was nicknamed Hatless Jack. I suspect many back then would’ve considered it dystopian to have a future without hat wearing.
Today, hat wearing is much less common. A man wearing a hat is often thought to be a bit of a poseur, maybe a hipster, or one of those people who wears a flat cap to pretend they’re working class when they’re actually an office manager. Women wearing head scarves for religious reasons is actively abhorred by many.
Societies change. No one really knows why hat wearing fell out of style. If there’s a bit more mask wearing in certain contexts and we get a significant reduction in respiratory diseases (old or new ones), I’m not seeing a problem personally.
Seriously?
Hat = cover your hair (or lack of it) plus baseball caps, beanie caps, er, top hats - plenty worn today. Mask = cover your face and all the facial expressions that eg @BartholomewRoberts has explained are so vital for so many reasons.
Are you really equating the social norm of wearing a hat and wearing a mask?
I mean I know we like to argue the toss on here but that is just bizarre.
I'm not equating hats and masks, I'm saying that society changes in many ways, and each generation is often aghast at those changes, while forgetting the changes that came before them.
Wearing a mask while you have respiratory symptoms is such a minor thing that I do find bizarre the arguments that it's massively detrimental to the workings of society.
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
This is the most likely set of events. However, it holds a mirror up to the Western "Alliance" that few are prepared to look into.
The CDU/CSU Christian Democratic Union suffered defeat in the Bundestag with a proposal to increase military support for Ukraine. In a roll-call vote, 179 MPs voted in favour of the proposal, 476 were against and one abstained, the German public broadcaster ARD reported.
Eliminating any chance of a gas pipeline reduces incentive for more voting along those lines in the Bundestag.
Or increases it.
I mean that vote was after the pipeline sabotage, so doesn't seem to be working...
America’s sabotage is working because you ain’t getting any Russian gas through that pipe ever again
FFS Is there ever a ridiculous alt-right conspiracy you don't fall for?
Can I just say this is genius work by the CIA. They have managed to file an obviously plausible explanation for the pipeline explosion, that America did it - an explanation believed by many experts - under the heading "Trumpite conspiracy theory". So that unintelligent naive people will not believe it, because they are dim and need to be told what to think
This is, indeed, uncannily similar to what they did with Lab Leak. "Racist conspiracy theory espoused by Trump"
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
Or also because they don't trust Europe not to cave to Russia in the Winter and want to cut off that exit. Which would be intolerable.
It IS nonsense. It makes no sense. Whereas it makes perfect sense in every way for Russia to do it.
It may not be true, and I have not even looked at any evidence to endorse or disprove it, but 'nonsense' that 'makes no sense' it aint. They threatened publicly to do it ffs.
Can you point me to where the US threatened to blow up pipelines in the Baltic?
How does US state terrorism in Western Europe keep Europe onside?
How is blowing up the infrastructure in the waters of allied nations something that is in the interests of the US?
Is the US also going to blow up all the other gas pipelines from Russia to Europe?
How does it help the Democrats in the midterms?
You seem to think something cannot be true, and cannot be happening, simply because you dislike the implications
We saw similar reactions to Brexit and early Covid
Well, of course it could be true. It's just extremely unlikely. Your own reactions to practically everything show that you have a pretty tenuous connection to reality most of the time.
Jawohl, dumbkopf
Check the Biden video. America did it
Why would they do it now? The consensus is that Europe would never again rely on Russian energy, so why destroy the pipeline now?
Seems like madness to me. Imagine if it leaked that the US had destroyed a Russian/German pipeline. it just seems like pretext for the Russians to look at NATO cables and pipelines.
Is this really an action that Biden would agree to? Its actively hostile, conflagratory and makes no difference to European energy policy.
Biden literally said he would do this, in February. Biden said out loud "I will do this". Biden also smirked as he gave the answer that he would do it - as in, oh boy, my guys can do this, don't you worry, we will do it and it will be done - and then Biden went and did it
So, I'm having a wild guess that Yes, Biden did it
The pipeline never opened.
What intelligence would make the Americans decide to do this? They must have a very good reason.
Interesting thread, which I find slightly more convincing on the pipeline question than the combined opinions of @Leon , @Luckyguy1983 , and @Dura_Ace . FWIW.
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
This is the most likely set of events. However, it holds a mirror up to the Western "Alliance" that few are prepared to look into.
The CDU/CSU Christian Democratic Union suffered defeat in the Bundestag with a proposal to increase military support for Ukraine. In a roll-call vote, 179 MPs voted in favour of the proposal, 476 were against and one abstained, the German public broadcaster ARD reported.
Eliminating any chance of a gas pipeline reduces incentive for more voting along those lines in the Bundestag.
Or increases it.
I mean that vote was after the pipeline sabotage, so doesn't seem to be working...
America’s sabotage is working because you ain’t getting any Russian gas through that pipe ever again
FFS Is there ever a ridiculous alt-right conspiracy you don't fall for?
Can I just say this is genius work by the CIA. They have managed to file an obviously plausible explanation for the pipeline explosion, that America did it - an explanation believed by many experts - under the heading "Trumpite conspiracy theory". So that unintelligent naive people will not believe it, because they are dim and need to be told what to think
This is, indeed, uncannily similar to what they did with Lab Leak. "Racist conspiracy theory espoused by Trump"
Russia cut the pipeline so that grannies in "the West" will freeze this winter.
Interesting thread, which I find slightly more convincing on the pipeline question than the combined opinions of @Leon , @Luckyguy1983 , and @Dura_Ace . FWIW.
Is he seriously claiming America does not have an obvious motive?! lol
They've got the means. And the means to hide it. The most powerful military the world has ever seen. Plausible deniability with Russia. It's either them or Vlad.
Actually, it does not require advanced technology, just access to the inside of the pipeline. An inspection "pig" could have been armed with explosives and sent down the inside of the pipe. I just do not know if they have the range for that.
A friend of mine was involved in using them for North Sea pipe inspections and I am sure they exist for Baltic pipe inspections
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
This is the most likely set of events. However, it holds a mirror up to the Western "Alliance" that few are prepared to look into.
The CDU/CSU Christian Democratic Union suffered defeat in the Bundestag with a proposal to increase military support for Ukraine. In a roll-call vote, 179 MPs voted in favour of the proposal, 476 were against and one abstained, the German public broadcaster ARD reported.
Eliminating any chance of a gas pipeline reduces incentive for more voting along those lines in the Bundestag.
Or increases it.
I mean that vote was after the pipeline sabotage, so doesn't seem to be working...
America’s sabotage is working because you ain’t getting any Russian gas through that pipe ever again
FFS Is there ever a ridiculous alt-right conspiracy you don't fall for?
He’s seen so many wolves that his running up and down the street shouting about them has become just background noise for the villagers.
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
Or also because they don't trust Europe not to cave to Russia in the Winter and want to cut off that exit. Which would be intolerable.
It IS nonsense. It makes no sense. Whereas it makes perfect sense in every way for Russia to do it.
It may not be true, and I have not even looked at any evidence to endorse or disprove it, but 'nonsense' that 'makes no sense' it aint. They threatened publicly to do it ffs.
Can you point me to where the US threatened to blow up pipelines in the Baltic?
How does US state terrorism in Western Europe keep Europe onside?
How is blowing up the infrastructure in the waters of allied nations something that is in the interests of the US?
Is the US also going to blow up all the other gas pipelines from Russia to Europe?
How does it help the Democrats in the midterms?
You seem to think something cannot be true, and cannot be happening, simply because you dislike the implications
We saw similar reactions to Brexit and early Covid
Well, of course it could be true. It's just extremely unlikely. Your own reactions to practically everything show that you have a pretty tenuous connection to reality most of the time.
Jawohl, dumbkopf
Check the Biden video. America did it
Why would they do it now? The consensus is that Europe would never again rely on Russian energy, so why destroy the pipeline now?
Seems like madness to me. Imagine if it leaked that the US had destroyed a Russian/German pipeline. it just seems like pretext for the Russians to look at NATO cables and pipelines.
Is this really an action that Biden would agree to? Its actively hostile, conflagratory and makes no difference to European energy policy.
Biden literally said he would do this, in February. Biden said out loud "I will do this". Biden also smirked as he gave the answer that he would do it - as in, oh boy, my guys can do this, don't you worry, we will do it and it will be done - and then Biden went and did it
So, I'm having a wild guess that Yes, Biden did it
The pipeline never opened.
What intelligence would make the Americans decide to do this? They must have a very good reason.
Cui bono?
America achieved its objective of getting the pipeline halted back in February. What possible benefit would they have to stand to do this now?
Russia OTOH has this useless pipeline that it can't export its good through anymore, has shown a willingness to use gas a weapon since even before the new invasion began, has contracts its in difficulty with and this explosion gives it force majeure to deal with, and has now got its useful idiots in the West attacking the USA instead of Russia just as it wants.
BREAKING: Hospital admissions of covid positive patients in England up 48% in a week.
Fourth Covid wave of 2022 now in full effect
At this point the only answer is dark, sardonic laughter, and a stiff scotch before noon
At this point the only answer is to stop worrying about Covid.
I'm not joking when I say if people get sick and die, they get sick and die. We've spent years locked down, we've rolled out is four or five rounds of vaccines now. Seriously, get over it already.
We haven't "spent years locked down".
Yes we have. They lasted for a period of years and at any time during that period we didn't know when the next one was going to occur.
Please don't let's go down the old, rich blokes in charming houses wondering what the big fuss about lockdown route is again.
Yes i imagine lockdown in a nice house in Hampstead was quite pleasant..a walk on the heath everyday whilst tutting at the covidiots sitting on park benches
Indeed.
But hasn't the opposite been shown? That those most in favour of lockdowns - the young, the precarious and the like - also had the worst experience of lockdown. They just understood that the sacrifice was necessary for society to keep functioning. Whereas a lot of the people moaning the most, and demanding people go into the office asap, are rich old guys who do have mansions, and in many cases, have worked from home as journalists for years...
I don't know I haven't read the breakdowns. I would be amazed (but then PB knowledge is amazing) if the young were in favour of lockdowns when as far as I can tell they almost continuously ignored them throughout the years they were in operation. Or is it one of those survey answer questions to "would you like world peace" or "should there be higher taxes".
I’d have to dig deeper on the question, but we know some predictors of poor adherence to guidelines or regulations across the pandemic. Being young and male were predictive of lower adherence. But also we saw those who struggled with following restrictions were (unsurprisingly) less likely to follow them, so financial distress and having dependent children at home were both predictive of poor adherence.
Meanwhile, the young were, if I remember correctly, also more worried about COVID-19 on average than the middle aged. That may not be the same youngsters who were following regulations less. I’d guess that there was a greater dichotomy: some ignoring the rules, others very worried. We’re working on a paper looking at predictors of worry across the pandemic. Remind me to report back in a few months…
Super interesting yes please do.
My (ANECDOTAL) understanding from every young person I know and have spoken to about it (nephews, neices, sons/daughters of friends) was that there was wholesale attempted circumvention of the rules. This was mainly at universities where I know there were also some pretty hefty compliance measures by the unis eg threatening to chuck them out/report them to the police. It is also a pretty ABC1 kind of demographic so maybe this is a factor.
Would be very interested to hear your findings.
My (equally anecdotal) understanding from young people in my family (cousins, siblings, and their friends) was a big concern for the elder generation in our family (my maternal grandparents are still with us, and my paternal ones managed most of the lockdowns before passing). That may be anomalous though, as my dad and sister lived with my grandmother, and my family is very close and so weekly meals with grandparents became weekly zoom calls. I would say 2/3rds of the under 25s in the family were very strict, the other 3rd masked, tested whenever they went out, but still wanted to go out.
I've contributed to an (as yet unpublished, although I hear it's near submission) study looking indirectly at Covid concern in relation to other things. Patterning is interesting there as the very young and very old were most concerned, with those in 30-50 less concerned. Should note that this was in terms of ranking issues of concern, so it doesn't necessarily mean absolute levels of concern, but perhaps only that 30-50s had other things that concerned them more than Covid.
ETA: piggybacking on an ONS survey, so representative sampling. But not directly the question of interest.
Yes, we usually found a U-shaped (or inverse U-shaped) relationship against age on various beliefs and behaviours.
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
This is the most likely set of events. However, it holds a mirror up to the Western "Alliance" that few are prepared to look into.
The CDU/CSU Christian Democratic Union suffered defeat in the Bundestag with a proposal to increase military support for Ukraine. In a roll-call vote, 179 MPs voted in favour of the proposal, 476 were against and one abstained, the German public broadcaster ARD reported.
Eliminating any chance of a gas pipeline reduces incentive for more voting along those lines in the Bundestag.
Or increases it.
I mean that vote was after the pipeline sabotage, so doesn't seem to be working...
America’s sabotage is working because you ain’t getting any Russian gas through that pipe ever again
FFS Is there ever a ridiculous alt-right conspiracy you don't fall for?
Can I just say this is genius work by the CIA. They have managed to file an obviously plausible explanation for the pipeline explosion, that America did it - an explanation believed by many experts - under the heading "Trumpite conspiracy theory". So that unintelligent naive people will not believe it, because they are dim and need to be told what to think
This is, indeed, uncannily similar to what they did with Lab Leak. "Racist conspiracy theory espoused by Trump"
Is that a conspiracy about a conspiracy? The lizard people of the Global Government have caught on to the idea that if they want one of their conspiracies to go unnoticed they put out a story that MAGA nutjobs say it is a conspiracy, and those who don't believe in far fetched conspiracies don't actually realise that it is a conspiracy within another conspiracy.
Thats the US. We may catch it, yes. The global economy is on the verge of collapsing
22.5% drop? That seems to be volume, not prices.
Hopefully we do get a 50% or so drop in house prices in the UK. Would love to see house prices back at a 3x multiple in the North and a 4x multiple in London, just as it used to be.
Sometimes a bit of pain and disruption is needed to fix the fundamentals. We may need to go through that now.
50% drop in house prices = GFC mark 2, not just a bit of pain and disruption.
Oh well.
Controlled burn-backs are better at preventing rampaging forest fires, but if you don't have them and allow the undergrowth never to be removed then the problems build up until a rampaging forest fire becomes necessary and unpreventable. We're possibly at that point now.
Had we had brief periods of negative equity repeatedly in the past thirty years, then we'd now be in a position where prices were reasonable, as they'd bounced up and down. Unfortunately we've taken a toxic attitude that prices must never fall and they've ratchetted higher and higher to the point it will take a 50% fall to get back to reasonable levels.
Smaller falls more often would have been better, than a major fall at once.
I imagine that even if they do fall it might still be difficult to get a mortgage when your only occupation that you can declare is "amateur keyboard warrior -unpaid"
I find it amusing that you're so invested in my work life balance. I've only been on the site for a few minutes today while I have my lunch, and made fewer posts than many others, but you've still got your hard on for me since I was OK with Brexit and rejected your Europhilia.
Its rather cute you keep trying to make things personal like that, I think you secretly enjoy having people to argue with and maybe just get frustrated that you can't match my intellect or arguments so you just turn personal instead, its a bit like a young boy tugging on a girls pigtails because they like them.
Hahahaha. I just got back from lunch. Nice one Barty. "match your intellect"? I most certainly can't and wouldn't want to "match your intellect" as it appears to be lower than a slightly imbecilic amoeba. Your posts (and those of your previous incarnation) indicate you are one of the lowest intellect contributors on this site. There are some posters who have wacky and far fetched ideas and they are nonetheless amusing. Yours are neither credible or amusing, and your metaphors are cringingly poor, all indicating your status as the dullest of dullards.
You are indeed a curious phenomenon though. If one carries on your amusingly unimaginative playground theme you are like the child that desperately wants to play with the big boys and just makes himself a figure of fun because he can't keep up. As for enjoying arguing with you, I don't because it is too easy. I am not arguing with you I am simply pointing out that not only are you dumb, you are a very sick saddo. One of the few people on here who is so callous that were it not for the fact that I know you to be relatively young, I would imagine you to be an old fart of such horrifically twisted personality that even Dickens would think you too unrealistic to be one of his most revolting caricatures. Am I being unfair or unkind? No, you are someone who seems to get a kick out of stating that it is OK for a surplus of the population to get on and die, and for another part of the population, those with families and mortgages (that you are clearly envious of) to fall into destitution. You are a very unpleasant far right little oik.
Which is a very long winded way of saying "I disagree with your politics", even though that's what you mean.
Interesting thread, which I find slightly more convincing on the pipeline question than the combined opinions of @Leon , @Luckyguy1983 , and @Dura_Ace . FWIW.
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
Or also because they don't trust Europe not to cave to Russia in the Winter and want to cut off that exit. Which would be intolerable.
It IS nonsense. It makes no sense. Whereas it makes perfect sense in every way for Russia to do it.
It may not be true, and I have not even looked at any evidence to endorse or disprove it, but 'nonsense' that 'makes no sense' it aint. They threatened publicly to do it ffs.
Can you point me to where the US threatened to blow up pipelines in the Baltic?
How does US state terrorism in Western Europe keep Europe onside?
How is blowing up the infrastructure in the waters of allied nations something that is in the interests of the US?
Is the US also going to blow up all the other gas pipelines from Russia to Europe?
How does it help the Democrats in the midterms?
You seem to think something cannot be true, and cannot be happening, simply because you dislike the implications
We saw similar reactions to Brexit and early Covid
Well, of course it could be true. It's just extremely unlikely. Your own reactions to practically everything show that you have a pretty tenuous connection to reality most of the time.
Jawohl, dumbkopf
Check the Biden video. America did it
Why would they do it now? The consensus is that Europe will never again rely on Russian energy, so why destroy the pipeline now?
Seems like madness to me. Imagine if it leaked that the US had destroyed a Russian/German pipeline. it just seems like pretext for the Russians to look at NATO cables and pipelines.
Is this really an action that Biden would agree to? Its actively hostile, conflagratory and makes no difference to European energy policy.
Seems obvious that one of the reasons the Russians did it was to get Europeans panicking about all the other pipelines and subsea infrastructure. If the Norwegian gas pipelines are taken out Europe suffers very badly. Similarly the Irish are a bit jumpy about the fibre optic cables that cross the Atlantic just off their coast, where the Russian Navy was messing about during the summer. One third of global internet data goes through those cables.
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
This is the most likely set of events. However, it holds a mirror up to the Western "Alliance" that few are prepared to look into.
The CDU/CSU Christian Democratic Union suffered defeat in the Bundestag with a proposal to increase military support for Ukraine. In a roll-call vote, 179 MPs voted in favour of the proposal, 476 were against and one abstained, the German public broadcaster ARD reported.
Eliminating any chance of a gas pipeline reduces incentive for more voting along those lines in the Bundestag.
Or increases it.
I mean that vote was after the pipeline sabotage, so doesn't seem to be working...
America’s sabotage is working because you ain’t getting any Russian gas through that pipe ever again
FFS Is there ever a ridiculous alt-right conspiracy you don't fall for?
Lab leak? Oh, no, wait, that one was right and I believed it and told you from the start, when you were all moaning about it being a racist conspiracy theory
Plausible, not proven. I know you think it is proven, but its as likely to have been natural origin. Do you consider that all the other viruses that spread from animals to man must have been lab leaks too? Mers? Swine flu? Avian flu? I think a lot of scientists thougt it plausible and tried to discredit the idea. I'm less convinced that they knew it was a lab leak and tried to cover it up.
THIS stat geek guy has just crunched the probabilities
"To summarize:
It's improbable for a CoV to emerge in Wuhan. It's improbable for a CoV to be so transmissible. It's improbable for a SARS CoV to have a FCS
SARS-CoV-2 is highly transmissible with FCS, and it emerged in Wuhan next to the WIV.
We will never know for sure, China has taken care of that, but the circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly points to Lab Leak. A lot of scientists hate this conclusion, for obvious reasons, but there it is. Endex
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
Or also because they don't trust Europe not to cave to Russia in the Winter and want to cut off that exit. Which would be intolerable.
It IS nonsense. It makes no sense. Whereas it makes perfect sense in every way for Russia to do it.
It may not be true, and I have not even looked at any evidence to endorse or disprove it, but 'nonsense' that 'makes no sense' it aint. They threatened publicly to do it ffs.
Can you point me to where the US threatened to blow up pipelines in the Baltic?
How does US state terrorism in Western Europe keep Europe onside?
How is blowing up the infrastructure in the waters of allied nations something that is in the interests of the US?
Is the US also going to blow up all the other gas pipelines from Russia to Europe?
How does it help the Democrats in the midterms?
You seem to think something cannot be true, and cannot be happening, simply because you dislike the implications
We saw similar reactions to Brexit and early Covid
Well, of course it could be true. It's just extremely unlikely. Your own reactions to practically everything show that you have a pretty tenuous connection to reality most of the time.
Jawohl, dumbkopf
Check the Biden video. America did it
Why would they do it now? The consensus is that Europe will never again rely on Russian energy, so why destroy the pipeline now?
Seems like madness to me. Imagine if it leaked that the US had destroyed a Russian/German pipeline. it just seems like pretext for the Russians to look at NATO cables and pipelines.
Is this really an action that Biden would agree to? Its actively hostile, conflagratory and makes no difference to European energy policy.
Stop confusing Leon with facts and logic.
To answer the question: maybe an implied threat from Putin to the rest of Europe: fine, you’ve decided to stop buying gas from us. Play nice, or we cut off the rest of the gas pipelines in the North Sea.
It could be a long, cold winter with no Norwegian gas in northern Europe.
That this would be an act of war against a bunch of NATO countries would make this an act of madness, but historically Putin hasn’t exactly been constrained by rationality has he?
It seems Putin is determined to escalate the war in order to keep control of the situation within Russia. He and we are now locked in a conflict that neither can walk away from for good (to each party) reasons. We can only hope for either a total collapse of the Russian army in the field before winter sets in, or else an internal coup because otherwise I can’t see this ending well.
(I seem to have caught Leon’s doom&gloom somehow. Maybe there are sunlit uplands I haven’t seen?)
Interesting thread, which I find slightly more convincing on the pipeline question than the combined opinions of @Leon , @Luckyguy1983 , and @Dura_Ace . FWIW.
Thats the US. We may catch it, yes. The global economy is on the verge of collapsing
22.5% drop? That seems to be volume, not prices.
Hopefully we do get a 50% or so drop in house prices in the UK. Would love to see house prices back at a 3x multiple in the North and a 4x multiple in London, just as it used to be.
Sometimes a bit of pain and disruption is needed to fix the fundamentals. We may need to go through that now.
50% drop in house prices = GFC mark 2, not just a bit of pain and disruption.
Oh well.
Controlled burn-backs are better at preventing rampaging forest fires, but if you don't have them and allow the undergrowth never to be removed then the problems build up until a rampaging forest fire becomes necessary and unpreventable. We're possibly at that point now.
Had we had brief periods of negative equity repeatedly in the past thirty years, then we'd now be in a position where prices were reasonable, as they'd bounced up and down. Unfortunately we've taken a toxic attitude that prices must never fall and they've ratchetted higher and higher to the point it will take a 50% fall to get back to reasonable levels.
Smaller falls more often would have been better, than a major fall at once.
I imagine that even if they do fall it might still be difficult to get a mortgage when your only occupation that you can declare is "amateur keyboard warrior -unpaid"
I find it amusing that you're so invested in my work life balance. I've only been on the site for a few minutes today while I have my lunch, and made fewer posts than many others, but you've still got your hard on for me since I was OK with Brexit and rejected your Europhilia.
Its rather cute you keep trying to make things personal like that, I think you secretly enjoy having people to argue with and maybe just get frustrated that you can't match my intellect or arguments so you just turn personal instead, its a bit like a young boy tugging on a girls pigtails because they like them.
Hahahaha. I just got back from lunch. Nice one Barty. "match your intellect"? I most certainly can't and wouldn't want to "match your intellect" as it appears to be lower than a slightly imbecilic amoeba. Your posts (and those of your previous incarnation) indicate you are one of the lowest intellect contributors on this site. There are some posters who have wacky and far fetched ideas and they are nonetheless amusing. Yours are neither credible or amusing, and your metaphors are cringingly poor, all indicating your status as the dullest of dullards.
You are indeed a curious phenomenon though. If one carries on your amusingly unimaginative playground theme you are like the child that desperately wants to play with the big boys and just makes himself a figure of fun because he can't keep up. As for enjoying arguing with you, I don't because it is too easy. I am not arguing with you I am simply pointing out that not only are you dumb, you are a very sick saddo. One of the few people on here who is so callous that were it not for the fact that I know you to be relatively young, I would imagine you to be an old fart of such horrifically twisted personality that even Dickens would think you too unrealistic to be one of his most revolting caricatures. Am I being unfair or unkind? No, you are someone who seems to get a kick out of stating that it is OK for a surplus of the population to get on and die, and for another part of the population, those with families and mortgages (that you are clearly envious of) to fall into destitution. You are a very unpleasant far right little oik.
Which is a very long winded way of saying "I disagree with your politics", even though that's what you mean.
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
Or also because they don't trust Europe not to cave to Russia in the Winter and want to cut off that exit. Which would be intolerable.
It IS nonsense. It makes no sense. Whereas it makes perfect sense in every way for Russia to do it.
It may not be true, and I have not even looked at any evidence to endorse or disprove it, but 'nonsense' that 'makes no sense' it aint. They threatened publicly to do it ffs.
Can you point me to where the US threatened to blow up pipelines in the Baltic?
How does US state terrorism in Western Europe keep Europe onside?
How is blowing up the infrastructure in the waters of allied nations something that is in the interests of the US?
Is the US also going to blow up all the other gas pipelines from Russia to Europe?
How does it help the Democrats in the midterms?
You seem to think something cannot be true, and cannot be happening, simply because you dislike the implications
We saw similar reactions to Brexit and early Covid
Well, of course it could be true. It's just extremely unlikely. Your own reactions to practically everything show that you have a pretty tenuous connection to reality most of the time.
Jawohl, dumbkopf
Check the Biden video. America did it
Why would they do it now? The consensus is that Europe would never again rely on Russian energy, so why destroy the pipeline now?
Seems like madness to me. Imagine if it leaked that the US had destroyed a Russian/German pipeline. it just seems like pretext for the Russians to look at NATO cables and pipelines.
Is this really an action that Biden would agree to? Its actively hostile, conflagratory and makes no difference to European energy policy.
Biden literally said he would do this, in February. Biden said out loud "I will do this". Biden also smirked as he gave the answer that he would do it - as in, oh boy, my guys can do this, don't you worry, we will do it and it will be done - and then Biden went and did it
So, I'm having a wild guess that Yes, Biden did it
The pipeline never opened.
What intelligence would make the Americans decide to do this? They must have a very good reason.
Cui bono?
America achieved its objective of getting the pipeline halted back in February. What possible benefit would they have to stand to do this now?
Russia OTOH has this useless pipeline that it can't export its good through anymore, has shown a willingness to use gas a weapon since even before the new invasion began, has contracts its in difficulty with and this explosion gives it force majeure to deal with, and has now got its useful idiots in the West attacking the USA instead of Russia just as it wants.
For a start it's a pre-emptive warning to Putin by the USA: "we too are prepared to do crazy or violent things, so you bluff won't work, we will also go to the brink and maybe beyond"
In fact this fits perfectly with Deterrence Theory. You should EXPECT America to do something like this, and so they have done it
BREAKING: Hospital admissions of covid positive patients in England up 48% in a week.
Fourth Covid wave of 2022 now in full effect
At this point the only answer is dark, sardonic laughter, and a stiff scotch before noon
At this point the only answer is to stop worrying about Covid.
I'm not joking when I say if people get sick and die, they get sick and die. We've spent years locked down, we've rolled out is four or five rounds of vaccines now. Seriously, get over it already.
We haven't "spent years locked down".
Yes we have. They lasted for a period of years and at any time during that period we didn't know when the next one was going to occur.
Please don't let's go down the old, rich blokes in charming houses wondering what the big fuss about lockdown route is again.
Yes i imagine lockdown in a nice house in Hampstead was quite pleasant..a walk on the heath everyday whilst tutting at the covidiots sitting on park benches
Indeed.
But hasn't the opposite been shown? That those most in favour of lockdowns - the young, the precarious and the like - also had the worst experience of lockdown. They just understood that the sacrifice was necessary for society to keep functioning. Whereas a lot of the people moaning the most, and demanding people go into the office asap, are rich old guys who do have mansions, and in many cases, have worked from home as journalists for years...
I don't know I haven't read the breakdowns. I would be amazed (but then PB knowledge is amazing) if the young were in favour of lockdowns when as far as I can tell they almost continuously ignored them throughout the years they were in operation. Or is it one of those survey answer questions to "would you like world peace" or "should there be higher taxes".
I’d have to dig deeper on the question, but we know some predictors of poor adherence to guidelines or regulations across the pandemic. Being young and male were predictive of lower adherence. But also we saw those who struggled with following restrictions were (unsurprisingly) less likely to follow them, so financial distress and having dependent children at home were both predictive of poor adherence.
Meanwhile, the young were, if I remember correctly, also more worried about COVID-19 on average than the middle aged. That may not be the same youngsters who were following regulations less. I’d guess that there was a greater dichotomy: some ignoring the rules, others very worried. We’re working on a paper looking at predictors of worry across the pandemic. Remind me to report back in a few months…
Super interesting yes please do.
My (ANECDOTAL) understanding from every young person I know and have spoken to about it (nephews, neices, sons/daughters of friends) was that there was wholesale attempted circumvention of the rules. This was mainly at universities where I know there were also some pretty hefty compliance measures by the unis eg threatening to chuck them out/report them to the police. It is also a pretty ABC1 kind of demographic so maybe this is a factor.
Would be very interested to hear your findings.
My (equally anecdotal) understanding from young people in my family (cousins, siblings, and their friends) was a big concern for the elder generation in our family (my maternal grandparents are still with us, and my paternal ones managed most of the lockdowns before passing). That may be anomalous though, as my dad and sister lived with my grandmother, and my family is very close and so weekly meals with grandparents became weekly zoom calls. I would say 2/3rds of the under 25s in the family were very strict, the other 3rd masked, tested whenever they went out, but still wanted to go out.
I've contributed to an (as yet unpublished, although I hear it's near submission) study looking indirectly at Covid concern in relation to other things. Patterning is interesting there as the very young and very old were most concerned, with those in 30-50 less concerned. Should note that this was in terms of ranking issues of concern, so it doesn't necessarily mean absolute levels of concern, but perhaps only that 30-50s had other things that concerned them more than Covid.
That matches my anecdotal observations.
I'd say 30-50 year olds best understood the overall and age-related risks and felt less personally threatened. They were right. The oldies were more concerned for obvious reasons. The youngsters (by which I mean 15 - 20 year olds) tended to - kind-of - lazily and confirmedly don the masks and observe other stuff etc with a shrug and didn't understand the moans and objections of their parents to something that they didn't see as a big deal.
The views of the young are concerning in my opinion. Doesn't bode well.
That feels counterintuitive in my mind. The young took a precautionary approach, treating an unknown threat with the seriousness it deserved. That is a pretty mature position. Whereas I would argue the 30-50 year old "meh" reaction is more concerning - a bit of a "I should be fine, so why do I need to worry" position that doesn't think of people in wider society.
The biggest fear of my sister (who was 19 when lockdown started) was going to work (she worked in a nursery and worked all through covid) and brining the virus home and killing our nan. Not that she would get ill and feel bad for a week or so, but real concern for the at risk group. That is what I think the younger people understood better than some middle aged folk.
Alternatively what you call middle aged folk (since when were thirty-somethings middle aged!?) include the vast bulk of people who are parents and who could see what harm the restrictions were doing. Parents are more willing to put their children before themselves, and harming children's education by shutting schools, restricting socialisation and having a masked up population which is a barrier to children learning to talk and communicate properly is a negative that they were better able to see and disagree with.
Those who only saw one side of the argument, and thought there were no downsides to shutting schools, imposing masks or blocking socialisation were not 'better' than others.
BREAKING: Hospital admissions of covid positive patients in England up 48% in a week.
Fourth Covid wave of 2022 now in full effect
At this point the only answer is dark, sardonic laughter, and a stiff scotch before noon
At this point the only answer is to stop worrying about Covid.
I'm not joking when I say if people get sick and die, they get sick and die. We've spent years locked down, we've rolled out is four or five rounds of vaccines now. Seriously, get over it already.
So I only just had it this summer after 3 jabs - the illness itself was a bad flu, I was bedbound for a few days with a high temp, and didn't actually have much in the way of bad lung stuff.
Problem I have now is, a few months after that, I'm still exhausted, I'm having headaches and brainfog, I'm getting muscle aches and chest pain all the time. I used to walk home most days from the office, about 4.5 miles in about an hour depending on weather and if I popped into the shops. I can't do half of that atm without breaking into flopsweats and wheezing.
Even if you think it's fine for people to get sick and die - the long term impact of this won't go away. My doc is assuming it's long covid, but I'm going to go for tests, impacting an already crippled healthcare system. I can't work as efficiently as I have been, my quality of life has dramatically reduced - hell I'm finding doing 30 mins - 1 hour of housework hard. And I'm in my early 30s. We have no idea how long these symptoms will last, or if we can treat them. That's a strain on our healthcare system, a strain on our labour productivity, a strain on society.
And if we keep letting wave after wave hit the populace, the chance people have of getting ill and staying ill gets closer to 1. A nation enfeebled by this is a pretty significant threat, in my view.
I'm sorry you're not feeling good, and hope you're feeling better soon.
Please take what follows as honest discord and not a belittlement of how you're feeling, but with all respect I'm sorry to say that shit happens, viruses exist, and we need to get used to it.
If the healthcare system is crippled, then people will die. If people die, then they come off waiting lists and stop needing pensions, or care, or ... eventually a new equilibrium is found.
Its horrible, and its unpleasant, but its also true. What is the alternative? How do we prevent a rampant virus from spreading? The virus can not be contained or controlled, its hubris to suggest it can be, unless we lockdown for about six months to remove and permanently seal up the borders, permanently prevent international trade and permanently prevent international travel.
Realistically, post-vaccines is as good as it gets.
We can reduce the spread of viruses and other pathogens, and routinely do so. We eradicated smallpox and rinderpest, and are making good progress against polio. We contained SARS and MERS. We work every year to minimise the impact of flu, through vaccinations, through behaviour and through reducing infection in animal populations. We work every year to minimise the impact of HIV/AIDS, through behaviour, testing and contact tracing.
Likewise, there is plenty we can do to reduce COVID-19 cases: good air filtration in buildings, encouraging those with symptoms to not go into work and to wear masks, vaccination campaigns. These methods are effective and they are cost effective. But libertarians like to pretend we’re impotent because they are so allergic* to any form of collective action. Bart’s “let them die in the streets” is perhaps at the extreme end of that…
You're right we do vaccinate against the flu. And I'm all for vaccines for Covid.
I've had 3 vaccines, I doubt I'll have any more but if offered more I would do my bit and get a jab. My grandparents that are still alive have had five vaccines each.
So yes, vaccinated for Covid, like we vaccinate against the flu. Great. But no to masks, or lockdowns, or restrictions or staying at home when you're healthy but a carrier or any other nonsense.
You response seems minimally connected to what I wrote. I didn’t mention a single restriction or lockdowns.
We have public health information campaigns to encourage people to wash their hands after using the toilet. What’s wrong with having public health information campaigns to encourage people to wear a mask and not go into work when they have symptoms of a respiratory infection?
We have sewerage systems to provide clean water (with the occasional outpouring of poo onto beaches under the Conservatives). What’s wrong with having air filtration systems in buildings to provide clean air?
You appear to be ideologically opposed to the mere idea that we can do something about COVID. We have to be impotent to justify your libertarianism, just as others on the right argue that the economy is in such a mess that we are impotent to the markets rather than admit that Truss/Kwarteng got it wrong, just as others on the right argue that there’s nothing we can do to stop Putin, so let’s make Ukraine sue for peace.
Encouraging people to wear a mask is dystopian whereas advising not go into work when you have symptoms of a respiratory infection is common sense. Advising people not to go to work when they have no symptoms yet have bizarrely chosen to take a Covid test (which showed positive) is still an issue I understand. Perhaps Truss could usefully do something about this?
Is it dystopian to encourage people to wear a shirt - cultural norms and societal expectations mean we almost always do wear a shirt, but it is sometimes so warm in my office I'd like to derobe. When conditions change should a different understanding of what is typical, expected or desired also change?
Naughty x2. Covering your face is a deeply unnormal activity for at least our western liberal democracies. It just is.
Will it all become normalised in time with an increase in mask wearing? Probably. Possibly. But as it is today I can understand it being termed dystopian.
A hundred years ago, it was considered unthinkable in the West for an adult to go out without a hat or other head covering (head scarves for working-class women). Even at the time of Kennedy’s election as President, plenty were still shocked at how we went out and about without a hat. He was nicknamed Hatless Jack. I suspect many back then would’ve considered it dystopian to have a future without hat wearing.
Today, hat wearing is much less common. A man wearing a hat is often thought to be a bit of a poseur, maybe a hipster, or one of those people who wears a flat cap to pretend they’re working class when they’re actually an office manager. Women wearing head scarves for religious reasons is actively abhorred by many.
Societies change. No one really knows why hat wearing fell out of style. If there’s a bit more mask wearing in certain contexts and we get a significant reduction in respiratory diseases (old or new ones), I’m not seeing a problem personally.
Seriously?
Hat = cover your hair (or lack of it) plus baseball caps, beanie caps, er, top hats - plenty worn today. Mask = cover your face and all the facial expressions that eg @BartholomewRoberts has explained are so vital for so many reasons.
Are you really equating the social norm of wearing a hat and wearing a mask?
I mean I know we like to argue the toss on here but that is just bizarre.
I'm not equating hats and masks, I'm saying that society changes in many ways, and each generation is often aghast at those changes, while forgetting the changes that came before them.
Wearing a mask while you have respiratory symptoms is such a minor thing that I do find bizarre the arguments that it's massively detrimental to the workings of society.
As @turbotubbs I think noted, it is not for you to say it is such a minor thing. It is a minor thing for you, which is absolutely fair enough but for some people it is distressing or uncomfortable or irritating or any of a hundred other things.
And so far (early days yet) we have not normalised covering our face and I sincerely hope that we never do.
Interesting thread, which I find slightly more convincing on the pipeline question than the combined opinions of @Leon , @Luckyguy1983 , and @Dura_Ace . FWIW.
Thats the US. We may catch it, yes. The global economy is on the verge of collapsing
22.5% drop? That seems to be volume, not prices.
Hopefully we do get a 50% or so drop in house prices in the UK. Would love to see house prices back at a 3x multiple in the North and a 4x multiple in London, just as it used to be.
Sometimes a bit of pain and disruption is needed to fix the fundamentals. We may need to go through that now.
50% drop in house prices = GFC mark 2, not just a bit of pain and disruption.
Oh well.
Controlled burn-backs are better at preventing rampaging forest fires, but if you don't have them and allow the undergrowth never to be removed then the problems build up until a rampaging forest fire becomes necessary and unpreventable. We're possibly at that point now.
Had we had brief periods of negative equity repeatedly in the past thirty years, then we'd now be in a position where prices were reasonable, as they'd bounced up and down. Unfortunately we've taken a toxic attitude that prices must never fall and they've ratchetted higher and higher to the point it will take a 50% fall to get back to reasonable levels.
Smaller falls more often would have been better, than a major fall at once.
Do you believe a house price crash was the deliberate policy of Truss and Kwarteng, or is it a surprise to them?
If it’s a deliberate policy, they’ve been lying to people because they never admitted this. If it was unintended, then you must agree that they’re incompetent.
My guess would be neither.
I would think its not something they deliberately wanted to engineer for its own sake, but they would have known its a possible consequence of their actions and they'd be OK with that. Which would be a huge improvement if so on the past thirty years of "prices must never fall" orthodoxy if so.
That's neither lying, nor incompetent. There are always byproducts or consequences or opportunity costs for any decision made and there's no reason to trumpet them or to avoid them.
When a “byproduct” is of a very significant nature, as a substantial house price fall is, then you should definitely acknowledge them, or seek to avoid them. If Liz and Kwasi thought this was a possible consequence but not worth mentioning or trying to avoid, then they are grossly incompetent.
No, they're not.
Interest rates needing to go up was mentioned and discussed during the leadership campaign. We even had this conversation at the time.
Trying to prevent prices going down would sound better if the same hysteria and action was taken to prevent them going up. Where was the tackling of house price inflation in the past quarter of a century?
What goes up must come down. Prices reaching their appropriate levels rather than being overly inflated due to a one way ratchet is not incompetent, its long overdue.
Provide me a quote from Truss in the leadership campaign saying house prices will fall substantially.
First you provide me a quote by any campaign ever saying that house prices would have rampant and uncontrolled inflation to unaffordable levels.
You seem to be of the attitude that rampant inflation is the natural order of things and not a problem? Or that ending or reversing the rampant inflation of the past is what is problematic instead?
No, Bart, that's all nonsense. I have never, for example, expressed the attitude that rampant inflation is the natural order of things. I have often said I would be happy to see house prices fall.
But that's all your usual approach of moving the goalposts. The question is about the (non-)budget and the competence of Truss and Kwarteng. If they planned to crash house prices, they didn't say they'd do that and have misled the voters and the public. If they didn't plan to crash house prices, then they're incompetent.
If you are arguing that this was the plan, provide me a quote from Truss in the leadership campaign saying house prices will fall substantially.
Its not moving the goalposts, because if you're saying that they need to be saying up front that prices will fall, then there should have been equally statements up front saying there'd be uncontrolled inflation in house prices under the past five Prime Ministers.
How many of the past five Prime Ministers said they'd encourage rampant inflation? If zero, then you're holding Truss to a standard you never held any prior PM.
The last five Prime Ministers were... let's see... Johnson, May, Cameron, Brown and Blair. I think they were all pretty bad Prime Ministers. I didn't vote for any of them. I am happy to criticise all of them for mishandling high house prices. Most of the *inflation* was under Blair and Brown. The others left prices high, but prices haven't been going up as much. Indeed, they initially fell under Cameron. So, you seem to be inventing criticisms that aren't exactly fair, but, still, sure, I think they all failed on tackling property affordability.
Great, now we've established that I am holding Truss to the same standard as the others, can we put the goalposts back?
Truss and Kwarteng lied or are incompetent... or both. It's probably both.
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
This is the most likely set of events. However, it holds a mirror up to the Western "Alliance" that few are prepared to look into.
The CDU/CSU Christian Democratic Union suffered defeat in the Bundestag with a proposal to increase military support for Ukraine. In a roll-call vote, 179 MPs voted in favour of the proposal, 476 were against and one abstained, the German public broadcaster ARD reported.
Eliminating any chance of a gas pipeline reduces incentive for more voting along those lines in the Bundestag.
Or increases it.
I mean that vote was after the pipeline sabotage, so doesn't seem to be working...
America’s sabotage is working because you ain’t getting any Russian gas through that pipe ever again
FFS Is there ever a ridiculous alt-right conspiracy you don't fall for?
Lab leak? Oh, no, wait, that one was right and I believed it and told you from the start, when you were all moaning about it being a racist conspiracy theory
Plausible, not proven. I know you think it is proven, but its as likely to have been natural origin. Do you consider that all the other viruses that spread from animals to man must have been lab leaks too? Mers? Swine flu? Avian flu? I think a lot of scientists thougt it plausible and tried to discredit the idea. I'm less convinced that they knew it was a lab leak and tried to cover it up.
THIS stat geek guy has just crunched the probabilities
"To summarize:
It's improbable for a CoV to emerge in Wuhan. It's improbable for a CoV to be so transmissible. It's improbable for a SARS CoV to have a FCS
SARS-CoV-2 is highly transmissible with FCS, and it emerged in Wuhan next to the WIV.
We will never know for sure, China has taken care of that, but the circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly points to Lab Leak. A lot of scientists hate this conclusion, for obvious reasons, but there it is. Endex
It's improbable for a CoV to emerge in Wuhan. - Why? And also irrelevant. Viruses emerge where they emerge. It's improbable for a CoV to be so transmissible. Why? Different diseases have different transmissibility. There are lots of factors. How is it spread, when are you most infectious, how much virus is produced etc It's improbable for a SARS CoV to have a FCS Why? Its plausible, hence why scientists were interested in seeing what happens.
This is a bit like the Drake equation. Line up some factors and then make up some numbers, get your conclusion.
I think you believe that the virus that first emerged was altered by man (i.e. not natural). Others have looked at that and the evidence is mixed.
How long can we go politically feather bedding pensioner incomes at a time when the working population is seeing their incomes crushed & many of them are falling into poverty?
The triple lock was a mistake: Pensions should have been tied to UK wages so that pensioners got a fair shake out of UK output, not given this promise that meant they never lost out regardless of what happened to everyone else.
It was fine at the point it was introduced - pensions were way too low as a percentage of median wage but it’s served it’s time and should be replaced with a percentage model as you suggest
BREAKING: Hospital admissions of covid positive patients in England up 48% in a week.
Fourth Covid wave of 2022 now in full effect
At this point the only answer is dark, sardonic laughter, and a stiff scotch before noon
At this point the only answer is to stop worrying about Covid.
I'm not joking when I say if people get sick and die, they get sick and die. We've spent years locked down, we've rolled out is four or five rounds of vaccines now. Seriously, get over it already.
We haven't "spent years locked down".
Yes we have. They lasted for a period of years and at any time during that period we didn't know when the next one was going to occur.
Please don't let's go down the old, rich blokes in charming houses wondering what the big fuss about lockdown route is again.
Yes i imagine lockdown in a nice house in Hampstead was quite pleasant..a walk on the heath everyday whilst tutting at the covidiots sitting on park benches
Indeed.
But hasn't the opposite been shown? That those most in favour of lockdowns - the young, the precarious and the like - also had the worst experience of lockdown. They just understood that the sacrifice was necessary for society to keep functioning. Whereas a lot of the people moaning the most, and demanding people go into the office asap, are rich old guys who do have mansions, and in many cases, have worked from home as journalists for years...
I don't know I haven't read the breakdowns. I would be amazed (but then PB knowledge is amazing) if the young were in favour of lockdowns when as far as I can tell they almost continuously ignored them throughout the years they were in operation. Or is it one of those survey answer questions to "would you like world peace" or "should there be higher taxes".
I’d have to dig deeper on the question, but we know some predictors of poor adherence to guidelines or regulations across the pandemic. Being young and male were predictive of lower adherence. But also we saw those who struggled with following restrictions were (unsurprisingly) less likely to follow them, so financial distress and having dependent children at home were both predictive of poor adherence.
Meanwhile, the young were, if I remember correctly, also more worried about COVID-19 on average than the middle aged. That may not be the same youngsters who were following regulations less. I’d guess that there was a greater dichotomy: some ignoring the rules, others very worried. We’re working on a paper looking at predictors of worry across the pandemic. Remind me to report back in a few months…
Super interesting yes please do.
My (ANECDOTAL) understanding from every young person I know and have spoken to about it (nephews, neices, sons/daughters of friends) was that there was wholesale attempted circumvention of the rules. This was mainly at universities where I know there were also some pretty hefty compliance measures by the unis eg threatening to chuck them out/report them to the police. It is also a pretty ABC1 kind of demographic so maybe this is a factor.
Would be very interested to hear your findings.
My (equally anecdotal) understanding from young people in my family (cousins, siblings, and their friends) was a big concern for the elder generation in our family (my maternal grandparents are still with us, and my paternal ones managed most of the lockdowns before passing). That may be anomalous though, as my dad and sister lived with my grandmother, and my family is very close and so weekly meals with grandparents became weekly zoom calls. I would say 2/3rds of the under 25s in the family were very strict, the other 3rd masked, tested whenever they went out, but still wanted to go out.
I've contributed to an (as yet unpublished, although I hear it's near submission) study looking indirectly at Covid concern in relation to other things. Patterning is interesting there as the very young and very old were most concerned, with those in 30-50 less concerned. Should note that this was in terms of ranking issues of concern, so it doesn't necessarily mean absolute levels of concern, but perhaps only that 30-50s had other things that concerned them more than Covid.
That matches my anecdotal observations.
I'd say 30-50 year olds best understood the overall and age-related risks and felt less personally threatened. They were right. The oldies were more concerned for obvious reasons. The youngsters (by which I mean 15 - 20 year olds) tended to - kind-of - lazily and confirmedly don the masks and observe other stuff etc with a shrug and didn't understand the moans and objections of their parents to something that they didn't see as a big deal.
The views of the young are concerning in my opinion. Doesn't bode well.
That feels counterintuitive in my mind. The young took a precautionary approach, treating an unknown threat with the seriousness it deserved. That is a pretty mature position. Whereas I would argue the 30-50 year old "meh" reaction is more concerning - a bit of a "I should be fine, so why do I need to worry" position that doesn't think of people in wider society.
The biggest fear of my sister (who was 19 when lockdown started) was going to work (she worked in a nursery and worked all through covid) and brining the virus home and killing our nan. Not that she would get ill and feel bad for a week or so, but real concern for the at risk group. That is what I think the younger people understood better than some middle aged folk.
Yes, re the overall response of us as a society, I was on the whole heartened by it. To me it showed that people care about the common good.
Rubbish...take away the free money and the freedom to wfh and you would have seen how many really cared about the common good...most supported lockdowns for selfish reasons either for the free money or the wfh skive
That's jaundiced and misanthropic. Of course you couldn't have a lockdown with no support. It would have been utter chaos. But it doesn't follow that people didn't see the need for it - especially the first one.
I was no lockdown hawk. I argued for a quicker unlocking in summer 21 and I applauded Johnson for not caving in and doing "one more for the road" in response to omicron. But that there was a need to act to enforce distancing - which is what lockdown really means - when the virus first exploded and there wasn't yet a vaccine is to me not really a matter of opinion. It simply had to be done.
There's every valid and interesting debate under the sun to be had about the hows and whens and how longs of it etc but we had to take measures to stop people catching the bug and passing it on. It's a rewrite of history to dispute this.
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
This is the most likely set of events. However, it holds a mirror up to the Western "Alliance" that few are prepared to look into.
The CDU/CSU Christian Democratic Union suffered defeat in the Bundestag with a proposal to increase military support for Ukraine. In a roll-call vote, 179 MPs voted in favour of the proposal, 476 were against and one abstained, the German public broadcaster ARD reported.
Eliminating any chance of a gas pipeline reduces incentive for more voting along those lines in the Bundestag.
Or increases it.
I mean that vote was after the pipeline sabotage, so doesn't seem to be working...
America’s sabotage is working because you ain’t getting any Russian gas through that pipe ever again
FFS Is there ever a ridiculous alt-right conspiracy you don't fall for?
Can I just say this is genius work by the CIA. They have managed to file an obviously plausible explanation for the pipeline explosion, that America did it - an explanation believed by many experts - under the heading "Trumpite conspiracy theory". So that unintelligent naive people will not believe it, because they are dim and need to be told what to think.
This is, indeed, uncannily similar to what they did with Lab Leak. "Racist conspiracy theory espoused by Trump".
Hmm, Lab Leak. But the extrapolation works differently to how you're doing it. The thing is, if we take a random 1000 'theories' espoused by Donald Trump and his crazy MAGA crowd, we will find that 999 of them are complete turkeys and just the 1 has a decent (but by no means certain) chance of being right. And we've had that 1. Thus Lab Leak doesn't show that Biden/Pipeline is probably right. It pretty much proves it's wrong.
We need to squash the idea that "suggesting America zapped the pipeline" is some kind of MAGA-hat conspiracy theory
It really is not. It is perfectly plausible, and America has the means and motive. This is not Trumpite nonsense
We just don't know. It could also be Ukraine, Russia, China... or even maverick elements within all four countries
The implications that it did so are unpleasant. It's a physical attack on the European continent, amounting to economical sabotage. Russia or Ukraine doing it are also troubling possibilities, but not in the same way.
Yes, it is disturbing whoever did it
If I was forced to bet on it, I'd say it was the USA that zapped the pipe, and it is in direct response to Putin threatening nuclear war. This is America saying: we can choke off the Russian economy forever
This is the most likely set of events. However, it holds a mirror up to the Western "Alliance" that few are prepared to look into.
The CDU/CSU Christian Democratic Union suffered defeat in the Bundestag with a proposal to increase military support for Ukraine. In a roll-call vote, 179 MPs voted in favour of the proposal, 476 were against and one abstained, the German public broadcaster ARD reported.
Eliminating any chance of a gas pipeline reduces incentive for more voting along those lines in the Bundestag.
Or increases it.
I mean that vote was after the pipeline sabotage, so doesn't seem to be working...
America’s sabotage is working because you ain’t getting any Russian gas through that pipe ever again
FFS Is there ever a ridiculous alt-right conspiracy you don't fall for?
Lab leak? Oh, no, wait, that one was right and I believed it and told you from the start, when you were all moaning about it being a racist conspiracy theory
Plausible, not proven. I know you think it is proven, but its as likely to have been natural origin. Do you consider that all the other viruses that spread from animals to man must have been lab leaks too? Mers? Swine flu? Avian flu? I think a lot of scientists thougt it plausible and tried to discredit the idea. I'm less convinced that they knew it was a lab leak and tried to cover it up.
THIS stat geek guy has just crunched the probabilities
"To summarize:
It's improbable for a CoV to emerge in Wuhan. It's improbable for a CoV to be so transmissible. It's improbable for a SARS CoV to have a FCS
SARS-CoV-2 is highly transmissible with FCS, and it emerged in Wuhan next to the WIV.
We will never know for sure, China has taken care of that, but the circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly points to Lab Leak. A lot of scientists hate this conclusion, for obvious reasons, but there it is. Endex
It's improbable for a CoV to emerge in Wuhan. - Why? And also irrelevant. Viruses emerge where they emerge. It's improbable for a CoV to be so transmissible. Why? Different diseases have different transmissibility. There are lots of factors. How is it spread, when are you most infectious, how much virus is produced etc It's improbable for a SARS CoV to have a FCS Why? Its plausible, hence why scientists were interested in seeing what happens.
This is a bit like the Drake equation. Line up some factors and then make up some numbers, get your conclusion.
I think you believe that the virus that first emerged was altered by man (i.e. not natural). Others have looked at that and the evidence is mixed.
Exactly.
On 1 - it is improbable for any virus to emerge in any given location. Yet they do. It is improbable to see a car with any given numberplate, but they do. No matter where any virus emerges, it is improbable for it to emerge there. It is certain that any virus that emerges will emerge somewhere.
It is improbable for a CoV to be so transmissible. Fine. But how many hundreds jump the species barrier each decade and fall short because they aren't so transmissible. Only the transmissible ones will spread. It is certain that a successfully spreading virus will be transmissible.
It's improbable for a SARS CoV to have a FCS? We only know a handful. And on the wider breadth of CoVs, several have FCS.
BREAKING: Hospital admissions of covid positive patients in England up 48% in a week.
Fourth Covid wave of 2022 now in full effect
At this point the only answer is dark, sardonic laughter, and a stiff scotch before noon
At this point the only answer is to stop worrying about Covid.
I'm not joking when I say if people get sick and die, they get sick and die. We've spent years locked down, we've rolled out is four or five rounds of vaccines now. Seriously, get over it already.
We haven't "spent years locked down".
Yes we have. They lasted for a period of years and at any time during that period we didn't know when the next one was going to occur.
Please don't let's go down the old, rich blokes in charming houses wondering what the big fuss about lockdown route is again.
Yes i imagine lockdown in a nice house in Hampstead was quite pleasant..a walk on the heath everyday whilst tutting at the covidiots sitting on park benches
Indeed.
But hasn't the opposite been shown? That those most in favour of lockdowns - the young, the precarious and the like - also had the worst experience of lockdown. They just understood that the sacrifice was necessary for society to keep functioning. Whereas a lot of the people moaning the most, and demanding people go into the office asap, are rich old guys who do have mansions, and in many cases, have worked from home as journalists for years...
I don't know I haven't read the breakdowns. I would be amazed (but then PB knowledge is amazing) if the young were in favour of lockdowns when as far as I can tell they almost continuously ignored them throughout the years they were in operation. Or is it one of those survey answer questions to "would you like world peace" or "should there be higher taxes".
I’d have to dig deeper on the question, but we know some predictors of poor adherence to guidelines or regulations across the pandemic. Being young and male were predictive of lower adherence. But also we saw those who struggled with following restrictions were (unsurprisingly) less likely to follow them, so financial distress and having dependent children at home were both predictive of poor adherence.
Meanwhile, the young were, if I remember correctly, also more worried about COVID-19 on average than the middle aged. That may not be the same youngsters who were following regulations less. I’d guess that there was a greater dichotomy: some ignoring the rules, others very worried. We’re working on a paper looking at predictors of worry across the pandemic. Remind me to report back in a few months…
Super interesting yes please do.
My (ANECDOTAL) understanding from every young person I know and have spoken to about it (nephews, neices, sons/daughters of friends) was that there was wholesale attempted circumvention of the rules. This was mainly at universities where I know there were also some pretty hefty compliance measures by the unis eg threatening to chuck them out/report them to the police. It is also a pretty ABC1 kind of demographic so maybe this is a factor.
Would be very interested to hear your findings.
My (equally anecdotal) understanding from young people in my family (cousins, siblings, and their friends) was a big concern for the elder generation in our family (my maternal grandparents are still with us, and my paternal ones managed most of the lockdowns before passing). That may be anomalous though, as my dad and sister lived with my grandmother, and my family is very close and so weekly meals with grandparents became weekly zoom calls. I would say 2/3rds of the under 25s in the family were very strict, the other 3rd masked, tested whenever they went out, but still wanted to go out.
I've contributed to an (as yet unpublished, although I hear it's near submission) study looking indirectly at Covid concern in relation to other things. Patterning is interesting there as the very young and very old were most concerned, with those in 30-50 less concerned. Should note that this was in terms of ranking issues of concern, so it doesn't necessarily mean absolute levels of concern, but perhaps only that 30-50s had other things that concerned them more than Covid.
That matches my anecdotal observations.
I'd say 30-50 year olds best understood the overall and age-related risks and felt less personally threatened. They were right. The oldies were more concerned for obvious reasons. The youngsters (by which I mean 15 - 20 year olds) tended to - kind-of - lazily and confirmedly don the masks and observe other stuff etc with a shrug and didn't understand the moans and objections of their parents to something that they didn't see as a big deal.
The views of the young are concerning in my opinion. Doesn't bode well.
That feels counterintuitive in my mind. The young took a precautionary approach, treating an unknown threat with the seriousness it deserved. That is a pretty mature position. Whereas I would argue the 30-50 year old "meh" reaction is more concerning - a bit of a "I should be fine, so why do I need to worry" position that doesn't think of people in wider society.
The biggest fear of my sister (who was 19 when lockdown started) was going to work (she worked in a nursery and worked all through covid) and brining the virus home and killing our nan. Not that she would get ill and feel bad for a week or so, but real concern for the at risk group. That is what I think the younger people understood better than some middle aged folk.
Yes, re the overall response of us as a society, I was on the whole heartened by it. To me it showed that people care about the common good.
Rubbish...take away the free money and the freedom to wfh and you would have seen how many really cared about the common good...most supported lockdowns for selfish reasons either for the free money or the wfh skive
Our favourite Hampstead and so nearly but not in the end Richmond resident is retired and hence it is a mystery to him why everyone oughtn't to find lockdown utterly lovely.
It wasn't lovely, Captain and I feel for people who struggled badly with it. But this doesn't mean such people can talk drivel - the likes of "none of it was necessary" or "we were locked down for years" - without being gently corrected. Just for the record, you understand. It's important. This place would go to pot otherwise.
BREAKING: Hospital admissions of covid positive patients in England up 48% in a week.
Fourth Covid wave of 2022 now in full effect
At this point the only answer is dark, sardonic laughter, and a stiff scotch before noon
At this point the only answer is to stop worrying about Covid.
I'm not joking when I say if people get sick and die, they get sick and die. We've spent years locked down, we've rolled out is four or five rounds of vaccines now. Seriously, get over it already.
We haven't "spent years locked down".
Yes we have. They lasted for a period of years and at any time during that period we didn't know when the next one was going to occur.
Please don't let's go down the old, rich blokes in charming houses wondering what the big fuss about lockdown route is again.
Yes i imagine lockdown in a nice house in Hampstead was quite pleasant..a walk on the heath everyday whilst tutting at the covidiots sitting on park benches
Indeed.
But hasn't the opposite been shown? That those most in favour of lockdowns - the young, the precarious and the like - also had the worst experience of lockdown. They just understood that the sacrifice was necessary for society to keep functioning. Whereas a lot of the people moaning the most, and demanding people go into the office asap, are rich old guys who do have mansions, and in many cases, have worked from home as journalists for years...
I don't know I haven't read the breakdowns. I would be amazed (but then PB knowledge is amazing) if the young were in favour of lockdowns when as far as I can tell they almost continuously ignored them throughout the years they were in operation. Or is it one of those survey answer questions to "would you like world peace" or "should there be higher taxes".
I’d have to dig deeper on the question, but we know some predictors of poor adherence to guidelines or regulations across the pandemic. Being young and male were predictive of lower adherence. But also we saw those who struggled with following restrictions were (unsurprisingly) less likely to follow them, so financial distress and having dependent children at home were both predictive of poor adherence.
Meanwhile, the young were, if I remember correctly, also more worried about COVID-19 on average than the middle aged. That may not be the same youngsters who were following regulations less. I’d guess that there was a greater dichotomy: some ignoring the rules, others very worried. We’re working on a paper looking at predictors of worry across the pandemic. Remind me to report back in a few months…
Super interesting yes please do.
My (ANECDOTAL) understanding from every young person I know and have spoken to about it (nephews, neices, sons/daughters of friends) was that there was wholesale attempted circumvention of the rules. This was mainly at universities where I know there were also some pretty hefty compliance measures by the unis eg threatening to chuck them out/report them to the police. It is also a pretty ABC1 kind of demographic so maybe this is a factor.
Would be very interested to hear your findings.
My (equally anecdotal) understanding from young people in my family (cousins, siblings, and their friends) was a big concern for the elder generation in our family (my maternal grandparents are still with us, and my paternal ones managed most of the lockdowns before passing). That may be anomalous though, as my dad and sister lived with my grandmother, and my family is very close and so weekly meals with grandparents became weekly zoom calls. I would say 2/3rds of the under 25s in the family were very strict, the other 3rd masked, tested whenever they went out, but still wanted to go out.
I've contributed to an (as yet unpublished, although I hear it's near submission) study looking indirectly at Covid concern in relation to other things. Patterning is interesting there as the very young and very old were most concerned, with those in 30-50 less concerned. Should note that this was in terms of ranking issues of concern, so it doesn't necessarily mean absolute levels of concern, but perhaps only that 30-50s had other things that concerned them more than Covid.
That matches my anecdotal observations.
I'd say 30-50 year olds best understood the overall and age-related risks and felt less personally threatened. They were right. The oldies were more concerned for obvious reasons. The youngsters (by which I mean 15 - 20 year olds) tended to - kind-of - lazily and confirmedly don the masks and observe other stuff etc with a shrug and didn't understand the moans and objections of their parents to something that they didn't see as a big deal.
The views of the young are concerning in my opinion. Doesn't bode well.
That feels counterintuitive in my mind. The young took a precautionary approach, treating an unknown threat with the seriousness it deserved. That is a pretty mature position. Whereas I would argue the 30-50 year old "meh" reaction is more concerning - a bit of a "I should be fine, so why do I need to worry" position that doesn't think of people in wider society.
The biggest fear of my sister (who was 19 when lockdown started) was going to work (she worked in a nursery and worked all through covid) and brining the virus home and killing our nan. Not that she would get ill and feel bad for a week or so, but real concern for the at risk group. That is what I think the younger people understood better than some middle aged folk.
Yes, re the overall response of us as a society, I was on the whole heartened by it. To me it showed that people care about the common good.
Rubbish...take away the free money and the freedom to wfh and you would have seen how many really cared about the common good...most supported lockdowns for selfish reasons either for the free money or the wfh skive
Our favourite Hampstead and so nearly but not in the end Richmond resident is retired and hence it is a mystery to him why everyone oughtn't to find lockdown utterly lovely.
It wasn't lovely, Captain and I feel for people who struggled badly with it. But this doesn't mean such people can talk drivel - the likes of "none of it was necessary" or "we were locked down for years" - without being gently corrected. Just for the record, you understand. It's important. This place would go to pot otherwise.
Afternoon all! Of course it wasn't lovely; apart from anything else until the vaccine appeared if you were in a threatened category it was quite frightening. And yes I think it was necessary; at first anyway. However once the vaccine came along, and was got into a good number of arms the reasons for lockdown went away. What it has done of course is open up to a lot of elderly people the advantages of using a computer, and for example, Zoom or Teams.
BREAKING: Hospital admissions of covid positive patients in England up 48% in a week.
Fourth Covid wave of 2022 now in full effect
At this point the only answer is dark, sardonic laughter, and a stiff scotch before noon
At this point the only answer is to stop worrying about Covid.
I'm not joking when I say if people get sick and die, they get sick and die. We've spent years locked down, we've rolled out is four or five rounds of vaccines now. Seriously, get over it already.
We haven't "spent years locked down".
Yes we have. They lasted for a period of years and at any time during that period we didn't know when the next one was going to occur.
Please don't let's go down the old, rich blokes in charming houses wondering what the big fuss about lockdown route is again.
Yes i imagine lockdown in a nice house in Hampstead was quite pleasant..a walk on the heath everyday whilst tutting at the covidiots sitting on park benches
Indeed.
But hasn't the opposite been shown? That those most in favour of lockdowns - the young, the precarious and the like - also had the worst experience of lockdown. They just understood that the sacrifice was necessary for society to keep functioning. Whereas a lot of the people moaning the most, and demanding people go into the office asap, are rich old guys who do have mansions, and in many cases, have worked from home as journalists for years...
I don't know I haven't read the breakdowns. I would be amazed (but then PB knowledge is amazing) if the young were in favour of lockdowns when as far as I can tell they almost continuously ignored them throughout the years they were in operation. Or is it one of those survey answer questions to "would you like world peace" or "should there be higher taxes".
I’d have to dig deeper on the question, but we know some predictors of poor adherence to guidelines or regulations across the pandemic. Being young and male were predictive of lower adherence. But also we saw those who struggled with following restrictions were (unsurprisingly) less likely to follow them, so financial distress and having dependent children at home were both predictive of poor adherence.
Meanwhile, the young were, if I remember correctly, also more worried about COVID-19 on average than the middle aged. That may not be the same youngsters who were following regulations less. I’d guess that there was a greater dichotomy: some ignoring the rules, others very worried. We’re working on a paper looking at predictors of worry across the pandemic. Remind me to report back in a few months…
Super interesting yes please do.
My (ANECDOTAL) understanding from every young person I know and have spoken to about it (nephews, neices, sons/daughters of friends) was that there was wholesale attempted circumvention of the rules. This was mainly at universities where I know there were also some pretty hefty compliance measures by the unis eg threatening to chuck them out/report them to the police. It is also a pretty ABC1 kind of demographic so maybe this is a factor.
Would be very interested to hear your findings.
My (equally anecdotal) understanding from young people in my family (cousins, siblings, and their friends) was a big concern for the elder generation in our family (my maternal grandparents are still with us, and my paternal ones managed most of the lockdowns before passing). That may be anomalous though, as my dad and sister lived with my grandmother, and my family is very close and so weekly meals with grandparents became weekly zoom calls. I would say 2/3rds of the under 25s in the family were very strict, the other 3rd masked, tested whenever they went out, but still wanted to go out.
I've contributed to an (as yet unpublished, although I hear it's near submission) study looking indirectly at Covid concern in relation to other things. Patterning is interesting there as the very young and very old were most concerned, with those in 30-50 less concerned. Should note that this was in terms of ranking issues of concern, so it doesn't necessarily mean absolute levels of concern, but perhaps only that 30-50s had other things that concerned them more than Covid.
That matches my anecdotal observations.
I'd say 30-50 year olds best understood the overall and age-related risks and felt less personally threatened. They were right. The oldies were more concerned for obvious reasons. The youngsters (by which I mean 15 - 20 year olds) tended to - kind-of - lazily and confirmedly don the masks and observe other stuff etc with a shrug and didn't understand the moans and objections of their parents to something that they didn't see as a big deal.
The views of the young are concerning in my opinion. Doesn't bode well.
That feels counterintuitive in my mind. The young took a precautionary approach, treating an unknown threat with the seriousness it deserved. That is a pretty mature position. Whereas I would argue the 30-50 year old "meh" reaction is more concerning - a bit of a "I should be fine, so why do I need to worry" position that doesn't think of people in wider society.
The biggest fear of my sister (who was 19 when lockdown started) was going to work (she worked in a nursery and worked all through covid) and brining the virus home and killing our nan. Not that she would get ill and feel bad for a week or so, but real concern for the at risk group. That is what I think the younger people understood better than some middle aged folk.
Yes, re the overall response of us as a society, I was on the whole heartened by it. To me it showed that people care about the common good.
Rubbish...take away the free money and the freedom to wfh and you would have seen how many really cared about the common good...most supported lockdowns for selfish reasons either for the free money or the wfh skive
Our favourite Hampstead and so nearly but not in the end Richmond resident is retired and hence it is a mystery to him why everyone oughtn't to find lockdown utterly lovely.
It wasn't lovely, Captain and I feel for people who struggled badly with it. But this doesn't mean such people can talk drivel - the likes of "none of it was necessary" or "we were locked down for years" - without being gently corrected. Just for the record, you understand. It's important. This place would go to pot otherwise.
"I feel for people who struggled badly with it" - QED.
Very few people are saying none of it was necessary. Especially at the time.
I would classify myself as an anti-lockdown type. I would say that save for you-know-who, I was an early anti-lockdown voice. However, I understand, with pictures from Northern Italy showing hospital wards overflowing, why the government decided to lock people down until they knew what they were dealing with.
I was pretty much always anti-mandatory lockdown and then I was pro-segregated lockdown if there must be a mandatory lockdown, which I thought there shouldn't be.
My concern was infringement of liberties while acknowledging the economic precedent lockdown/furlough set. He Who Shall Not Be Named was concerned about that and also about the economic repercussions from the start.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing but I can also see now why people would think that none of it was necessary but at the time I can only think of one person who actually said that.
BREAKING: Hospital admissions of covid positive patients in England up 48% in a week.
Fourth Covid wave of 2022 now in full effect
At this point the only answer is dark, sardonic laughter, and a stiff scotch before noon
At this point the only answer is to stop worrying about Covid.
I'm not joking when I say if people get sick and die, they get sick and die. We've spent years locked down, we've rolled out is four or five rounds of vaccines now. Seriously, get over it already.
We haven't "spent years locked down".
Yes we have. They lasted for a period of years and at any time during that period we didn't know when the next one was going to occur.
Please don't let's go down the old, rich blokes in charming houses wondering what the big fuss about lockdown route is again.
Yes i imagine lockdown in a nice house in Hampstead was quite pleasant..a walk on the heath everyday whilst tutting at the covidiots sitting on park benches
Indeed.
But hasn't the opposite been shown? That those most in favour of lockdowns - the young, the precarious and the like - also had the worst experience of lockdown. They just understood that the sacrifice was necessary for society to keep functioning. Whereas a lot of the people moaning the most, and demanding people go into the office asap, are rich old guys who do have mansions, and in many cases, have worked from home as journalists for years...
I don't know I haven't read the breakdowns. I would be amazed (but then PB knowledge is amazing) if the young were in favour of lockdowns when as far as I can tell they almost continuously ignored them throughout the years they were in operation. Or is it one of those survey answer questions to "would you like world peace" or "should there be higher taxes".
I’d have to dig deeper on the question, but we know some predictors of poor adherence to guidelines or regulations across the pandemic. Being young and male were predictive of lower adherence. But also we saw those who struggled with following restrictions were (unsurprisingly) less likely to follow them, so financial distress and having dependent children at home were both predictive of poor adherence.
Meanwhile, the young were, if I remember correctly, also more worried about COVID-19 on average than the middle aged. That may not be the same youngsters who were following regulations less. I’d guess that there was a greater dichotomy: some ignoring the rules, others very worried. We’re working on a paper looking at predictors of worry across the pandemic. Remind me to report back in a few months…
Super interesting yes please do.
My (ANECDOTAL) understanding from every young person I know and have spoken to about it (nephews, neices, sons/daughters of friends) was that there was wholesale attempted circumvention of the rules. This was mainly at universities where I know there were also some pretty hefty compliance measures by the unis eg threatening to chuck them out/report them to the police. It is also a pretty ABC1 kind of demographic so maybe this is a factor.
Would be very interested to hear your findings.
My (equally anecdotal) understanding from young people in my family (cousins, siblings, and their friends) was a big concern for the elder generation in our family (my maternal grandparents are still with us, and my paternal ones managed most of the lockdowns before passing). That may be anomalous though, as my dad and sister lived with my grandmother, and my family is very close and so weekly meals with grandparents became weekly zoom calls. I would say 2/3rds of the under 25s in the family were very strict, the other 3rd masked, tested whenever they went out, but still wanted to go out.
I've contributed to an (as yet unpublished, although I hear it's near submission) study looking indirectly at Covid concern in relation to other things. Patterning is interesting there as the very young and very old were most concerned, with those in 30-50 less concerned. Should note that this was in terms of ranking issues of concern, so it doesn't necessarily mean absolute levels of concern, but perhaps only that 30-50s had other things that concerned them more than Covid.
That matches my anecdotal observations.
I'd say 30-50 year olds best understood the overall and age-related risks and felt less personally threatened. They were right. The oldies were more concerned for obvious reasons. The youngsters (by which I mean 15 - 20 year olds) tended to - kind-of - lazily and confirmedly don the masks and observe other stuff etc with a shrug and didn't understand the moans and objections of their parents to something that they didn't see as a big deal.
The views of the young are concerning in my opinion. Doesn't bode well.
That feels counterintuitive in my mind. The young took a precautionary approach, treating an unknown threat with the seriousness it deserved. That is a pretty mature position. Whereas I would argue the 30-50 year old "meh" reaction is more concerning - a bit of a "I should be fine, so why do I need to worry" position that doesn't think of people in wider society.
The biggest fear of my sister (who was 19 when lockdown started) was going to work (she worked in a nursery and worked all through covid) and brining the virus home and killing our nan. Not that she would get ill and feel bad for a week or so, but real concern for the at risk group. That is what I think the younger people understood better than some middle aged folk.
Yes, re the overall response of us as a society, I was on the whole heartened by it. To me it showed that people care about the common good.
Rubbish...take away the free money and the freedom to wfh and you would have seen how many really cared about the common good...most supported lockdowns for selfish reasons either for the free money or the wfh skive
Our favourite Hampstead and so nearly but not in the end Richmond resident is retired and hence it is a mystery to him why everyone oughtn't to find lockdown utterly lovely.
It wasn't lovely, Captain and I feel for people who struggled badly with it. But this doesn't mean such people can talk drivel - the likes of "none of it was necessary" or "we were locked down for years" - without being gently corrected. Just for the record, you understand. It's important. This place would go to pot otherwise.
Afternoon all! Of course it wasn't lovely; apart from anything else until the vaccine appeared if you were in a threatened category it was quite frightening. And yes I think it was necessary; at first anyway. However once the vaccine came along, and was got into a good number of arms the reasons for lockdown went away. What it has done of course is open up to a lot of elderly people the advantages of using a computer, and for example, Zoom or Teams.
I think I would rather order pizza with p*n**ppl* on than ever, ever have a "Zoom dinner party" again.
Interesting thread, which I find slightly more convincing on the pipeline question than the combined opinions of @Leon , @Luckyguy1983 , and @Dura_Ace . FWIW.
I'm not sure what you think this thread tells us beyond any of the opinions offered by the users you've tagged in. The options listed here are purely (and admittedly) groundless speculation, and it seems obvious to me that the author has eked the Russian options out a lot, and dismissed evidence supporting the US option out of hand 'Biden's wierd Tweets' - Really? An actual threat saying 'we can do that' about ending Nordstream 2 is just a 'wierd Tweet' would a 'wierd Tweet' by Putin saying the same thing have been dismissed, or actually be held up as a smoking gun?
Of the Russian motives, there is only one that stands out to me as having validity, and that is Gazprom not having to pay penalties for not supplying gas. However, how that tallies with the cost of repairs, I don't know, and how it also tallies with Putin's willingness to upend normal ways of doing business (ie, why wouldn't he just refuse to pay the penalties), I also don't know.
In the other actors presented, there is also a failure to mention the likelihood of any of these states acting without American blessing/foreknowledge/support - which is practically zero. The Ukrainians are the only ones desperate enough to do that, and their capability of doing so is rightly questioned, and doing so without prior American knowledge risks future weapons supplies and financial support worth billions - the Americans are the only ones propping up the Ukrainian state.
Given all those things, the probable culprit is Ukraine, or one of the Baltic states, but with American blessing and support. This achieves American aims, but is deniable, and they will 100% wash their hands of anyone who gets fingered for it.
Comments
Hat = cover your hair (or lack of it) plus baseball caps, beanie caps, er, top hats - plenty worn today.
Mask = cover your face and all the facial expressions that eg @BartholomewRoberts has explained are so vital for so many reasons.
Are you really equating the social norm of wearing a hat and wearing a mask?
I mean I know we like to argue the toss on here but that is just bizarre.
FWIW.
https://mobile.twitter.com/henryfarrell/status/1575465137389150209
A speculative thread on the question of who sabotaged Nord Stream 1. Building off this @EmmaMAshford thread but in a different direction - if no-one seems to have an obvious motive, are there other ways to narrow down the possibilities?
('New King arrives in his capital by air' Daily Newspaper)
Spirit of well-shot woodcock, partridge, snipe
Flutter and bear him up the Norfolk sky:
In that red house in a red mahogany book-case
The stamp collection waits with mounts long dry.
The big blue eyes are shut which saw wrong clothing
And favourite fields and coverts from a horse;
Old men in country houses hear clocks ticking
Over thick carpets with a deadened force;
Old men who never cheated, never doubted,
Communicated monthly, sit and stare
At the new suburb stretched beyond the runway
Where a young man lands hatless from the air.
Betjeman
Apart from Russian all the other plausible parties have major reasons (the consequences of being found to have done it) not to have blown it up
Perfect example of how Tories don't understand what causes economic growth.
a) It's not their pipeline.
b) There's no possibility of it ever being used.
c) They have increased the price of gas which was otherwise falling.
d) They have spread confusion and potential disunity amongst their enemies.
I could go on...
When you have eliminated the 'impossible' make sure you've haven't accidentally also eliminated the 'very likely actually'.
- Biden smirking is par for the course when he can't remember the answer he's supposed to give to a question.
- Germany halted Nordstream 2 on 22 February. There was already zero chance of it actually starting any time soon (if ever)
All that has been achieved so far by the sabotage is the price of gas has gone up, and a precedent has been set for destroying western European infrastructure.
The Times came out with the bald assertion. Russia did it. Now? A quiet but definite change of mind, and an article subtly edited
"Update: these claims & quotes (Russia "probably premeditated and planned for" sabotage) have been deleted from the new version of The Times' story, which is a lot more cautious. Original below.
https://thetimes.co.uk/article/russia-probably-bombed-nord-stream-pipeline-with-underwater-drone-says-defence-source-wkkcgshzv"
https://twitter.com/shashj/status/1575424459741270016?s=20&t=TEnmgg5hDYaoTV2GNhC9gA
Verdict? Western intelligence agencies and therefore western governments are in little doubt. America did it. But no one will ever say it, and no one will ever "know"
https://twitter.com/Faytuks/status/1575271212552519682?s=20&t=-Qkc8S_Gq2qFxv9OoGxR_g
Seems like madness to me. Imagine if it leaked that the US had destroyed a Russian/German pipeline. it just seems like pretext for the Russians to look at NATO cables and pipelines.
Is this really an action that Biden would agree to? Its actively hostile, conflagratory and makes no difference to European energy policy.
Masks are incredibly divisive. Too some its not an issue and they cannot understand why everyone isn't wearing one, all the time. To others they are a horrific imposition. I think being asked to wear them in healthcare settings is actually reasonable - and may help with other respiratory infections too. But I shy away from asking fit and well people to wear them 'to try to reduce the spread'. Humans are social creatures and the face is the window into the mind.
We should do the other things. Good air filtration is a must in crowded settings. Think about work from home options where applicable. Keep vaccinating.
Long covid is an issue, but it is not, as I saw posted, a game where everyone will eventually end up with long covid. The idea that we will all get covid 6 times a year and each time is rolling the long covid dice is wrong. I still have not had covid (that I know). I teach at Uni, I've not isolated myself, but been lucky so far. The experience of most, if not all, of my colleagues and friends is that not one of them has long covid. Of course it exists, and for those, like you who are suffering, thats awful and I sincerely hope you make a full recovery. But we don't help when catastrophising about the condition.
But the market and IMF hath spoken, thems the breaks. As the goat makes up 88.04% the cost of the shopping trolley we tried to check out but had our credit declined, that goat is getting a haircut. Soon enough. Watch this space.
Think of the goat as a cucumber, getting cut in half as we didn’t really need the whole cucumber.
So, I'm having a wild guess that Yes, Biden did it
have seen how many really cared about the common good...most supported lockdowns for selfish reasons either for the free money or the wfh skive
But that's all your usual approach of moving the goalposts. The question is about the (non-)budget and the competence of Truss and Kwarteng. If they planned to crash house prices, they didn't say they'd do that and have misled the voters and the public. If they didn't plan to crash house prices, then they're incompetent.
If you are arguing that this was the plan, provide me a quote from Truss in the leadership campaign saying house prices will fall substantially.
You are indeed a curious phenomenon though. If one carries on your amusingly unimaginative playground theme you are like the child that desperately wants to play with the big boys and just makes himself a figure of fun because he can't keep up. As for enjoying arguing with you, I don't because it is too easy. I am not arguing with you I am simply pointing out that not only are you dumb, you are a very sick saddo. One of the few people on here who is so callous that were it not for the fact that I know you to be relatively young, I would imagine you to be an old fart of such horrifically twisted personality that even Dickens would think you too unrealistic to be one of his most revolting caricatures. Am I being unfair or unkind? No, you are someone who seems to get a kick out of stating that it is OK for a surplus of the population to get on and die, and for another part of the population, those with families and mortgages (that you are clearly envious of) to fall into destitution. You are a very unpleasant far right little oik.
Of course, there were the "toddlers" who had tantrums and jumped up and down screaming about how masks were an infraction of their freedom to spread the non-existent virus. Some of them even wound up on video laying on their death-beds croaking "Oh my god - it is real. I wish I had listened"
How many of the past five Prime Ministers said they'd encourage rampant inflation? If zero, then you're holding Truss to a standard you never held any prior PM.
Wearing a mask while you have respiratory symptoms is such a minor thing that I do find bizarre the arguments that it's massively detrimental to the workings of society.
This is, indeed, uncannily similar to what they did with Lab Leak. "Racist conspiracy theory espoused by Trump"
What intelligence would make the Americans decide to do this? They must have a very good reason.
A friend of mine was involved in using them for North Sea pipe inspections and I am sure they exist for Baltic pipe inspections
America achieved its objective of getting the pipeline halted back in February. What possible benefit would they have to stand to do this now?
Russia OTOH has this useless pipeline that it can't export its good through anymore, has shown a willingness to use gas a weapon since even before the new invasion began, has contracts its in difficulty with and this explosion gives it force majeure to deal with, and has now got its useful idiots in the West attacking the USA instead of Russia just as it wants.
Wow, David Ike, eat your heart out.
Of course
"To summarize:
It's improbable for a CoV to emerge in Wuhan.
It's improbable for a CoV to be so transmissible.
It's improbable for a SARS CoV to have a FCS
SARS-CoV-2 is highly transmissible with FCS, and it emerged in Wuhan next to the WIV.
SARS2 likely came from the WIV."
https://twitter.com/WashburneAlex/status/1575188117350334464?s=20&t=TEnmgg5hDYaoTV2GNhC9gA
We will never know for sure, China has taken care of that, but the circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly points to Lab Leak. A lot of scientists hate this conclusion, for obvious reasons, but there it is. Endex
It could be a long, cold winter with no Norwegian gas in northern Europe.
That this would be an act of war against a bunch of NATO countries would make this an act of madness, but historically Putin hasn’t exactly been constrained by rationality has he?
It seems Putin is determined to escalate the war in order to keep control of the situation within Russia. He and we are now locked in a conflict that neither can walk away from for good (to each party) reasons. We can only hope for either a total collapse of the Russian army in the field before winter sets in, or else an internal coup because otherwise I can’t see this ending well.
(I seem to have caught Leon’s doom&gloom somehow. Maybe there are sunlit uplands I haven’t seen?)
That short enough for your attention sp..... ?
In fact this fits perfectly with Deterrence Theory. You should EXPECT America to do something like this, and so they have done it
Those who only saw one side of the argument, and thought there were no downsides to shutting schools, imposing masks or blocking socialisation were not 'better' than others.
And so far (early days yet) we have not normalised covering our face and I sincerely hope that we never do.
And I wear a hat quite regularly.
Great, now we've established that I am holding Truss to the same standard as the others, can we put the goalposts back?
Truss and Kwarteng lied or are incompetent... or both. It's probably both.
It's improbable for a CoV to be so transmissible. Why? Different diseases have different transmissibility. There are lots of factors. How is it spread, when are you most infectious, how much virus is produced etc
It's improbable for a SARS CoV to have a FCS Why? Its plausible, hence why scientists were interested in seeing what happens.
This is a bit like the Drake equation. Line up some factors and then make up some numbers, get your conclusion.
I think you believe that the virus that first emerged was altered by man (i.e. not natural). Others have looked at that and the evidence is mixed.
It was fine at the point it was introduced - pensions were way too low as a percentage of median wage but it’s served it’s time and should be replaced with a percentage model as you suggest
I was no lockdown hawk. I argued for a quicker unlocking in summer 21 and I applauded Johnson for not caving in and doing "one more for the road" in response to omicron. But that there was a need to act to enforce distancing - which is what lockdown really means - when the virus first exploded and there wasn't yet a vaccine is to me not really a matter of opinion. It simply had to be done.
There's every valid and interesting debate under the sun to be had about the hows and whens and how longs of it etc but we had to take measures to stop people catching the bug and passing it on. It's a rewrite of history to dispute this.
On 1 - it is improbable for any virus to emerge in any given location. Yet they do. It is improbable to see a car with any given numberplate, but they do. No matter where any virus emerges, it is improbable for it to emerge there. It is certain that any virus that emerges will emerge somewhere.
It is improbable for a CoV to be so transmissible. Fine. But how many hundreds jump the species barrier each decade and fall short because they aren't so transmissible. Only the transmissible ones will spread. It is certain that a successfully spreading virus will be transmissible.
It's improbable for a SARS CoV to have a FCS? We only know a handful. And on the wider breadth of CoVs, several have FCS.
What it has done of course is open up to a lot of elderly people the advantages of using a computer, and for example, Zoom or Teams.
Very few people are saying none of it was necessary. Especially at the time.
I would classify myself as an anti-lockdown type. I would say that save for you-know-who, I was an early anti-lockdown voice. However, I understand, with pictures from Northern Italy showing hospital wards overflowing, why the government decided to lock people down until they knew what they were dealing with.
I was pretty much always anti-mandatory lockdown and then I was pro-segregated lockdown if there must be a mandatory lockdown, which I thought there shouldn't be.
My concern was infringement of liberties while acknowledging the economic precedent lockdown/furlough set. He Who Shall Not Be Named was concerned about that and also about the economic repercussions from the start.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing but I can also see now why people would think that none of it was necessary but at the time I can only think of one person who actually said that.
Of the Russian motives, there is only one that stands out to me as having validity, and that is Gazprom not having to pay penalties for not supplying gas. However, how that tallies with the cost of repairs, I don't know, and how it also tallies with Putin's willingness to upend normal ways of doing business (ie, why wouldn't he just refuse to pay the penalties), I also don't know.
In the other actors presented, there is also a failure to mention the likelihood of any of these states acting without American blessing/foreknowledge/support - which is practically zero. The Ukrainians are the only ones desperate enough to do that, and their capability of doing so is rightly questioned, and doing so without prior American knowledge risks future weapons supplies and financial support worth billions - the Americans are the only ones propping up the Ukrainian state.
Given all those things, the probable culprit is Ukraine, or one of the Baltic states, but with American blessing and support. This achieves American aims, but is deniable, and they will 100% wash their hands of anyone who gets fingered for it.