Interesting debate on Trevor Phillips on Sky this morning about how well the recent assisted dying bill was discussed, and the quality of the debate, as mps could speak as they wanted and not follow the party line
Ayesha Hazarika suggested that letting mps debate freely and honestly in the house more often would be a good way forward
Morning all. Nearly three hours of thread and not a single "that's you, that is" - what is the world coming to?
I just assumed someone had already done it.
I wonder how many here would actually get that reference ?
Most of us, probably. It throws up a related question: how many viewers would have understood what the original sketches were about, rather than just laughing at increasingly ludicrous insults?
Did the Iowa poll really have any effect on anybody?
DJT's path to victory (one of AZ or GA plus PA, WI and MI) was so well understood by that point that the only people still believing in and predicting a Kamala victory were panglossian fools self-medicating on electoral tramadol. And that lot were not going to be swayed by logic or data because their belief system was entirely a faith based construct.
Funny you mention it but Most posters here were convinced of a Harris win and people like William Glenn who regularly posted pro Trump polls, as well as those who doubted Selzer, were regularly attacked for it.
It will be very interesting to see what investment comes from the very high level delegation going to China In January.
Phillip Hammond has been very bullish about embracing the opportunity whilst being a step ahead in terms of the risk.
He makes one very valid point that you can have very frank discussions in private but the Chinese hate leaks.
A good lesson for this Labour Government who MSM hate, that they stop taking the usual Press Corps on any significant overseas trips. If they are going to leak and lie and just ask irrelevant questions, treat them like the mushrooms they are... Keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit.
Hammond believes big scope to get Chinese Electric Vehicles built in UK, similar to Japanese in the past, of course if they were Chinese brands and not Tesla, so much the better.
Better still if Rachel could return with a 200m donation from the Chinese Communist Party for Labour.
Don't fuck with us Musk!
Labour turning itself into the local branch of the Communist Party of China would be suboptimal for this country.
It would be far less suboptimal than having Musk and Trump dictating to us.
Far less.
So the cure for the alt-right is actual Fascism?
HH eh?
Hadolf Hitler? Hoseph Hoebbels? Hermann Hoering? Hudolf Hess?
I believe the cure for the BNP was Harriet Harman.
She introduced the Equality Act, which then enabled them to be taken to court for their racist constitution.
The real cure for the BNP was, of course, getting Nick Griffin on Question Time.
Since it's Christmas, here's my annual surreal posting of Nick Griffin, complete with a relative of Blofeld's cat, reading the Christmas story.
It will be very interesting to see what investment comes from the very high level delegation going to China In January.
Phillip Hammond has been very bullish about embracing the opportunity whilst being a step ahead in terms of the risk.
He makes one very valid point that you can have very frank discussions in private but the Chinese hate leaks.
A good lesson for this Labour Government who MSM hate, that they stop taking the usual Press Corps on any significant overseas trips. If they are going to leak and lie and just ask irrelevant questions, treat them like the mushrooms they are... Keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit.
Hammond believes big scope to get Chinese Electric Vehicles built in UK, similar to Japanese in the past, of course if they were Chinese brands and not Tesla, so much the better.
Better still if Rachel could return with a 200m donation from the Chinese Communist Party for Labour.
Don't fuck with us Musk!
Labour turning itself into the local branch of the Communist Party of China would be suboptimal for this country.
It would be far less suboptimal than having Musk and Trump dictating to us.
Far less.
So the cure for the alt-right is actual Fascism?
HH eh?
Hadolf Hitler? Hoseph Hoebbels? Hermann Hoering? Hudolf Hess?
I believe the cure for the BNP was Harriet Harman.
She introduced the Equality Act, which then enabled them to be taken to court for their racist constitution.
The real cure for the BNP was, of course, getting Nick Griffin on Question Time.
Selling England by the pound. Once again the government opens the door for British assets to flow abroad.
Selling off the family silver* as McMillan put it. One of the less welcome legacies of Thatcher.
*To foreign asset strippers.
Because we British are too obsessed with buying property instead of productive stuff.
Buying property is not the real issue because the alternative, renting homes, is also very expensive. Whether someone rents or buys, a large part of their post-tax income is simply not available for discretionary purchases.
Interesting debate on Trevor Phillips on Sky this morning about how well the recent assisted dying bill was discussed, and the quality of the debate, as mps could speak as they wanted and not follow the party line
Ayesha Hazarika suggested that letting mps debate freely and honestly in the house more often would be a good way forward
It certainly has merits but doubt it is likely
Is part of the problem too much legislation, with too little time allocated to each matter?
I don't think so. In Parliament debate is dominated by people making lengthy speeches where they could have made their key points in 5 minutes. The result is that most MPs don't bother to attend debates and only come over for votes. A standard 5-minute limit would improve the quality no end and make debates genuinely interesting.
I would have thought that the other reason most MPs don't attend debates would be that they have no effect on the outcome - in almost all cases MPs will vote with their party and even a good short well-argued speech is unlikely to change that. As a free vote the assisted dying bill was somewhere where a well made point really might change somebody's vote.
The pandemic was the biggest event, easily. It established state control over every aspect of life for months on end and had wide public support. Dissenters were condemned and overall it was a period of great shame both for the government and for the public who didn't do enough to rebel against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I hope if something like this ever happens again people will ignore lockdowns completely and tell the government to go as stick their vaccine mandates up their arse.
It is troubling to me how easily we acquiesced to absolutely unthinkable terms of living for something that was never particularly deadly. People said that similar measures had been used previously, sure but those pandemics had a significantly higher death rate and measures were justified. COVID had a less than 0.1% death rate for healthy adults. The demands made in our lifestyles wasn't worth it.
But lots of people aren’t healthy adults. What’s the death rate for your average PB poster? The death rate is about 0.4% for 55 year olds. I think the average PBer is older. It was 1.4% for 65 year olds.
Of course, the real tragedy is that the demands made on our lifestyles could have been avoided with better public health measures and pandemic response. Japan never needed a national lockdown because they were better at doing more targeted stuff earlier.
Lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience but most of us found ways to accommodate it. Expecting less healthy people to die to avoid it is totally unreasonable, and a step towards a society where only those who practice a healthy lifestyle and are lucky enough not to be subject to ramdom illness are considered worthy of attention.
Only a childless wealthy person living in a nice place in provincial England would say such a stupid, crass, vulgar, tone-deaf and utterly insensitive thing like “lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience”
Selling England by the pound. Once again the government opens the door for British assets to flow abroad.
Selling off the family silver* as McMillan put it. One of the less welcome legacies of Thatcher.
*To foreign asset strippers.
Because we British are too obsessed with buying property instead of productive stuff.
Buying property is not the real issue because the alternative, renting homes, is also very expensive. Whether someone rents or buys, a large part of their post-tax income is simply not available for discretionary purchases.
Did the Iowa poll really have any effect on anybody?
DJT's path to victory (one of AZ or GA plus PA, WI and MI) was so well understood by that point that the only people still believing in and predicting a Kamala victory were panglossian fools self-medicating on electoral tramadol. And that lot were not going to be swayed by logic or data because their belief system was entirely a faith based construct.
Funny you mention it but Most posters here were convinced of a Harris win and people like William Glenn who regularly posted pro Trump polls, as well as those who doubted Selzer, were regularly attacked for it.
Most posters said it was a toss up. About the same number were convinced it was a Trump win and Harris win but both were in a clear minority compared to the toss up gang. More people thought Harris value at 3 than Trump at 1.5 is perhaps where you got that impression.
The pandemic was the biggest event, easily. It established state control over every aspect of life for months on end and had wide public support. Dissenters were condemned and overall it was a period of great shame both for the government and for the public who didn't do enough to rebel against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I hope if something like this ever happens again people will ignore lockdowns completely and tell the government to go as stick their vaccine mandates up their arse.
It is troubling to me how easily we acquiesced to absolutely unthinkable terms of living for something that was never particularly deadly. People said that similar measures had been used previously, sure but those pandemics had a significantly higher death rate and measures were justified. COVID had a less than 0.1% death rate for healthy adults. The demands made in our lifestyles wasn't worth it.
But lots of people aren’t healthy adults. What’s the death rate for your average PB poster? The death rate is about 0.4% for 55 year olds. I think the average PBer is older. It was 1.4% for 65 year olds.
Of course, the real tragedy is that the demands made on our lifestyles could have been avoided with better public health measures and pandemic response. Japan never needed a national lockdown because they were better at doing more targeted stuff earlier.
Lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience but most of us found ways to accommodate it. Expecting less healthy people to die to avoid it is totally unreasonable, and a step towards a society where only those who practice a healthy lifestyle and are lucky enough not to be subject to ramdom illness are considered worthy of attention.
I agree that the lockdown was necessary to protect less healthy people and more importantly to flatten the curve on those affected so as to ensure the hospitals were not overwhelmed (or at least not overwhelmed more) and potentially society breaking down and it worked in the sense we didn't use the Nightingale hospitals.
However I wouldn't call it a mild inconvenience for some. For me it was fine. I have a big house and a big garden and my family came home (together with a partner) so we had the company of 5 of us and an outside life. BUT if you were single, sociable (partying, sporting, etc), living in a flat with no garden it must have been hell.
It will be very interesting to see what investment comes from the very high level delegation going to China In January.
Phillip Hammond has been very bullish about embracing the opportunity whilst being a step ahead in terms of the risk.
He makes one very valid point that you can have very frank discussions in private but the Chinese hate leaks.
A good lesson for this Labour Government who MSM hate, that they stop taking the usual Press Corps on any significant overseas trips. If they are going to leak and lie and just ask irrelevant questions, treat them like the mushrooms they are... Keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit.
Hammond believes big scope to get Chinese Electric Vehicles built in UK, similar to Japanese in the past, of course if they were Chinese brands and not Tesla, so much the better.
Better still if Rachel could return with a 200m donation from the Chinese Communist Party for Labour.
Don't fuck with us Musk!
Labour turning itself into the local branch of the Communist Party of China would be suboptimal for this country.
It would be far less suboptimal than having Musk and Trump dictating to us.
Far less.
So the cure for the alt-right is actual Fascism?
HH eh?
Hadolf Hitler? Hoseph Hoebbels? Hermann Hoering? Hudolf Hess?
I believe the cure for the BNP was Harriet Harman.
She introduced the Equality Act, which then enabled them to be taken to court for their racist constitution.
The real cure for the BNP was, of course, getting Nick Griffin on Question Time.
Sadly it hasn't worked with Farage!
Griffin was a moron. Expose him to scrutiny and the absurdity of the cause was instantly revealed. Farage is the inverse of that - the more scrutiny he gets, the more support he draws.
The Tories have already been consumed by Farage. Labour fear they are next. The challenge is that Farage is a better conservative than today's remaining Tories, and isn't the FASCIST that so many Labour types instinctively screech at him.
Selling England by the pound. Once again the government opens the door for British assets to flow abroad.
Selling off the family silver* as McMillan put it. One of the less welcome legacies of Thatcher.
*To foreign asset strippers.
Because we British are too obsessed with buying property instead of productive stuff.
Buying property is not the real issue because the alternative, renting homes, is also very expensive. Whether someone rents or buys, a large part of their post-tax income is simply not available for discretionary purchases.
Build, build, build.
Build new towns, refurbish old ones, add transport links.
Did the Iowa poll really have any effect on anybody?
DJT's path to victory (one of AZ or GA plus PA, WI and MI) was so well understood by that point that the only people still believing in and predicting a Kamala victory were panglossian fools self-medicating on electoral tramadol. And that lot were not going to be swayed by logic or data because their belief system was entirely a faith based construct.
Funny you mention it but Most posters here were convinced of a Harris win and people like William Glenn who regularly posted pro Trump polls, as well as those who doubted Selzer, were regularly attacked for it.
Most posters said it was a toss up. About the same number were convinced it was a Trump win and Harris win but both were in a clear minority compared to the toss up gang. More people thought Harris value at 3 than Trump at 1.5 is perhaps where you got that impression.
Just thinking about Mr Dancer's comparison to the twentieth century, what would people in 1925 have picked as the most important moment so far? Probably either one aspect of the outbreak of WW1 or the Armistice.
But in the longer term, that accolade would surely have to go to the development of powered aircraft, which began either in 1903 with the Wright brothers or with either Brazilian or German pioneers (depending on what you call a 'powered aircraft' and which account you believe). That changed the whole planet in innumerable dramatic ways, including its weather systems.
I wonder if we're also overlooking something because the pandemic, 9/11 and financial crises are all blocking our view. Answer - very probably, but we won't know what it is (and I do hope that's not triggered a certain Multiple ID poster).
The annoying thing is that he'd almost certainly be right.
It's a possibility, although it would be a dramatic break with tradition from him.
But from what I have heard, I would actually suggest the most likely left-field candidate is the vaccines developed for Covid - which appear to be promising in many other fields of medicine to the extent they may be genuinely revolutionary.
Good morning comrades and colleagues!
There are very few* 'revolutionary' events which are stand-alone. The Covid experience facilitated the development and especially the use of the likes of Zoom and Teams. Quite a lot of elderly people of my acquaintance, who would once have relied on their own physical social circles now routinely meet up with like minded people across the globe. And, going back a century, would airplanes have developed in the way they did but for WWI.
*Edited for sense, due to finger failure.
Yes, but it would have been slower.
Just as atomic energy and weapons would have been developed, but it would have taken more time.
Or indeed, in medical terms again, penicillin.
War injects massive capital resources into things that expedites what would otherwise be slow development hampered by lack of cash.
Of course, it can go the other way. The Nuffield aero engine, which offered a power-weight ratio far in excess of any other internal combustion engine, was abandoned due to the Air Ministry's obsession with secrecy which annoyed Lord Nuffield so much he cancelled the programme. Equally, that made jet engines a more attractive option than they would otherwise have been.
On the government picking winners and killing them off, we can add maglev trains, vtol aircraft and of course public key encryption which today underlies all of ecommerce.
IIRC Nuffield dropped out of aero engine production because the Air Ministry wanted insane amounts of paperwork on military contracts - and with WWII approaching, it was going to be 100% military.
It was a variation on the Cost Plus comedy - as used in the US - where everything is accounted for at insane cost.
So Nuffield sold the research and designs, and made stuff for the Army. Who didn’t require the paperwork.
That's true; but it's also worth pointing out that having an engine fail in a tank or truck is generally an embuggerance, but not necessarily the end of the world. Having an engine fail in a plane can be - especially if it fails by catching fire. Which might explain why the Air Ministry had higher standards and more paperwork.
Which is also why Merlin parts that were not deemed good enough for flight were derated and made into the first Meteor tank/vehicle engines, which were massively successful. In fact, the first Meteor engines were developed from parts recovered from crashed aircraft.
The ITP system etc (like the Cost Plus system in America) was created after accusations of war profiteering during WWI. Tommy Sopwith’s creative bankruptcy etc.
It will be very interesting to see what investment comes from the very high level delegation going to China In January.
Phillip Hammond has been very bullish about embracing the opportunity whilst being a step ahead in terms of the risk.
He makes one very valid point that you can have very frank discussions in private but the Chinese hate leaks.
A good lesson for this Labour Government who MSM hate, that they stop taking the usual Press Corps on any significant overseas trips. If they are going to leak and lie and just ask irrelevant questions, treat them like the mushrooms they are... Keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit.
Hammond believes big scope to get Chinese Electric Vehicles built in UK, similar to Japanese in the past, of course if they were Chinese brands and not Tesla, so much the better.
Better still if Rachel could return with a 200m donation from the Chinese Communist Party for Labour.
Don't fuck with us Musk!
Labour turning itself into the local branch of the Communist Party of China would be suboptimal for this country.
It would be far less suboptimal than having Musk and Trump dictating to us.
Far less.
So the cure for the alt-right is actual Fascism?
HH eh?
Hadolf Hitler? Hoseph Hoebbels? Hermann Hoering? Hudolf Hess?
I believe the cure for the BNP was Harriet Harman.
She introduced the Equality Act, which then enabled them to be taken to court for their racist constitution.
The real cure for the BNP was, of course, getting Nick Griffin on Question Time.
That wizened old chestnut. I presume if it hadn’t been for the QT appearance that instead of the BNP only having its best ever result in the GE that followed 7 months later, Griffins would have gained a few MPs? It’s mystifying to me but it seems some folk would prefer to believe in the disinfectant of sunlight rather than the more prosaic reason of the rise of the nicotine stained bullfrog Farage to soak up the enraged gammon vote.
It will be very interesting to see what investment comes from the very high level delegation going to China In January.
Phillip Hammond has been very bullish about embracing the opportunity whilst being a step ahead in terms of the risk.
He makes one very valid point that you can have very frank discussions in private but the Chinese hate leaks.
A good lesson for this Labour Government who MSM hate, that they stop taking the usual Press Corps on any significant overseas trips. If they are going to leak and lie and just ask irrelevant questions, treat them like the mushrooms they are... Keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit.
Hammond believes big scope to get Chinese Electric Vehicles built in UK, similar to Japanese in the past, of course if they were Chinese brands and not Tesla, so much the better.
Better still if Rachel could return with a 200m donation from the Chinese Communist Party for Labour.
Don't fuck with us Musk!
Labour turning itself into the local branch of the Communist Party of China would be suboptimal for this country.
It would be far less suboptimal than having Musk and Trump dictating to us.
Far less.
So the cure for the alt-right is actual Fascism?
HH eh?
Hadolf Hitler? Hoseph Hoebbels? Hermann Hoering? Hudolf Hess?
I believe the cure for the BNP was Harriet Harman.
She introduced the Equality Act, which then enabled them to be taken to court for their racist constitution.
The real cure for the BNP was, of course, getting Nick Griffin on Question Time.
That wizened old chestnut. I presume if it hadn’t been for the QT appearance that instead of the BNP only having its best ever result in the GE that followed 7 months later, Griffins would have gained a few MPs? It’s mystifying to me but it seems some folk would prefer to believe in the disinfectant of sunlight rather than the more prosaic reason of the rise of the nicotine stained bullfrog Farage to soak up the enraged gammon vote.
It was a function of several things - the QT appearance, the collapse into fraud and other comedies of the handful of councillors they had got….
It was public, evident, exposure of who and what they were. Not just QT, but that was a big part of it.
The pandemic was the biggest event, easily. It established state control over every aspect of life for months on end and had wide public support. Dissenters were condemned and overall it was a period of great shame both for the government and for the public who didn't do enough to rebel against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I hope if something like this ever happens again people will ignore lockdowns completely and tell the government to go as stick their vaccine mandates up their arse.
It is troubling to me how easily we acquiesced to absolutely unthinkable terms of living for something that was never particularly deadly. People said that similar measures had been used previously, sure but those pandemics had a significantly higher death rate and measures were justified. COVID had a less than 0.1% death rate for healthy adults. The demands made in our lifestyles wasn't worth it.
But lots of people aren’t healthy adults. What’s the death rate for your average PB poster? The death rate is about 0.4% for 55 year olds. I think the average PBer is older. It was 1.4% for 65 year olds.
Of course, the real tragedy is that the demands made on our lifestyles could have been avoided with better public health measures and pandemic response. Japan never needed a national lockdown because they were better at doing more targeted stuff earlier.
Lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience but most of us found ways to accommodate it. Expecting less healthy people to die to avoid it is totally unreasonable, and a step towards a society where only those who practice a healthy lifestyle and are lucky enough not to be subject to ramdom illness are considered worthy of attention.
I agree that the lockdown was necessary to protect less healthy people and more importantly to flatten the curve on those affected so as to ensure the hospitals were not overwhelmed (or at least not overwhelmed more) and potentially society breaking down and it worked in the sense we didn't use the Nightingale hospitals.
However I wouldn't call it a mild inconvenience for some. For me it was fine. I have a big house and a big garden and my family came home (together with a partner) so we had the company of 5 of us and an outside life. BUT if you were single, sociable (partying, sporting, etc), living in a flat with no garden it must have been hell.
It was indeed hell. I was in that position. And it was far more hellish for poor parents with tiny kids who might now be permanently damaged because of lockdown. And people stuck in unhappy or violent relationships. And families divided for YEARS by worldwide lockdowns - parents not seeing kids, wives separated from husbands. And the insane debt we have now accrued. And the people sent mad by loneliness
“A moderate inconvenience”
Jesus fucking Christ. I’ve come to regard NPXMP as a pleasant old geezer - and I’m glad he’s found a late life love. But that is one of the stupidest most tin-eared remarks I’ve ever read on PB
The pandemic was the biggest event, easily. It established state control over every aspect of life for months on end and had wide public support. Dissenters were condemned and overall it was a period of great shame both for the government and for the public who didn't do enough to rebel against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I hope if something like this ever happens again people will ignore lockdowns completely and tell the government to go as stick their vaccine mandates up their arse.
It is troubling to me how easily we acquiesced to absolutely unthinkable terms of living for something that was never particularly deadly. People said that similar measures had been used previously, sure but those pandemics had a significantly higher death rate and measures were justified. COVID had a less than 0.1% death rate for healthy adults. The demands made in our lifestyles wasn't worth it.
But lots of people aren’t healthy adults. What’s the death rate for your average PB poster? The death rate is about 0.4% for 55 year olds. I think the average PBer is older. It was 1.4% for 65 year olds.
Of course, the real tragedy is that the demands made on our lifestyles could have been avoided with better public health measures and pandemic response. Japan never needed a national lockdown because they were better at doing more targeted stuff earlier.
Lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience but most of us found ways to accommodate it. Expecting less healthy people to die to avoid it is totally unreasonable, and a step towards a society where only those who practice a healthy lifestyle and are lucky enough not to be subject to ramdom illness are considered worthy of attention.
I agree that the lockdown was necessary to protect less healthy people and more importantly to flatten the curve on those affected so as to ensure the hospitals were not overwhelmed (or at least not overwhelmed more) and potentially society breaking down and it worked in the sense we didn't use the Nightingale hospitals.
However I wouldn't call it a mild inconvenience for some. For me it was fine. I have a big house and a big garden and my family came home (together with a partner) so we had the company of 5 of us and an outside life. BUT if you were single, sociable (partying, sporting, etc), living in a flat with no garden it must have been hell.
That came up 2 or 3 days back - not criticising you, not at all, just that it arose in passing and could be easily missed. Main nub of it was that 'private' option is being disabled so the mods can easily check previous posts (but our emails are still concealed); and, more generally, some of us have to behave ourselves more when making accusations about identifiable persons.
Maybe we ned a header when the mods and OGH have had a chance to consider it all.
Ah, I saw the discussion about private profiles but missed what prompted it. Thanks.
That link indicated there was an onerous amount of admin and management for those runnjng/moderating online forums. Risk assessments, trained moderators etc.
The Internet is proving very hard to manage/contain /police - there's such a lot of good stuff but attempts to control the downsides, eg scams, fake news, illegal/immoral content, etc inevitably impact on all the good stuff.
It's a worry that smaller websites might be targeted by law enforcement in order to show that the new laws are working, while the big companies that can afford legal assistance are left largely unfettered, and potentially meantime the dark underworld parts of the ineternet just carry on as normal.
With the added kicker that the US is all-in on ‘freedom of speech’, so most sites not based out of the UK will be unaffected. Expect many of the more controversial UK sites (and their employees) to relocate themselves overseas as a result.
The US *was* all-in on freedom of speech, but now we’ve got Trump, who is suing Ann Selzer for a poll result he didn’t like, etc.
Even if you don’t like him, Trump will be gone in four years’ time. There’s a two term limit, and he’s not going to amend the constitution in the next four years.
The Selzer Iowa poll was a 16-point miss, and had prominent Democrats pushing it hard in advance of publication. I suspect that, as with the ABC lawsuit, the respondents would prefer to settle than go through the discovery process.
US political polling is a mess, as has been discussed at length on this forum, and there’s a need to better regulate it than is currently the case.
Trump’s legacy will long outlive Trump.
If you are insinuating that Selzer’s polling was biased… well, I’m not surprised that you should repeat a MAGA conspiracy, but isn’t accusing a reputable pollster of fiddling the results a no-no under PB’s moderation policy?
Meanwhile, away from polling, Trump is also suing CBS over their Harris interview, and Simon & Schuster over the Woodward book. He lost a suit against CNN in 2023 over their reporting of him. No US President has come anywhere close to this hostile behaviour towards the speech of others.
58 is my birth year. 88 is the birth year of my twins I saw test cricket from the early 70s I learnt Latin at School... A very interesting little red book called The Latin Way R L Chambers. My first experience of watching Cricket was Scarborough Festival August 1972 Sunday League Yorkshire v Essex I am the biggest Anti Fascist you could imagine so it really is very funny to see myself linked to obscure groups like 18 and 88. No I don't have a spiderweb tattoo either. I fact I don't have a tattoo.
Shame you weren’t around when Heather was posting, you could have compared notes about your twins and love of cricket and hatred of the right. Oh well, if she comes back the two of you will get on like a house on fire.
Bro, American “foreign interference” is the only reason you’re not speaking German or Russian rn lmao
And why, if Musk and Trump have their way, parts of Eastern Europe might end up speaking Russian.
Musk really is an utter scumbag.
Pah. He is so much worse than that.
He has bought his way into office in the US. All of the President Trump gags are only partially disconnected from reality.
I don't think Trump is in the pocket of Putin. He isn't demanding NATO members increase their defence spending because he thinks Putin should just walk over them. Biden et al have been finger wagging at Putin for a decade - you Naughty Man you. Has it been successful? Trump is trying something else.
Musk? He thinks he is unstoppable. He doesn't want to hand Romania over to Putin because he thinks Putin will have to fall into line behind Him like everyone else.
Did the Iowa poll really have any effect on anybody?
DJT's path to victory (one of AZ or GA plus PA, WI and MI) was so well understood by that point that the only people still believing in and predicting a Kamala victory were panglossian fools self-medicating on electoral tramadol. And that lot were not going to be swayed by logic or data because their belief system was entirely a faith based construct.
Funny you mention it but Most posters here were convinced of a Harris win and people like William Glenn who regularly posted pro Trump polls, as well as those who doubted Selzer, were regularly attacked for it.
Most posters here were not convinced of a Harris win. Don’t type nonsense. There were a few who vocally said that, and some who were equally convinced of a Trump win, but most posters thought the election would be close, which it was.
58 is my birth year. 88 is the birth year of my twins I saw test cricket from the early 70s I learnt Latin at School... A very interesting little red book called The Latin Way R L Chambers. My first experience of watching Cricket was Scarborough Festival August 1972 Sunday League Yorkshire v Essex I am the biggest Anti Fascist you could imagine so it really is very funny to see myself linked to obscure groups like 18 and 88. No I don't have a spiderweb tattoo either. I fact I don't have a tattoo.
Shame you weren’t around when Heather was posting, you could have compared notes about your twins and love of cricket and hatred of the right. Oh well, if she comes back the two of you will get on like a house on fire.
58 is my birth year. 88 is the birth year of my twins I saw test cricket from the early 70s I learnt Latin at School... A very interesting little red book called The Latin Way R L Chambers. My first experience of watching Cricket was Scarborough Festival August 1972 Sunday League Yorkshire v Essex I am the biggest Anti Fascist you could imagine so it really is very funny to see myself linked to obscure groups like 18 and 88. No I don't have a spiderweb tattoo either. I fact I don't have a tattoo.
Shame you weren’t around when Heather was posting, you could have compared notes about your twins and love of cricket and hatred of the right. Oh well, if she comes back the two of you will get on like a house on fire.
Bro, American “foreign interference” is the only reason you’re not speaking German or Russian rn lmao
And why, if Musk and Trump have their way, parts of Eastern Europe might end up speaking Russian.
Musk really is an utter scumbag.
To be pedantic, Eastern Europe was long under the rule of Moscow, but they kept speaking Polish, German, Hungarian, Romanian etc. Russian rule does not necessarily mean everyone has to speak Russian. (Yes, within the Soviet Union, there was a policy of Russification.)
Did the Iowa poll really have any effect on anybody?
DJT's path to victory (one of AZ or GA plus PA, WI and MI) was so well understood by that point that the only people still believing in and predicting a Kamala victory were panglossian fools self-medicating on electoral tramadol. And that lot were not going to be swayed by logic or data because their belief system was entirely a faith based construct.
Funny you mention it but Most posters here were convinced of a Harris win and people like William Glenn who regularly posted pro Trump polls, as well as those who doubted Selzer, were regularly attacked for it.
Most posters here were not convinced of a Harris win. Don’t type nonsense. There were a few who vocally said that, and some who were equally convinced of a Trump win, but most posters thought the election would be close, which it was.
Pretty much. The problem was that Harris was a B+ candidate going up against a Big Beast. What the Democrats needed was a young Bill Clinton.
Selling England by the pound. Once again the government opens the door for British assets to flow abroad.
Selling off the family silver* as McMillan put it. One of the less welcome legacies of Thatcher.
*To foreign asset strippers.
Because we British are too obsessed with buying property instead of productive stuff.
Buying property is not the real issue because the alternative, renting homes, is also very expensive. Whether someone rents or buys, a large part of their post-tax income is simply not available for discretionary purchases.
Build, build, build.
Build new towns, refurbish old ones, add transport links.
This is a point that nobody wants to address. A decent part of the need for housing is because large chunks of the housing stock is tatty and sat in communities that are tattier.
We need to compulsory purchase whole areas, flatten them, and start again.
The pandemic was the biggest event, easily. It established state control over every aspect of life for months on end and had wide public support. Dissenters were condemned and overall it was a period of great shame both for the government and for the public who didn't do enough to rebel against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I hope if something like this ever happens again people will ignore lockdowns completely and tell the government to go as stick their vaccine mandates up their arse.
It is troubling to me how easily we acquiesced to absolutely unthinkable terms of living for something that was never particularly deadly. People said that similar measures had been used previously, sure but those pandemics had a significantly higher death rate and measures were justified. COVID had a less than 0.1% death rate for healthy adults. The demands made in our lifestyles wasn't worth it.
But lots of people aren’t healthy adults. What’s the death rate for your average PB poster? The death rate is about 0.4% for 55 year olds. I think the average PBer is older. It was 1.4% for 65 year olds.
Of course, the real tragedy is that the demands made on our lifestyles could have been avoided with better public health measures and pandemic response. Japan never needed a national lockdown because they were better at doing more targeted stuff earlier.
Lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience but most of us found ways to accommodate it. Expecting less healthy people to die to avoid it is totally unreasonable, and a step towards a society where only those who practice a healthy lifestyle and are lucky enough not to be subject to ramdom illness are considered worthy of attention.
I agree that the lockdown was necessary to protect less healthy people and more importantly to flatten the curve on those affected so as to ensure the hospitals were not overwhelmed (or at least not overwhelmed more) and potentially society breaking down and it worked in the sense we didn't use the Nightingale hospitals.
However I wouldn't call it a mild inconvenience for some. For me it was fine. I have a big house and a big garden and my family came home (together with a partner) so we had the company of 5 of us and an outside life. BUT if you were single, sociable (partying, sporting, etc), living in a flat with no garden it must have been hell.
We do have to not blame lockdown for the effects of the pandemic itself, which was highly disruptive and economically disruptive independent of whether places locked down.
Worth noting too that the most severe parts of lockdown were relatively brief. So my department organised a social hike and pub garden meal in the May of 2020, completely within the rules. Severe lockdown didn't restart until December 2020, and even then half of children were back in face to face education for one reason or another.
58 is my birth year. 88 is the birth year of my twins I saw test cricket from the early 70s I learnt Latin at School... A very interesting little red book called The Latin Way R L Chambers. My first experience of watching Cricket was Scarborough Festival August 1972 Sunday League Yorkshire v Essex I am the biggest Anti Fascist you could imagine so it really is very funny to see myself linked to obscure groups like 18 and 88. No I don't have a spiderweb tattoo either. I fact I don't have a tattoo.
Shame you weren’t around when Heather was posting, you could have compared notes about your twins and love of cricket and hatred of the right. Oh well, if she comes back the two of you will get on like a house on fire.
Who's Heather My name's Trevor
@boulay suspects you are a reincarnation of a quite prominent, eccentric, left wing poster called @Heathener - who was simultaneously rich enough to fly around the world while being so poor she saved hot water in thermos flasks to avoid using the kettle twice
I enjoyed her mad commentary (and sometimes she was quite perceptive); I quite enjoy yours, and unlike @boulay my guess is you are not @Heathener (but if you are, well done on juggling two distinct voices)
It will be very interesting to see what investment comes from the very high level delegation going to China In January.
Phillip Hammond has been very bullish about embracing the opportunity whilst being a step ahead in terms of the risk.
He makes one very valid point that you can have very frank discussions in private but the Chinese hate leaks.
A good lesson for this Labour Government who MSM hate, that they stop taking the usual Press Corps on any significant overseas trips. If they are going to leak and lie and just ask irrelevant questions, treat them like the mushrooms they are... Keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit.
Hammond believes big scope to get Chinese Electric Vehicles built in UK, similar to Japanese in the past, of course if they were Chinese brands and not Tesla, so much the better.
Better still if Rachel could return with a 200m donation from the Chinese Communist Party for Labour.
Don't fuck with us Musk!
Labour turning itself into the local branch of the Communist Party of China would be suboptimal for this country.
It would be far less suboptimal than having Musk and Trump dictating to us.
Far less.
So the cure for the alt-right is actual Fascism?
HH eh?
Hadolf Hitler? Hoseph Hoebbels? Hermann Hoering? Hudolf Hess?
I believe the cure for the BNP was Harriet Harman.
She introduced the Equality Act, which then enabled them to be taken to court for their racist constitution.
The real cure for the BNP was, of course, getting Nick Griffin on Question Time.
Sadly it hasn't worked with Farage!
Perhaps because Farage/Reform is not the same as Griffin/BNP?
Selling England by the pound. Once again the government opens the door for British assets to flow abroad.
Selling off the family silver* as McMillan put it. One of the less welcome legacies of Thatcher.
*To foreign asset strippers.
Because we British are too obsessed with buying property instead of productive stuff.
Buying property is not the real issue because the alternative, renting homes, is also very expensive. Whether someone rents or buys, a large part of their post-tax income is simply not available for discretionary purchases.
The pandemic was the biggest event, easily. It established state control over every aspect of life for months on end and had wide public support. Dissenters were condemned and overall it was a period of great shame both for the government and for the public who didn't do enough to rebel against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I hope if something like this ever happens again people will ignore lockdowns completely and tell the government to go as stick their vaccine mandates up their arse.
It is troubling to me how easily we acquiesced to absolutely unthinkable terms of living for something that was never particularly deadly. People said that similar measures had been used previously, sure but those pandemics had a significantly higher death rate and measures were justified. COVID had a less than 0.1% death rate for healthy adults. The demands made in our lifestyles wasn't worth it.
But lots of people aren’t healthy adults. What’s the death rate for your average PB poster? The death rate is about 0.4% for 55 year olds. I think the average PBer is older. It was 1.4% for 65 year olds.
Of course, the real tragedy is that the demands made on our lifestyles could have been avoided with better public health measures and pandemic response. Japan never needed a national lockdown because they were better at doing more targeted stuff earlier.
Lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience but most of us found ways to accommodate it. Expecting less healthy people to die to avoid it is totally unreasonable, and a step towards a society where only those who practice a healthy lifestyle and are lucky enough not to be subject to ramdom illness are considered worthy of attention.
Only a childless wealthy person living in a nice place in provincial England would say such a stupid, crass, vulgar, tone-deaf and utterly insensitive thing like “lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience”
You total fricking idiot
I was very lucky to have moved from Zone 3 London to the coast a few months before the panic. Still a flat with no garden, but plenty more pleasant places to go for a walk.
Did the Iowa poll really have any effect on anybody?
DJT's path to victory (one of AZ or GA plus PA, WI and MI) was so well understood by that point that the only people still believing in and predicting a Kamala victory were panglossian fools self-medicating on electoral tramadol. And that lot were not going to be swayed by logic or data because their belief system was entirely a faith based construct.
Funny you mention it but Most posters here were convinced of a Harris win and people like William Glenn who regularly posted pro Trump polls, as well as those who doubted Selzer, were regularly attacked for it.
Most posters here were not convinced of a Harris win. Don’t type nonsense. There were a few who vocally said that, and some who were equally convinced of a Trump win, but most posters thought the election would be close, which it was.
Pretty much. The problem was that Harris was a B+ candidate going up against a Big Beast. What the Democrats needed was a young Bill Clinton.
I would say rather "going up against a strong headwind" -- Trump has his strengths but also clear weaknesses, and I think the economic situation was much the largest factor in the result. It would have taken a really strong charismatic candidate on the D side to win in that situation; conversely, I think any reasonably capable candidate on the R side could have won.
The pandemic was the biggest event, easily. It established state control over every aspect of life for months on end and had wide public support. Dissenters were condemned and overall it was a period of great shame both for the government and for the public who didn't do enough to rebel against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I hope if something like this ever happens again people will ignore lockdowns completely and tell the government to go as stick their vaccine mandates up their arse.
It is troubling to me how easily we acquiesced to absolutely unthinkable terms of living for something that was never particularly deadly. People said that similar measures had been used previously, sure but those pandemics had a significantly higher death rate and measures were justified. COVID had a less than 0.1% death rate for healthy adults. The demands made in our lifestyles wasn't worth it.
But lots of people aren’t healthy adults. What’s the death rate for your average PB poster? The death rate is about 0.4% for 55 year olds. I think the average PBer is older. It was 1.4% for 65 year olds.
Of course, the real tragedy is that the demands made on our lifestyles could have been avoided with better public health measures and pandemic response. Japan never needed a national lockdown because they were better at doing more targeted stuff earlier.
Lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience but most of us found ways to accommodate it. Expecting less healthy people to die to avoid it is totally unreasonable, and a step towards a society where only those who practice a healthy lifestyle and are lucky enough not to be subject to ramdom illness are considered worthy of attention.
I agree that the lockdown was necessary to protect less healthy people and more importantly to flatten the curve on those affected so as to ensure the hospitals were not overwhelmed (or at least not overwhelmed more) and potentially society breaking down and it worked in the sense we didn't use the Nightingale hospitals.
However I wouldn't call it a mild inconvenience for some. For me it was fine. I have a big house and a big garden and my family came home (together with a partner) so we had the company of 5 of us and an outside life. BUT if you were single, sociable (partying, sporting, etc), living in a flat with no garden it must have been hell.
We do have to not blame lockdown for the effects of the pandemic itself, which was highly disruptive and economically disruptive independent of whether places locked down.
Worth noting too that the most severe parts of lockdown were relatively brief. So my department organised a social hike and pub garden meal in the May of 2020, completely within the rules. Severe lockdown didn't restart until December 2020, and even then half of children were back in face to face education for one reason or another.
Another wealthy person who had a nice big house and garden - and you got to go to work IIRC?
Trust me, the “most severe part of lockdown” was not “relatively brief”. It went from late December 2020 deep into 2021, several long hideous winter months. Easily the worst months of my life - and much worse for other people in even more dire circumstances
The inability of some PBers to put themselves in the shoes of others - to use theory of mind to conceive how others might feel - is quite telling. Speaks to the very high levels of autism in our commenters
It will be very interesting to see what investment comes from the very high level delegation going to China In January.
Phillip Hammond has been very bullish about embracing the opportunity whilst being a step ahead in terms of the risk.
He makes one very valid point that you can have very frank discussions in private but the Chinese hate leaks.
A good lesson for this Labour Government who MSM hate, that they stop taking the usual Press Corps on any significant overseas trips. If they are going to leak and lie and just ask irrelevant questions, treat them like the mushrooms they are... Keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit.
Hammond believes big scope to get Chinese Electric Vehicles built in UK, similar to Japanese in the past, of course if they were Chinese brands and not Tesla, so much the better.
Better still if Rachel could return with a 200m donation from the Chinese Communist Party for Labour.
Don't fuck with us Musk!
Labour turning itself into the local branch of the Communist Party of China would be suboptimal for this country.
It would be far less suboptimal than having Musk and Trump dictating to us.
Far less.
So the cure for the alt-right is actual Fascism?
HH eh?
Hadolf Hitler? Hoseph Hoebbels? Hermann Hoering? Hudolf Hess?
I believe the cure for the BNP was Harriet Harman.
She introduced the Equality Act, which then enabled them to be taken to court for their racist constitution.
The real cure for the BNP was, of course, getting Nick Griffin on Question Time.
Sadly it hasn't worked with Farage!
Griffin was a moron. Expose him to scrutiny and the absurdity of the cause was instantly revealed. Farage is the inverse of that - the more scrutiny he gets, the more support he draws.
The Tories have already been consumed by Farage. Labour fear they are next. The challenge is that Farage is a better conservative than today's remaining Tories, and isn't the FASCIST that so many Labour types instinctively screech at him.
One thing that's clear coming back after a month away and seeing our new troll/astroturfer is that Labour are really worried about Reform.
They should have been from the day after the general election, of course, but they've got there sooner than I thought they might.
The pandemic was the biggest event, easily. It established state control over every aspect of life for months on end and had wide public support. Dissenters were condemned and overall it was a period of great shame both for the government and for the public who didn't do enough to rebel against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I hope if something like this ever happens again people will ignore lockdowns completely and tell the government to go as stick their vaccine mandates up their arse.
It is troubling to me how easily we acquiesced to absolutely unthinkable terms of living for something that was never particularly deadly. People said that similar measures had been used previously, sure but those pandemics had a significantly higher death rate and measures were justified. COVID had a less than 0.1% death rate for healthy adults. The demands made in our lifestyles wasn't worth it.
But lots of people aren’t healthy adults. What’s the death rate for your average PB poster? The death rate is about 0.4% for 55 year olds. I think the average PBer is older. It was 1.4% for 65 year olds.
Of course, the real tragedy is that the demands made on our lifestyles could have been avoided with better public health measures and pandemic response. Japan never needed a national lockdown because they were better at doing more targeted stuff earlier.
Lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience but most of us found ways to accommodate it. Expecting less healthy people to die to avoid it is totally unreasonable, and a step towards a society where only those who practice a healthy lifestyle and are lucky enough not to be subject to ramdom illness are considered worthy of attention.
I agree that the lockdown was necessary to protect less healthy people and more importantly to flatten the curve on those affected so as to ensure the hospitals were not overwhelmed (or at least not overwhelmed more) and potentially society breaking down and it worked in the sense we didn't use the Nightingale hospitals.
However I wouldn't call it a mild inconvenience for some. For me it was fine. I have a big house and a big garden and my family came home (together with a partner) so we had the company of 5 of us and an outside life. BUT if you were single, sociable (partying, sporting, etc), living in a flat with no garden it must have been hell.
We do have to not blame lockdown for the effects of the pandemic itself, which was highly disruptive and economically disruptive independent of whether places locked down.
Worth noting too that the most severe parts of lockdown were relatively brief. So my department organised a social hike and pub garden meal in the May of 2020, completely within the rules. Severe lockdown didn't restart until December 2020, and even then half of children were back in face to face education for one reason or another.
Another wealthy person who had a nice big house and garden - and you got to go to work IIRC?
Trust me, the “most severe part of lockdown” was not “relatively brief”. It went from late December 2020 deep into 2021, several long hideous winter months. Easily the worst months of my life - and much worse for other people in even more dire circumstances
The inability of some PBers to put themselves in the shoes of others - to use theory of mind to conceive how others might feel - is quite telling. Speaks to the very high levels of autism in our commenters
Yep, Mrs Foxy and I were working in ICU in Jan and Feb 2021.
The mortality was 50%, and no one over 65 got admitted. We had 53 patients in an 18 bedded unit at one point. It was horrible. I would have much rather been at home watching Netflix.
The pandemic was the biggest event, easily. It established state control over every aspect of life for months on end and had wide public support. Dissenters were condemned and overall it was a period of great shame both for the government and for the public who didn't do enough to rebel against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I hope if something like this ever happens again people will ignore lockdowns completely and tell the government to go as stick their vaccine mandates up their arse.
It is troubling to me how easily we acquiesced to absolutely unthinkable terms of living for something that was never particularly deadly. People said that similar measures had been used previously, sure but those pandemics had a significantly higher death rate and measures were justified. COVID had a less than 0.1% death rate for healthy adults. The demands made in our lifestyles wasn't worth it.
But lots of people aren’t healthy adults. What’s the death rate for your average PB poster? The death rate is about 0.4% for 55 year olds. I think the average PBer is older. It was 1.4% for 65 year olds.
Of course, the real tragedy is that the demands made on our lifestyles could have been avoided with better public health measures and pandemic response. Japan never needed a national lockdown because they were better at doing more targeted stuff earlier.
Lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience but most of us found ways to accommodate it. Expecting less healthy people to die to avoid it is totally unreasonable, and a step towards a society where only those who practice a healthy lifestyle and are lucky enough not to be subject to ramdom illness are considered worthy of attention.
Only a childless wealthy person living in a nice place in provincial England would say such a stupid, crass, vulgar, tone-deaf and utterly insensitive thing like “lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience”
You total fricking idiot
I was very lucky to have moved from Zone 3 London to the coast a few months before the panic. Still a flat with no garden, but plenty more pleasant places to go for a walk.
Central London was utterly dystopian during lockdown 3. Not helped by the fact that the winter of 20-21 was particularly bitter, long and grey. Unlike the amazing sunshine of lockdown 1
Just thinking about it makes me shudder with the memory. Awful
The pandemic was the biggest event, easily. It established state control over every aspect of life for months on end and had wide public support. Dissenters were condemned and overall it was a period of great shame both for the government and for the public who didn't do enough to rebel against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I hope if something like this ever happens again people will ignore lockdowns completely and tell the government to go as stick their vaccine mandates up their arse.
It is troubling to me how easily we acquiesced to absolutely unthinkable terms of living for something that was never particularly deadly. People said that similar measures had been used previously, sure but those pandemics had a significantly higher death rate and measures were justified. COVID had a less than 0.1% death rate for healthy adults. The demands made in our lifestyles wasn't worth it.
But lots of people aren’t healthy adults. What’s the death rate for your average PB poster? The death rate is about 0.4% for 55 year olds. I think the average PBer is older. It was 1.4% for 65 year olds.
Of course, the real tragedy is that the demands made on our lifestyles could have been avoided with better public health measures and pandemic response. Japan never needed a national lockdown because they were better at doing more targeted stuff earlier.
Lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience but most of us found ways to accommodate it. Expecting less healthy people to die to avoid it is totally unreasonable, and a step towards a society where only those who practice a healthy lifestyle and are lucky enough not to be subject to ramdom illness are considered worthy of attention.
I agree that the lockdown was necessary to protect less healthy people and more importantly to flatten the curve on those affected so as to ensure the hospitals were not overwhelmed (or at least not overwhelmed more) and potentially society breaking down and it worked in the sense we didn't use the Nightingale hospitals.
However I wouldn't call it a mild inconvenience for some. For me it was fine. I have a big house and a big garden and my family came home (together with a partner) so we had the company of 5 of us and an outside life. BUT if you were single, sociable (partying, sporting, etc), living in a flat with no garden it must have been hell.
We do have to not blame lockdown for the effects of the pandemic itself, which was highly disruptive and economically disruptive independent of whether places locked down.
Worth noting too that the most severe parts of lockdown were relatively brief. So my department organised a social hike and pub garden meal in the May of 2020, completely within the rules. Severe lockdown didn't restart until December 2020, and even then half of children were back in face to face education for one reason or another.
Another wealthy person who had a nice big house and garden - and you got to go to work IIRC?
Trust me, the “most severe part of lockdown” was not “relatively brief”. It went from late December 2020 deep into 2021, several long hideous winter months. Easily the worst months of my life - and much worse for other people in even more dire circumstances
The inability of some PBers to put themselves in the shoes of others - to use theory of mind to conceive how others might feel - is quite telling. Speaks to the very high levels of autism in our commenters
Yep, Mrs Foxy and I were working in ICU in Jan and Feb 2021.
The mortality was 50%, and no one over 65 got admitted. We had 53 patients in an 18 bedded unit at one point. It was horrible. I would have much rather been at home watching Netflix.
But you are factually wrong that “severe lockdown” was “relatively brief”. Relatively brief is “a few days”
We were jailed in our homes and virtually everything was shut for several long cold bleak suicide-inducing months
Maybe it felt shorter for you because you were allowed to go to work
Selling England by the pound. Once again the government opens the door for British assets to flow abroad.
Selling off the family silver* as McMillan put it. One of the less welcome legacies of Thatcher.
*To foreign asset strippers.
Because we British are too obsessed with buying property instead of productive stuff.
Buying property is not the real issue because the alternative, renting homes, is also very expensive. Whether someone rents or buys, a large part of their post-tax income is simply not available for discretionary purchases.
Build, build, build.
Then build some more.
Then build again.
We are 8 million homes behind.
Worse. We are acutely short of people who build houses. We are going to have to invest heavily in training and pay to make being a builder attractive. Because if we don't it means importing workers again.
This is our problem. Simon Cowell Syndrome means that nobody wants to graft. A whole generation or perhaps two have been brought up to think that their choices are university (thanks New Labour) or get famous on the Telly. Some idiots even think they can bypass the telly and get famous on TikTok or even YouTube.
We want to build 1.5m houses. But don't remotely have the workforce. We want to stop the forrin coming in and taking our jobs. But we don't want to do the jobs ourselves.
And yet Starmer hasn't yet waved the magic wand and fixed this. He's a wrong'un
It will be very interesting to see what investment comes from the very high level delegation going to China In January.
Phillip Hammond has been very bullish about embracing the opportunity whilst being a step ahead in terms of the risk.
He makes one very valid point that you can have very frank discussions in private but the Chinese hate leaks.
A good lesson for this Labour Government who MSM hate, that they stop taking the usual Press Corps on any significant overseas trips. If they are going to leak and lie and just ask irrelevant questions, treat them like the mushrooms they are... Keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit.
Hammond believes big scope to get Chinese Electric Vehicles built in UK, similar to Japanese in the past, of course if they were Chinese brands and not Tesla, so much the better.
Better still if Rachel could return with a 200m donation from the Chinese Communist Party for Labour.
Don't fuck with us Musk!
Labour turning itself into the local branch of the Communist Party of China would be suboptimal for this country.
It would be far less suboptimal than having Musk and Trump dictating to us.
Far less.
So the cure for the alt-right is actual Fascism?
HH eh?
Hadolf Hitler? Hoseph Hoebbels? Hermann Hoering? Hudolf Hess?
I believe the cure for the BNP was Harriet Harman.
She introduced the Equality Act, which then enabled them to be taken to court for their racist constitution.
The real cure for the BNP was, of course, getting Nick Griffin on Question Time.
That wizened old chestnut. I presume if it hadn’t been for the QT appearance that instead of the BNP only having its best ever result in the GE that followed 7 months later, Griffins would have gained a few MPs? It’s mystifying to me but it seems some folk would prefer to believe in the disinfectant of sunlight rather than the more prosaic reason of the rise of the nicotine stained bullfrog Farage to soak up the enraged gammon vote.
It was a function of several things - the QT appearance, the collapse into fraud and other comedies of the handful of councillors they had got….
It was public, evident, exposure of who and what they were. Not just QT, but that was a big part of it.
Not that it was their intention, of course, but the people who campaigned for him to be kept off actually ended up helping their own cause by drawing so much attention to the broadcast.
The 2008 financial crash certainly left a legacy of loss of trust in financial institutions which has spread to other institutions since other scandals since. It also has seen largely stagnant wages since which has further spread populism across the West, exacerbated by rising inflation as a legacy of the Ukraine war and the Covid lockdowns. 9/11, the peak of jihadi terrorism, then further spread suspicion of immigration and intervention in foreign wars.
Of course not all banks were bailed out, the US administration let Lehmans go bust for example in 2008 after Brown and Darling blocked an immediate rescue by Barclays without full due diligence first. The play Lehmans is well worth seeing and in its final weeks
The pandemic was the biggest event, easily. It established state control over every aspect of life for months on end and had wide public support. Dissenters were condemned and overall it was a period of great shame both for the government and for the public who didn't do enough to rebel against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I hope if something like this ever happens again people will ignore lockdowns completely and tell the government to go as stick their vaccine mandates up their arse.
It is troubling to me how easily we acquiesced to absolutely unthinkable terms of living for something that was never particularly deadly. People said that similar measures had been used previously, sure but those pandemics had a significantly higher death rate and measures were justified. COVID had a less than 0.1% death rate for healthy adults. The demands made in our lifestyles wasn't worth it.
But lots of people aren’t healthy adults. What’s the death rate for your average PB poster? The death rate is about 0.4% for 55 year olds. I think the average PBer is older. It was 1.4% for 65 year olds.
Of course, the real tragedy is that the demands made on our lifestyles could have been avoided with better public health measures and pandemic response. Japan never needed a national lockdown because they were better at doing more targeted stuff earlier.
Lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience but most of us found ways to accommodate it. Expecting less healthy people to die to avoid it is totally unreasonable, and a step towards a society where only those who practice a healthy lifestyle and are lucky enough not to be subject to ramdom illness are considered worthy of attention.
I agree that the lockdown was necessary to protect less healthy people and more importantly to flatten the curve on those affected so as to ensure the hospitals were not overwhelmed (or at least not overwhelmed more) and potentially society breaking down and it worked in the sense we didn't use the Nightingale hospitals.
However I wouldn't call it a mild inconvenience for some. For me it was fine. I have a big house and a big garden and my family came home (together with a partner) so we had the company of 5 of us and an outside life. BUT if you were single, sociable (partying, sporting, etc), living in a flat with no garden it must have been hell.
We do have to not blame lockdown for the effects of the pandemic itself, which was highly disruptive and economically disruptive independent of whether places locked down.
True, but neither should we ignore the fact that lockdown did itself have a severe cost that the government refused at the time to consider (and no government since has seemed the least bit interested in counting the cost either).
I lived alone at the time of lockdown. Looking back I do think it was challenging and definitely strained me. It made work all-encompassing as a distraction, and I certainly found myself eating/drinking more and being more sedentary.
I agree with others on here that while the first lockdown was a challenge and I don’t look back on it with any joy, I felt more comfortable with it. The subsequent ones, tier system etc I found incredibly depressing and they really affected my mood, after having started to come out of lockdown and see everyone again to be plunged back into it (it felt) again and again was grim (as was following the news media who seemed to be screaming for it every single week).
The pandemic was the biggest event, easily. It established state control over every aspect of life for months on end and had wide public support. Dissenters were condemned and overall it was a period of great shame both for the government and for the public who didn't do enough to rebel against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I hope if something like this ever happens again people will ignore lockdowns completely and tell the government to go as stick their vaccine mandates up their arse.
It is troubling to me how easily we acquiesced to absolutely unthinkable terms of living for something that was never particularly deadly. People said that similar measures had been used previously, sure but those pandemics had a significantly higher death rate and measures were justified. COVID had a less than 0.1% death rate for healthy adults. The demands made in our lifestyles wasn't worth it.
But lots of people aren’t healthy adults. What’s the death rate for your average PB poster? The death rate is about 0.4% for 55 year olds. I think the average PBer is older. It was 1.4% for 65 year olds.
Of course, the real tragedy is that the demands made on our lifestyles could have been avoided with better public health measures and pandemic response. Japan never needed a national lockdown because they were better at doing more targeted stuff earlier.
Lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience but most of us found ways to accommodate it. Expecting less healthy people to die to avoid it is totally unreasonable, and a step towards a society where only those who practice a healthy lifestyle and are lucky enough not to be subject to ramdom illness are considered worthy of attention.
I agree that the lockdown was necessary to protect less healthy people and more importantly to flatten the curve on those affected so as to ensure the hospitals were not overwhelmed (or at least not overwhelmed more) and potentially society breaking down and it worked in the sense we didn't use the Nightingale hospitals.
However I wouldn't call it a mild inconvenience for some. For me it was fine. I have a big house and a big garden and my family came home (together with a partner) so we had the company of 5 of us and an outside life. BUT if you were single, sociable (partying, sporting, etc), living in a flat with no garden it must have been hell.
We do have to not blame lockdown for the effects of the pandemic itself, which was highly disruptive and economically disruptive independent of whether places locked down.
True, but neither should we ignore the fact that lockdown did itself have a severe cost that the government refused at the time to consider (and no government since has seemed the least bit interested in counting the cost either.
We're having a massive inquiry about COVID-19. The claim that "no government since has seemed the least bit interested in counting the cost" is clearly risible.
Yes, I'm with the Header. The 08 crash has to be right up there. It burst a bubble and led to an era of low growth that we are far from seeing the back of.
“The third pandemic lockdown in the UK began on January 6, 2021, and lasted until significant restrictions were eased on April 12, 2021, meaning it spanned approximately three months.
Here’s a timeline breakdown:
1. January 6, 2021: England entered its third lockdown due to a surge in COVID-19 cases, driven by the Alpha variant. Schools were closed, and people were required to stay at home except for essential reasons.
2. March 8, 2021: Schools reopened, and some restrictions began to ease as part of the government’s staged “roadmap out of lockdown.”
3. April 12, 2021: Non-essential retail, outdoor hospitality, and personal care services (like hairdressers) reopened. This marked the end of the most severe lockdown restrictions.
4. June 21, 2021: Remaining restrictions were scheduled to end, but this was delayed to July 19, 2021, due to concerns about the Delta variant.”
So in some form it went on for over SIX months. And the most severe forms (stay in your homes, no social gatherings, no pubs no nothing) went on for over three months
The 2008 financial crash certainly left a legacy of loss of trust in financial institutions which has spread to other institutions since other scandals since. It also has seen largely stagnant wages since which has further spread populism across the West, exacerbated by rising inflation as a legacy of the Ukraine war and the Covid lockdowns. 9/11, the peak of jihadi terrorism, then further spread suspicion of immigration and intervention in foreign wars.
Of course not all banks were bailed out, the US administration let Lehmans go bust for example in 2008 after Brown and Darling blocked an immediate rescue by Barclays without full due diligence first. The play Lehmans is well worth seeing and in its final weeks
With hindsight, letting Lehmans fail might have triggered the GFC from a little local difficulty with subprime mortgages.
The pandemic was the biggest event, easily. It established state control over every aspect of life for months on end and had wide public support. Dissenters were condemned and overall it was a period of great shame both for the government and for the public who didn't do enough to rebel against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I hope if something like this ever happens again people will ignore lockdowns completely and tell the government to go as stick their vaccine mandates up their arse.
It is troubling to me how easily we acquiesced to absolutely unthinkable terms of living for something that was never particularly deadly. People said that similar measures had been used previously, sure but those pandemics had a significantly higher death rate and measures were justified. COVID had a less than 0.1% death rate for healthy adults. The demands made in our lifestyles wasn't worth it.
But lots of people aren’t healthy adults. What’s the death rate for your average PB poster? The death rate is about 0.4% for 55 year olds. I think the average PBer is older. It was 1.4% for 65 year olds.
Of course, the real tragedy is that the demands made on our lifestyles could have been avoided with better public health measures and pandemic response. Japan never needed a national lockdown because they were better at doing more targeted stuff earlier.
Lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience but most of us found ways to accommodate it. Expecting less healthy people to die to avoid it is totally unreasonable, and a step towards a society where only those who practice a healthy lifestyle and are lucky enough not to be subject to ramdom illness are considered worthy of attention.
I agree that the lockdown was necessary to protect less healthy people and more importantly to flatten the curve on those affected so as to ensure the hospitals were not overwhelmed (or at least not overwhelmed more) and potentially society breaking down and it worked in the sense we didn't use the Nightingale hospitals.
However I wouldn't call it a mild inconvenience for some. For me it was fine. I have a big house and a big garden and my family came home (together with a partner) so we had the company of 5 of us and an outside life. BUT if you were single, sociable (partying, sporting, etc), living in a flat with no garden it must have been hell.
We do have to not blame lockdown for the effects of the pandemic itself, which was highly disruptive and economically disruptive independent of whether places locked down.
True, but neither should we ignore the fact that lockdown did itself have a severe cost that the government refused at the time to consider (and no government since has seemed the least bit interested in counting the cost either.
We're having a massive inquiry about COVID-19. The claim that "no government since has seemed the least bit interested in counting the cost" is clearly risible.
Yes, and it's deciding between "the government did the best it could" and "the government should have done more".
I was about to go for the 2008 financial crisis but when I told my wife that she said, "of course you would, it plays to your interests."
Which is spot on, as usual, and rather shows the pointlessness of this kind of polling. Covid and 9/11 both changed the world in different ways too, neither for the better sadly, but trying hard to set aside my bias, I still think 2008 changed our world more than anything else. If only our political class would stop pretending otherwise. It was, in many ways, the point where Keynesian economics ran out of road.
On the contrary, 2008 saw the revival of Keynesian economics. It was out of fashion among the likes of Greenspan et al who were running the central banks before the crisis.
We didn't have Keynesian economics before 2008 and we haven't had Keynesian economics afterwards either.
We merely changed from "things are going well so we're entitled to live beyond our means" to "things are going badly so we're entitled to live beyond our means".
Actual betting question, When will the petition actually reach 3,000,000 million ? I had thought just about the time of the parliamentary vote, then I thought maybe New Year's Day. But after several weeks of not picking up many votes it seems to have got a new spurt and could be Christmas Day, or Boxing Day. Also, when will the signatories in Morecambe and Lunesdale overtake the Labour MP's Majority ? At the moment looks like about 3 January 2025.
The pandemic was the biggest event, easily. It established state control over every aspect of life for months on end and had wide public support. Dissenters were condemned and overall it was a period of great shame both for the government and for the public who didn't do enough to rebel against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I hope if something like this ever happens again people will ignore lockdowns completely and tell the government to go as stick their vaccine mandates up their arse.
It is troubling to me how easily we acquiesced to absolutely unthinkable terms of living for something that was never particularly deadly. People said that similar measures had been used previously, sure but those pandemics had a significantly higher death rate and measures were justified. COVID had a less than 0.1% death rate for healthy adults. The demands made in our lifestyles wasn't worth it.
But lots of people aren’t healthy adults. What’s the death rate for your average PB poster? The death rate is about 0.4% for 55 year olds. I think the average PBer is older. It was 1.4% for 65 year olds.
Of course, the real tragedy is that the demands made on our lifestyles could have been avoided with better public health measures and pandemic response. Japan never needed a national lockdown because they were better at doing more targeted stuff earlier.
Lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience but most of us found ways to accommodate it. Expecting less healthy people to die to avoid it is totally unreasonable, and a step towards a society where only those who practice a healthy lifestyle and are lucky enough not to be subject to ramdom illness are considered worthy of attention.
Only a childless wealthy person living in a nice place in provincial England would say such a stupid, crass, vulgar, tone-deaf and utterly insensitive thing like “lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience”
You total fricking idiot
I was very lucky to have moved from Zone 3 London to the coast a few months before the panic. Still a flat with no garden, but plenty more pleasant places to go for a walk.
Central London was utterly dystopian during lockdown 3. Not helped by the fact that the winter of 20-21 was particularly bitter, long and grey. Unlike the amazing sunshine of lockdown 1
Just thinking about it makes me shudder with the memory. Awful
Lockdown 1 was surreal. Beautiful weather, everyone pulling together to do this thing, no vaccine and no masks mandate.
By the time we got to lockdown 3 I was living in one of the Covid hotspots, the local hospitals literally drowning in seriously ill patients. Weather was awful, local pox rate was awful, like a geiger counter clicking away out the window.
There's this wonderful revisionist history where all the subsequent lockdowns were pointless. And yet at the time we had Covid tearing its way through not sufficiently jabbed people and killing them in sufficient numbers to put the health service on the brink of collapse...
Selling England by the pound. Once again the government opens the door for British assets to flow abroad.
Selling off the family silver* as McMillan put it. One of the less welcome legacies of Thatcher.
*To foreign asset strippers.
Because we British are too obsessed with buying property instead of productive stuff.
Buying property is not the real issue because the alternative, renting homes, is also very expensive. Whether someone rents or buys, a large part of their post-tax income is simply not available for discretionary purchases.
Build, build, build.
Then build some more.
Then build again.
We are 8 million homes behind.
Worse. We are acutely short of people who build houses. We are going to have to invest heavily in training and pay to make being a builder attractive. Because if we don't it means importing workers again.
This is our problem. Simon Cowell Syndrome means that nobody wants to graft. A whole generation or perhaps two have been brought up to think that their choices are university (thanks New Labour) or get famous on the Telly. Some idiots even think they can bypass the telly and get famous on TikTok or even YouTube.
We want to build 1.5m houses. But don't remotely have the workforce. We want to stop the forrin coming in and taking our jobs. But we don't want to do the jobs ourselves.
And yet Starmer hasn't yet waved the magic wand and fixed this. He's a wrong'un
We, or some people anyway, do want to do the jobs but the question of how to learn a trade arises.
“The third pandemic lockdown in the UK began on January 6, 2021, and lasted until significant restrictions were eased on April 12, 2021, meaning it spanned approximately three months.
Here’s a timeline breakdown:
1. January 6, 2021: England entered its third lockdown due to a surge in COVID-19 cases, driven by the Alpha variant. Schools were closed, and people were required to stay at home except for essential reasons.
2. March 8, 2021: Schools reopened, and some restrictions began to ease as part of the government’s staged “roadmap out of lockdown.”
3. April 12, 2021: Non-essential retail, outdoor hospitality, and personal care services (like hairdressers) reopened. This marked the end of the most severe lockdown restrictions.
4. June 21, 2021: Remaining restrictions were scheduled to end, but this was delayed to July 19, 2021, due to concerns about the Delta variant.”
So in some form it went on for over SIX months. And the most severe forms (stay in your homes, no social gatherings, no pubs no nothing) went on for over three months
In some regions it went on WAY longer than that. Much of Lancashire (to give one example) had people locked down though all the back end of 2020 as well.
OT if the fire alarm keeps going off, I might be forced to investigate.
There's an immersion heater tank appeared out front so presumably someone is welding near a smoke detector.
(Anecdata: last week someone in the building game told me that sparks and plumbing are especially scarce right now. That might explain why they are earning Christmas money on a Sunday.)
Selling England by the pound. Once again the government opens the door for British assets to flow abroad.
Selling off the family silver* as McMillan put it. One of the less welcome legacies of Thatcher.
*To foreign asset strippers.
Because we British are too obsessed with buying property instead of productive stuff.
Buying property is not the real issue because the alternative, renting homes, is also very expensive. Whether someone rents or buys, a large part of their post-tax income is simply not available for discretionary purchases.
I mean well-off people who buy a second home, or a bigger home, or a BTL, as an alternative to buying shares etc.
It will be very interesting to see what investment comes from the very high level delegation going to China In January.
Phillip Hammond has been very bullish about embracing the opportunity whilst being a step ahead in terms of the risk.
He makes one very valid point that you can have very frank discussions in private but the Chinese hate leaks.
A good lesson for this Labour Government who MSM hate, that they stop taking the usual Press Corps on any significant overseas trips. If they are going to leak and lie and just ask irrelevant questions, treat them like the mushrooms they are... Keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit.
Hammond believes big scope to get Chinese Electric Vehicles built in UK, similar to Japanese in the past, of course if they were Chinese brands and not Tesla, so much the better.
Better still if Rachel could return with a 200m donation from the Chinese Communist Party for Labour.
Don't fuck with us Musk!
Labour turning itself into the local branch of the Communist Party of China would be suboptimal for this country.
It would be far less suboptimal than having Musk and Trump dictating to us.
Far less.
While I despise Trump with every fibre of my being, I have to agree with @Sean_F and @MaxPB that Xi is a whole lot worse. Trump is a violent and unstable criminal and a clear cut risk to our security, but hasn't the intellect or the patience to be controlling in the way Xi is or the intention of being a mass murderer. That's partly why I think Vance, De Santis and Ramaswamy are actually in many ways more dangerous than he is.
I am not so sure about Musk. I think he has all the attributes of Xi - the greed, ruthlessness, erratic embrace of conspiracy theories, utter narcissism, the hatred of minorities and above all the same control freakery - but fortunately for various reasons is never likely to get the same level of power, even though as it is he's got far too much.
It is inevitable that China will replace the US as the global superpower in the next decade or two. Just compare economic size, growth rates and long term strategic intent.
A stable world is in China's interests in order to support its international trade and political expansion. So it will become the world's policeman. China is already reining in Putin. The last thing China wants is WWW3.
Fast forward twenty years and the UK may value its "special relationship" with China more than with the US.
Chinese growth has decelerated sharply and its population is falling. The USA’s population is rising, and is growing steadily.
China has purchased enough oil and gas from Putin to keep his war machine functioning.
China, at least under the Communist Party, will never be anything other than a brutal dictatorship, and is not our friend.
Between 2005 and 2020, the GDP of China grew from 2.3 trillion to 14.9 trillion U.S. dollars. During the same time period the GDP of the United States grew from 13 trillion to 20.8 trillion dollars. It is estimated that, by 2030, China will overtake the U.S. as the world's largest economy, with a GDP of 33.7 trillion dollars, compared to 30.5 trillion dollars; this margin of more than three trillion is predicted to increase to almost 13 trillion over the subsequent five year period.
China is keeping the Russian war machine going to weaken Russia and test the resolve of the West. It has Putin on a leash with regards to nuclear.
The pandemic was the biggest event, easily. It established state control over every aspect of life for months on end and had wide public support. Dissenters were condemned and overall it was a period of great shame both for the government and for the public who didn't do enough to rebel against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I hope if something like this ever happens again people will ignore lockdowns completely and tell the government to go as stick their vaccine mandates up their arse.
It is troubling to me how easily we acquiesced to absolutely unthinkable terms of living for something that was never particularly deadly. People said that similar measures had been used previously, sure but those pandemics had a significantly higher death rate and measures were justified. COVID had a less than 0.1% death rate for healthy adults. The demands made in our lifestyles wasn't worth it.
But lots of people aren’t healthy adults. What’s the death rate for your average PB poster? The death rate is about 0.4% for 55 year olds. I think the average PBer is older. It was 1.4% for 65 year olds.
Of course, the real tragedy is that the demands made on our lifestyles could have been avoided with better public health measures and pandemic response. Japan never needed a national lockdown because they were better at doing more targeted stuff earlier.
Lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience but most of us found ways to accommodate it. Expecting less healthy people to die to avoid it is totally unreasonable, and a step towards a society where only those who practice a healthy lifestyle and are lucky enough not to be subject to ramdom illness are considered worthy of attention.
I agree that the lockdown was necessary to protect less healthy people and more importantly to flatten the curve on those affected so as to ensure the hospitals were not overwhelmed (or at least not overwhelmed more) and potentially society breaking down and it worked in the sense we didn't use the Nightingale hospitals.
However I wouldn't call it a mild inconvenience for some. For me it was fine. I have a big house and a big garden and my family came home (together with a partner) so we had the company of 5 of us and an outside life. BUT if you were single, sociable (partying, sporting, etc), living in a flat with no garden it must have been hell.
We do have to not blame lockdown for the effects of the pandemic itself, which was highly disruptive and economically disruptive independent of whether places locked down.
True, but neither should we ignore the fact that lockdown did itself have a severe cost that the government refused at the time to consider (and no government since has seemed the least bit interested in counting the cost either.
We're having a massive inquiry about COVID-19. The claim that "no government since has seemed the least bit interested in counting the cost" is clearly risible.
Yes, and it's deciding between "the government did the best it could" and "the government should have done more".
I'd be more interested in seeing international comparisons of what actually happened than endless speculation about what the UK did and might have done differently.
“The third pandemic lockdown in the UK began on January 6, 2021, and lasted until significant restrictions were eased on April 12, 2021, meaning it spanned approximately three months.
Here’s a timeline breakdown:
1. January 6, 2021: England entered its third lockdown due to a surge in COVID-19 cases, driven by the Alpha variant. Schools were closed, and people were required to stay at home except for essential reasons.
2. March 8, 2021: Schools reopened, and some restrictions began to ease as part of the government’s staged “roadmap out of lockdown.”
3. April 12, 2021: Non-essential retail, outdoor hospitality, and personal care services (like hairdressers) reopened. This marked the end of the most severe lockdown restrictions.
4. June 21, 2021: Remaining restrictions were scheduled to end, but this was delayed to July 19, 2021, due to concerns about the Delta variant.”
So in some form it went on for over SIX months. And the most severe forms (stay in your homes, no social gatherings, no pubs no nothing) went on for over three months
It had started in mid December for parts of southern England with the restrictions steadily being moved northwards.
I remember still swimming on 5th January 2021.
Unfortunately there were too many people happy to be on furlough or working from home and the government too willing to pander to them.
The pandemic was the biggest event, easily. It established state control over every aspect of life for months on end and had wide public support. Dissenters were condemned and overall it was a period of great shame both for the government and for the public who didn't do enough to rebel against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I hope if something like this ever happens again people will ignore lockdowns completely and tell the government to go as stick their vaccine mandates up their arse.
It is troubling to me how easily we acquiesced to absolutely unthinkable terms of living for something that was never particularly deadly. People said that similar measures had been used previously, sure but those pandemics had a significantly higher death rate and measures were justified. COVID had a less than 0.1% death rate for healthy adults. The demands made in our lifestyles wasn't worth it.
But lots of people aren’t healthy adults. What’s the death rate for your average PB poster? The death rate is about 0.4% for 55 year olds. I think the average PBer is older. It was 1.4% for 65 year olds.
Of course, the real tragedy is that the demands made on our lifestyles could have been avoided with better public health measures and pandemic response. Japan never needed a national lockdown because they were better at doing more targeted stuff earlier.
Lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience but most of us found ways to accommodate it. Expecting less healthy people to die to avoid it is totally unreasonable, and a step towards a society where only those who practice a healthy lifestyle and are lucky enough not to be subject to ramdom illness are considered worthy of attention.
Only a childless wealthy person living in a nice place in provincial England would say such a stupid, crass, vulgar, tone-deaf and utterly insensitive thing like “lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience”
You total fricking idiot
I was very lucky to have moved from Zone 3 London to the coast a few months before the panic. Still a flat with no garden, but plenty more pleasant places to go for a walk.
Central London was utterly dystopian during lockdown 3. Not helped by the fact that the winter of 20-21 was particularly bitter, long and grey. Unlike the amazing sunshine of lockdown 1
Just thinking about it makes me shudder with the memory. Awful
Lockdown 1 was surreal. Beautiful weather, everyone pulling together to do this thing, no vaccine and no masks mandate.
By the time we got to lockdown 3 I was living in one of the Covid hotspots, the local hospitals literally drowning in seriously ill patients. Weather was awful, local pox rate was awful, like a geiger counter clicking away out the window.
There's this wonderful revisionist history where all the subsequent lockdowns were pointless. And yet at the time we had Covid tearing its way through not sufficiently jabbed people and killing them in sufficient numbers to put the health service on the brink of collapse...
I’ve no doubt the NHS came under strain, I don’t dispute @Foxy’s account on that score - he was there. And yet, the Nightingale hospitals - they never got used. And the strain the NHS suffered must be measured against the long term damage lockdowns have done, to minds, lives, economies
Perhaps it is too complex a question for anyone to solve. But my sense is that the 2nd and 3rd lockdowns were a terrible if understandable error, and we should have found a better way to shield the vulnerable
“The third pandemic lockdown in the UK began on January 6, 2021, and lasted until significant restrictions were eased on April 12, 2021, meaning it spanned approximately three months.
Here’s a timeline breakdown:
1. January 6, 2021: England entered its third lockdown due to a surge in COVID-19 cases, driven by the Alpha variant. Schools were closed, and people were required to stay at home except for essential reasons.
2. March 8, 2021: Schools reopened, and some restrictions began to ease as part of the government’s staged “roadmap out of lockdown.”
3. April 12, 2021: Non-essential retail, outdoor hospitality, and personal care services (like hairdressers) reopened. This marked the end of the most severe lockdown restrictions.
4. June 21, 2021: Remaining restrictions were scheduled to end, but this was delayed to July 19, 2021, due to concerns about the Delta variant.”
So in some form it went on for over SIX months. And the most severe forms (stay in your homes, no social gatherings, no pubs no nothing) went on for over three months
Don’t forget because of local lockdowns some places had it for much longer.
It will be very interesting to see what investment comes from the very high level delegation going to China In January.
Phillip Hammond has been very bullish about embracing the opportunity whilst being a step ahead in terms of the risk.
He makes one very valid point that you can have very frank discussions in private but the Chinese hate leaks.
A good lesson for this Labour Government who MSM hate, that they stop taking the usual Press Corps on any significant overseas trips. If they are going to leak and lie and just ask irrelevant questions, treat them like the mushrooms they are... Keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit.
Hammond believes big scope to get Chinese Electric Vehicles built in UK, similar to Japanese in the past, of course if they were Chinese brands and not Tesla, so much the better.
Better still if Rachel could return with a 200m donation from the Chinese Communist Party for Labour.
Don't fuck with us Musk!
Labour turning itself into the local branch of the Communist Party of China would be suboptimal for this country.
It would be far less suboptimal than having Musk and Trump dictating to us.
Far less.
While I despise Trump with every fibre of my being, I have to agree with @Sean_F and @MaxPB that Xi is a whole lot worse. Trump is a violent and unstable criminal and a clear cut risk to our security, but hasn't the intellect or the patience to be controlling in the way Xi is or the intention of being a mass murderer. That's partly why I think Vance, De Santis and Ramaswamy are actually in many ways more dangerous than he is.
I am not so sure about Musk. I think he has all the attributes of Xi - the greed, ruthlessness, erratic embrace of conspiracy theories, utter narcissism, the hatred of minorities and above all the same control freakery - but fortunately for various reasons is never likely to get the same level of power, even though as it is he's got far too much.
It is inevitable that China will replace the US as the global superpower in the next decade or two. Just compare economic size, growth rates and long term strategic intent.
A stable world is in China's interests in order to support its international trade and political expansion. So it will become the world's policeman. China is already reining in Putin. The last thing China wants is WWW3.
Fast forward twenty years and the UK may value its "special relationship" with China more than with the US.
Chinese growth has decelerated sharply and its population is falling. The USA’s population is rising, and is growing steadily.
China has purchased enough oil and gas from Putin to keep his war machine functioning.
China, at least under the Communist Party, will never be anything other than a brutal dictatorship, and is not our friend.
Between 2005 and 2020, the GDP of China grew from 2.3 trillion to 14.9 trillion U.S. dollars. During the same time period the GDP of the United States grew from 13 trillion to 20.8 trillion dollars. It is estimated that, by 2030, China will overtake the U.S. as the world's largest economy, with a GDP of 33.7 trillion dollars, compared to 30.5 trillion dollars; this margin of more than three trillion is predicted to increase to almost 13 trillion over the subsequent five year period.
China is keeping the Russian war machine going to weaken Russia and test the resolve of the West. It has Putin on a leash with regards to nuclear.
If "China is keeping the Russian war machine going to weaken Russia" then Biden has been doing the same. Only Trump can save them.
Selling England by the pound. Once again the government opens the door for British assets to flow abroad.
Selling off the family silver* as McMillan put it. One of the less welcome legacies of Thatcher.
*To foreign asset strippers.
Because we British are too obsessed with buying property instead of productive stuff.
Buying property is not the real issue because the alternative, renting homes, is also very expensive. Whether someone rents or buys, a large part of their post-tax income is simply not available for discretionary purchases.
Build, build, build.
Then build some more.
Then build again.
We are 8 million homes behind.
Worse. We are acutely short of people who build houses. We are going to have to invest heavily in training and pay to make being a builder attractive. Because if we don't it means importing workers again.
This is our problem. Simon Cowell Syndrome means that nobody wants to graft. A whole generation or perhaps two have been brought up to think that their choices are university (thanks New Labour) or get famous on the Telly. Some idiots even think they can bypass the telly and get famous on TikTok or even YouTube.
We want to build 1.5m houses. But don't remotely have the workforce. We want to stop the forrin coming in and taking our jobs. But we don't want to do the jobs ourselves.
And yet Starmer hasn't yet waved the magic wand and fixed this. He's a wrong'un
There is another side to this - tons of U.K. people in *some* trades. Lots of solar installers, for example.
It’s been portrayed that *all* building workers are Furrin. Which puts people off.
It isn’t true, but that combined with a complete lack of decent training…
Easy to blame the firms on training. But they know that the government will just import more - so they will spend money on training and then their rivals will use pre skilled labour.
Selling England by the pound. Once again the government opens the door for British assets to flow abroad.
Selling off the family silver* as McMillan put it. One of the less welcome legacies of Thatcher.
*To foreign asset strippers.
Because we British are too obsessed with buying property instead of productive stuff.
Buying property is not the real issue because the alternative, renting homes, is also very expensive. Whether someone rents or buys, a large part of their post-tax income is simply not available for discretionary purchases.
Build, build, build.
Then build some more.
Then build again.
We are 8 million homes behind.
Worse. We are acutely short of people who build houses. We are going to have to invest heavily in training and pay to make being a builder attractive. Because if we don't it means importing workers again.
This is our problem. Simon Cowell Syndrome means that nobody wants to graft. A whole generation or perhaps two have been brought up to think that their choices are university (thanks New Labour) or get famous on the Telly. Some idiots even think they can bypass the telly and get famous on TikTok or even YouTube.
We want to build 1.5m houses. But don't remotely have the workforce. We want to stop the forrin coming in and taking our jobs. But we don't want to do the jobs ourselves.
And yet Starmer hasn't yet waved the magic wand and fixed this. He's a wrong'un
We, or some people anyway, do want to do the jobs but the question of how to learn a trade arises.
We've stopped training people - and dropped the idea of employers training people.
Genuinely though, we need a lot of people to do a lot of grafty unsexy jobs which are going to need to be make to look desirable and sexy.
“The third pandemic lockdown in the UK began on January 6, 2021, and lasted until significant restrictions were eased on April 12, 2021, meaning it spanned approximately three months.
Here’s a timeline breakdown:
1. January 6, 2021: England entered its third lockdown due to a surge in COVID-19 cases, driven by the Alpha variant. Schools were closed, and people were required to stay at home except for essential reasons.
2. March 8, 2021: Schools reopened, and some restrictions began to ease as part of the government’s staged “roadmap out of lockdown.”
3. April 12, 2021: Non-essential retail, outdoor hospitality, and personal care services (like hairdressers) reopened. This marked the end of the most severe lockdown restrictions.
4. June 21, 2021: Remaining restrictions were scheduled to end, but this was delayed to July 19, 2021, due to concerns about the Delta variant.”
So in some form it went on for over SIX months. And the most severe forms (stay in your homes, no social gatherings, no pubs no nothing) went on for over three months
It had started in mid December for parts of southern England with the restrictions steadily being moved northwards.
I remember still swimming on 5th January 2021.
Unfortunately there were too many people happy to be on furlough or working from home and the government too willing to pander to them.
Interesting. I thought I was misremembering because my recollection is lockdown 3 began in December not January. So what you say explains the discrepancy
Also means that for me lockdown 3 went on - in its most brutal form - for around four months. No wonder I was suicidally deranged by the end
The pandemic was the biggest event, easily. It established state control over every aspect of life for months on end and had wide public support. Dissenters were condemned and overall it was a period of great shame both for the government and for the public who didn't do enough to rebel against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I hope if something like this ever happens again people will ignore lockdowns completely and tell the government to go as stick their vaccine mandates up their arse.
It is troubling to me how easily we acquiesced to absolutely unthinkable terms of living for something that was never particularly deadly. People said that similar measures had been used previously, sure but those pandemics had a significantly higher death rate and measures were justified. COVID had a less than 0.1% death rate for healthy adults. The demands made in our lifestyles wasn't worth it.
But lots of people aren’t healthy adults. What’s the death rate for your average PB poster? The death rate is about 0.4% for 55 year olds. I think the average PBer is older. It was 1.4% for 65 year olds.
Of course, the real tragedy is that the demands made on our lifestyles could have been avoided with better public health measures and pandemic response. Japan never needed a national lockdown because they were better at doing more targeted stuff earlier.
Lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience but most of us found ways to accommodate it. Expecting less healthy people to die to avoid it is totally unreasonable, and a step towards a society where only those who practice a healthy lifestyle and are lucky enough not to be subject to ramdom illness are considered worthy of attention.
I agree that the lockdown was necessary to protect less healthy people and more importantly to flatten the curve on those affected so as to ensure the hospitals were not overwhelmed (or at least not overwhelmed more) and potentially society breaking down and it worked in the sense we didn't use the Nightingale hospitals.
However I wouldn't call it a mild inconvenience for some. For me it was fine. I have a big house and a big garden and my family came home (together with a partner) so we had the company of 5 of us and an outside life. BUT if you were single, sociable (partying, sporting, etc), living in a flat with no garden it must have been hell.
We do have to not blame lockdown for the effects of the pandemic itself, which was highly disruptive and economically disruptive independent of whether places locked down.
True, but neither should we ignore the fact that lockdown did itself have a severe cost that the government refused at the time to consider (and no government since has seemed the least bit interested in counting the cost either.
We're having a massive inquiry about COVID-19. The claim that "no government since has seemed the least bit interested in counting the cost" is clearly risible.
Yes, and it's deciding between "the government did the best it could" and "the government should have done more".
Yeah, fair comment.
Actually the government was shit. Out of its depth. Beyond its competence. And had been for a decade.
The Conservative administration by small state ideological choice reduced health planning capability below a rational minimum.
Bro, American “foreign interference” is the only reason you’re not speaking German or Russian rn lmao
And why, if Musk and Trump have their way, parts of Eastern Europe might end up speaking Russian.
Musk really is an utter scumbag.
To be pedantic, Eastern Europe was long under the rule of Moscow, but they kept speaking Polish, German, Hungarian, Romanian etc. Russian rule does not necessarily mean everyone has to speak Russian. (Yes, within the Soviet Union, there was a policy of Russification.)
Russification is exactly my point. Putin sees anyone who speaks Russian as Russian, so the more they spread the language, the more their malign, poisonous influence spreads.
I lived alone at the time of lockdown. Looking back I do think it was challenging and definitely strained me. It made work all-encompassing as a distraction, and I certainly found myself eating/drinking more and being more sedentary.
I agree with others on here that while the first lockdown was a challenge and I don’t look back on it with any joy, I felt more comfortable with it. The subsequent ones, tier system etc I found incredibly depressing and they really affected my mood, after having started to come out of lockdown and see everyone again to be plunged back into it (it felt) again and again was grim (as was following the news media who seemed to be screaming for it every single week).
I have no desire to go through it again.
No-one wants another lockdown. So, how do we avoid getting into that sort of situation again? A key problem in the UK is that the Conservatives transferred public health to local councils and then local council funding was slashed under austerity. We need much better funding for local public health teams, and pandemic preparedness more generally. We need healthcare surge capacity. We made huge breakthroughs with vaccine development during COVID-19. We need to build on that success and ensure we maintain good vaccine development and production facilities in the UK. We also need to encourage vaccinations and counter vaccine misinformation. We need to be more supportive of mask usage.
Globally, we need to do more to discourage wet markets and bushmeat. We need to improve surveillance systems. One way of doing that is more foreign aid to improve health services in central Africa, from where HIV, Zika, ebola and mpox have come.
The pandemic was the biggest event, easily. It established state control over every aspect of life for months on end and had wide public support. Dissenters were condemned and overall it was a period of great shame both for the government and for the public who didn't do enough to rebel against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I hope if something like this ever happens again people will ignore lockdowns completely and tell the government to go as stick their vaccine mandates up their arse.
It is troubling to me how easily we acquiesced to absolutely unthinkable terms of living for something that was never particularly deadly. People said that similar measures had been used previously, sure but those pandemics had a significantly higher death rate and measures were justified. COVID had a less than 0.1% death rate for healthy adults. The demands made in our lifestyles wasn't worth it.
But lots of people aren’t healthy adults. What’s the death rate for your average PB poster? The death rate is about 0.4% for 55 year olds. I think the average PBer is older. It was 1.4% for 65 year olds.
Of course, the real tragedy is that the demands made on our lifestyles could have been avoided with better public health measures and pandemic response. Japan never needed a national lockdown because they were better at doing more targeted stuff earlier.
Lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience but most of us found ways to accommodate it. Expecting less healthy people to die to avoid it is totally unreasonable, and a step towards a society where only those who practice a healthy lifestyle and are lucky enough not to be subject to ramdom illness are considered worthy of attention.
Only a childless wealthy person living in a nice place in provincial England would say such a stupid, crass, vulgar, tone-deaf and utterly insensitive thing like “lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience”
You total fricking idiot
I was very lucky to have moved from Zone 3 London to the coast a few months before the panic. Still a flat with no garden, but plenty more pleasant places to go for a walk.
Central London was utterly dystopian during lockdown 3. Not helped by the fact that the winter of 20-21 was particularly bitter, long and grey. Unlike the amazing sunshine of lockdown 1
Just thinking about it makes me shudder with the memory. Awful
Lockdown 1 was surreal. Beautiful weather, everyone pulling together to do this thing, no vaccine and no masks mandate.
By the time we got to lockdown 3 I was living in one of the Covid hotspots, the local hospitals literally drowning in seriously ill patients. Weather was awful, local pox rate was awful, like a geiger counter clicking away out the window.
There's this wonderful revisionist history where all the subsequent lockdowns were pointless. And yet at the time we had Covid tearing its way through not sufficiently jabbed people and killing them in sufficient numbers to put the health service on the brink of collapse...
I’ve no doubt the NHS came under strain, I don’t dispute @Foxy’s account on that score - he was there. And yet, the Nightingale hospitals - they never got used. And the strain the NHS suffered must be measured against the long term damage lockdowns have done, to minds, lives, economies
Perhaps it is too complex a question for anyone to solve. But my sense is that the 2nd and 3rd lockdowns were a terrible if understandable error, and we should have found a better way to shield the vulnerable
The nightingale hospitals - who did they envision would be staffing them?
It's a few years behind us now, but let's be honest about the alternative choice we had - let it run riot and kill an awful lot of people who survived it. People are pack animals when it comes down to it. The alternative choice purports that we would have been able to persuade people to keep going to work as people dropped dead around them. Which we all know is cobblers.
Anyway, its only relevant with regards to how we could choose to respond to the next one. The joy of our linear corporeal existence is that we don't get to go back and change our minds.
“The third pandemic lockdown in the UK began on January 6, 2021, and lasted until significant restrictions were eased on April 12, 2021, meaning it spanned approximately three months.
Here’s a timeline breakdown:
1. January 6, 2021: England entered its third lockdown due to a surge in COVID-19 cases, driven by the Alpha variant. Schools were closed, and people were required to stay at home except for essential reasons.
2. March 8, 2021: Schools reopened, and some restrictions began to ease as part of the government’s staged “roadmap out of lockdown.”
3. April 12, 2021: Non-essential retail, outdoor hospitality, and personal care services (like hairdressers) reopened. This marked the end of the most severe lockdown restrictions.
4. June 21, 2021: Remaining restrictions were scheduled to end, but this was delayed to July 19, 2021, due to concerns about the Delta variant.”
So in some form it went on for over SIX months. And the most severe forms (stay in your homes, no social gatherings, no pubs no nothing) went on for over three months
In some regions it went on WAY longer than that. Much of Lancashire (to give one example) had people locked down though all the back end of 2020 as well.
It was grim. However the people who took the biggest hit from the pandemic were those who died or nearly died from Covid. Without the lockdowns there would have been a lot more of them.
Bro, American “foreign interference” is the only reason you’re not speaking German or Russian rn lmao
And why, if Musk and Trump have their way, parts of Eastern Europe might end up speaking Russian.
Musk really is an utter scumbag.
To be pedantic, Eastern Europe was long under the rule of Moscow, but they kept speaking Polish, German, Hungarian, Romanian etc. Russian rule does not necessarily mean everyone has to speak Russian. (Yes, within the Soviet Union, there was a policy of Russification.)
If Russia were the hegemon across Europe then the working language of the equivalent of the European Commission would be Russian and not English.
I lived alone at the time of lockdown. Looking back I do think it was challenging and definitely strained me. It made work all-encompassing as a distraction, and I certainly found myself eating/drinking more and being more sedentary.
I agree with others on here that while the first lockdown was a challenge and I don’t look back on it with any joy, I felt more comfortable with it. The subsequent ones, tier system etc I found incredibly depressing and they really affected my mood, after having started to come out of lockdown and see everyone again to be plunged back into it (it felt) again and again was grim (as was following the news media who seemed to be screaming for it every single week).
I have no desire to go through it again.
No-one wants another lockdown. So, how do we avoid getting into that sort of situation again? A key problem in the UK is that the Conservatives transferred public health to local councils and then local council funding was slashed under austerity. We need much better funding for local public health teams, and pandemic preparedness more generally. We need healthcare surge capacity. We made huge breakthroughs with vaccine development during COVID-19. We need to build on that success and ensure we maintain good vaccine development and production facilities in the UK. We also need to encourage vaccinations and counter vaccine misinformation. We need to be more supportive of mask usage.
Globally, we need to do more to discourage wet markets and bushmeat. We need to improve surveillance systems. One way of doing that is more foreign aid to improve health services in central Africa, from where HIV, Zika, ebola and mpox have come.
Yes, those bloody wet markets. Gotta clamp down on those
Virologists manufacturing brand new and horribly dangerous viruses for no good reason in hideously unsafe conditions? All good. Keep at it. Aim for a lethality rate of 59% next time
Can anyone tell me off teh top of their how the various main UK political parties are organised.
Unincorporated Associations, Co-operatives, Companies Limited by Guarantee etc?
I can go and find it, but does anyone know already?
(Clearly we know that RefUK are a Limited Compavy.)
The other political parties are unincorporated organisations which register with the electoral commission under section 22 of the PPERA.
I think Cicero is correct. Repeated questions to Copilot answered with Reform is a limited company, the others (Lab, Con, LD, SNP, Plaid etc) are unincorporated associations.
An unincorporated association operates based on its own rules and constitution rather than being governed by company law. It is a bunch of people and associations organised by agreed rules that it sets down in its constitution. It is not a legal entity separate from its members
Reform UK Party Limited (formerly the Brexit Party Limited) is a limited company (not a PLC: its shares aren't traded). Unlike unincorporated associations it can legally take a profit and it does not have to elect its leader. It currently has three officers (Company Secretary is Mehrtash A'Zami, Company Directors are Farage and Tice).
Reform intends (hmmm) to change its stucture, I think to a company limited by guarantee.
“The third pandemic lockdown in the UK began on January 6, 2021, and lasted until significant restrictions were eased on April 12, 2021, meaning it spanned approximately three months.
Here’s a timeline breakdown:
1. January 6, 2021: England entered its third lockdown due to a surge in COVID-19 cases, driven by the Alpha variant. Schools were closed, and people were required to stay at home except for essential reasons.
2. March 8, 2021: Schools reopened, and some restrictions began to ease as part of the government’s staged “roadmap out of lockdown.”
3. April 12, 2021: Non-essential retail, outdoor hospitality, and personal care services (like hairdressers) reopened. This marked the end of the most severe lockdown restrictions.
4. June 21, 2021: Remaining restrictions were scheduled to end, but this was delayed to July 19, 2021, due to concerns about the Delta variant.”
So in some form it went on for over SIX months. And the most severe forms (stay in your homes, no social gatherings, no pubs no nothing) went on for over three months
In some regions it went on WAY longer than that. Much of Lancashire (to give one example) had people locked down though all the back end of 2020 as well.
It was grim. However the people who took the biggest hit from the pandemic were those who died or nearly died from Covid. Without the lockdowns there would have been a lot more of them.
And yet I know people who nearly died of Covid who think the lockdowns were catastrophic
“The third pandemic lockdown in the UK began on January 6, 2021, and lasted until significant restrictions were eased on April 12, 2021, meaning it spanned approximately three months.
Here’s a timeline breakdown:
1. January 6, 2021: England entered its third lockdown due to a surge in COVID-19 cases, driven by the Alpha variant. Schools were closed, and people were required to stay at home except for essential reasons.
2. March 8, 2021: Schools reopened, and some restrictions began to ease as part of the government’s staged “roadmap out of lockdown.”
3. April 12, 2021: Non-essential retail, outdoor hospitality, and personal care services (like hairdressers) reopened. This marked the end of the most severe lockdown restrictions.
4. June 21, 2021: Remaining restrictions were scheduled to end, but this was delayed to July 19, 2021, due to concerns about the Delta variant.”
So in some form it went on for over SIX months. And the most severe forms (stay in your homes, no social gatherings, no pubs no nothing) went on for over three months
It had started in mid December for parts of southern England with the restrictions steadily being moved northwards.
I remember still swimming on 5th January 2021.
Unfortunately there were too many people happy to be on furlough or working from home and the government too willing to pander to them.
Interesting. I thought I was misremembering because my recollection is lockdown 3 began in December not January. So what you say explains the discrepancy
Also means that for me lockdown 3 went on - in its most brutal form - for around four months. No wonder I was suicidally deranged by the end
I didn't mind lockdown 3.
Vaccination allowed a steadily brightening prospect as did the usual steadily lengthening days.
And as I mentioned I was affected by the restrictions a few weeks later than much of the country.
Not to mention that January and February are 'stay inside' months generally.
I do think that going to work helped me as it gave a purpose and social interaction with other people.
It was lockdown 2 that aggravated me - it felt like all the hard work in lockdown 1 had been wasted because the government had pandered to people who insisted on having their week in Benidorm.
Many people were living in “modern” flats. Where as a policy between government and the house builders, square footage has been massively reduced. Density is all.
At works we have people who can’t WFH, because in their 1 bed flat, their other half is WFH. And trying to live all day in the same small space drives them crazy. Drives them crazy…..
These flats were pitched thus - get up in morning, cereal, got to work. Lunch and diner are out, because Real People don’t cook. Party until late. Come home, collapse.
So no space, kitchen inadequate to the point of danger (stoves too close to other stuff).
It will be very interesting to see what investment comes from the very high level delegation going to China In January.
Phillip Hammond has been very bullish about embracing the opportunity whilst being a step ahead in terms of the risk.
He makes one very valid point that you can have very frank discussions in private but the Chinese hate leaks.
A good lesson for this Labour Government who MSM hate, that they stop taking the usual Press Corps on any significant overseas trips. If they are going to leak and lie and just ask irrelevant questions, treat them like the mushrooms they are... Keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit.
Hammond believes big scope to get Chinese Electric Vehicles built in UK, similar to Japanese in the past, of course if they were Chinese brands and not Tesla, so much the better.
Better still if Rachel could return with a 200m donation from the Chinese Communist Party for Labour.
Don't fuck with us Musk!
Labour turning itself into the local branch of the Communist Party of China would be suboptimal for this country.
It would be far less suboptimal than having Musk and Trump dictating to us.
Far less.
While I despise Trump with every fibre of my being, I have to agree with @Sean_F and @MaxPB that Xi is a whole lot worse. Trump is a violent and unstable criminal and a clear cut risk to our security, but hasn't the intellect or the patience to be controlling in the way Xi is or the intention of being a mass murderer. That's partly why I think Vance, De Santis and Ramaswamy are actually in many ways more dangerous than he is.
I am not so sure about Musk. I think he has all the attributes of Xi - the greed, ruthlessness, erratic embrace of conspiracy theories, utter narcissism, the hatred of minorities and above all the same control freakery - but fortunately for various reasons is never likely to get the same level of power, even though as it is he's got far too much.
It is inevitable that China will replace the US as the global superpower in the next decade or two. Just compare economic size, growth rates and long term strategic intent.
A stable world is in China's interests in order to support its international trade and political expansion. So it will become the world's policeman. China is already reining in Putin. The last thing China wants is WWW3.
Fast forward twenty years and the UK may value its "special relationship" with China more than with the US.
China has no interest in sending troops abroad to get involved in foreign wars far from the homeland, it will provide support to nations economically to align with its interests but that is it.
So the US will still likely lead on foreign global intervention longer term, even with phases of isolationism as under Trump
The pandemic was the biggest event, easily. It established state control over every aspect of life for months on end and had wide public support. Dissenters were condemned and overall it was a period of great shame both for the government and for the public who didn't do enough to rebel against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I hope if something like this ever happens again people will ignore lockdowns completely and tell the government to go as stick their vaccine mandates up their arse.
It is troubling to me how easily we acquiesced to absolutely unthinkable terms of living for something that was never particularly deadly. People said that similar measures had been used previously, sure but those pandemics had a significantly higher death rate and measures were justified. COVID had a less than 0.1% death rate for healthy adults. The demands made in our lifestyles wasn't worth it.
But lots of people aren’t healthy adults. What’s the death rate for your average PB poster? The death rate is about 0.4% for 55 year olds. I think the average PBer is older. It was 1.4% for 65 year olds.
Of course, the real tragedy is that the demands made on our lifestyles could have been avoided with better public health measures and pandemic response. Japan never needed a national lockdown because they were better at doing more targeted stuff earlier.
Lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience but most of us found ways to accommodate it. Expecting less healthy people to die to avoid it is totally unreasonable, and a step towards a society where only those who practice a healthy lifestyle and are lucky enough not to be subject to ramdom illness are considered worthy of attention.
Only a childless wealthy person living in a nice place in provincial England would say such a stupid, crass, vulgar, tone-deaf and utterly insensitive thing like “lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience”
You total fricking idiot
I was very lucky to have moved from Zone 3 London to the coast a few months before the panic. Still a flat with no garden, but plenty more pleasant places to go for a walk.
Central London was utterly dystopian during lockdown 3. Not helped by the fact that the winter of 20-21 was particularly bitter, long and grey. Unlike the amazing sunshine of lockdown 1
Just thinking about it makes me shudder with the memory. Awful
Lockdown 1 was surreal. Beautiful weather, everyone pulling together to do this thing, no vaccine and no masks mandate.
By the time we got to lockdown 3 I was living in one of the Covid hotspots, the local hospitals literally drowning in seriously ill patients. Weather was awful, local pox rate was awful, like a geiger counter clicking away out the window.
There's this wonderful revisionist history where all the subsequent lockdowns were pointless. And yet at the time we had Covid tearing its way through not sufficiently jabbed people and killing them in sufficient numbers to put the health service on the brink of collapse...
I’ve no doubt the NHS came under strain, I don’t dispute @Foxy’s account on that score - he was there. And yet, the Nightingale hospitals - they never got used. And the strain the NHS suffered must be measured against the long term damage lockdowns have done, to minds, lives, economies
Perhaps it is too complex a question for anyone to solve. But my sense is that the 2nd and 3rd lockdowns were a terrible if understandable error, and we should have found a better way to shield the vulnerable
The nightingale hospitals - who did they envision would be staffing them?
It's a few years behind us now, but let's be honest about the alternative choice we had - let it run riot and kill an awful lot of people who survived it. People are pack animals when it comes down to it. The alternative choice purports that we would have been able to persuade people to keep going to work as people dropped dead around them. Which we all know is cobblers.
Anyway, its only relevant with regards to how we could choose to respond to the next one. The joy of our linear corporeal existence is that we don't get to go back and change our minds.
But other countries did take very different approaches. And some countries with much less severe lockdowns did no worse than us
It’s a thorny question, and not one our inquiry had really addressed - unless I’ve missed it
As said upthread, we need a meta-analysis of all the Covid responses around the world, then we need to ask DeepMind which was best
The pandemic was the biggest event, easily. It established state control over every aspect of life for months on end and had wide public support. Dissenters were condemned and overall it was a period of great shame both for the government and for the public who didn't do enough to rebel against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I hope if something like this ever happens again people will ignore lockdowns completely and tell the government to go as stick their vaccine mandates up their arse.
It is troubling to me how easily we acquiesced to absolutely unthinkable terms of living for something that was never particularly deadly. People said that similar measures had been used previously, sure but those pandemics had a significantly higher death rate and measures were justified. COVID had a less than 0.1% death rate for healthy adults. The demands made in our lifestyles wasn't worth it.
But lots of people aren’t healthy adults. What’s the death rate for your average PB poster? The death rate is about 0.4% for 55 year olds. I think the average PBer is older. It was 1.4% for 65 year olds.
Of course, the real tragedy is that the demands made on our lifestyles could have been avoided with better public health measures and pandemic response. Japan never needed a national lockdown because they were better at doing more targeted stuff earlier.
Lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience but most of us found ways to accommodate it. Expecting less healthy people to die to avoid it is totally unreasonable, and a step towards a society where only those who practice a healthy lifestyle and are lucky enough not to be subject to ramdom illness are considered worthy of attention.
Only a childless wealthy person living in a nice place in provincial England would say such a stupid, crass, vulgar, tone-deaf and utterly insensitive thing like “lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience”
You total fricking idiot
I was very lucky to have moved from Zone 3 London to the coast a few months before the panic. Still a flat with no garden, but plenty more pleasant places to go for a walk.
Central London was utterly dystopian during lockdown 3. Not helped by the fact that the winter of 20-21 was particularly bitter, long and grey. Unlike the amazing sunshine of lockdown 1
Just thinking about it makes me shudder with the memory. Awful
Lockdown 1 was surreal. Beautiful weather, everyone pulling together to do this thing, no vaccine and no masks mandate.
By the time we got to lockdown 3 I was living in one of the Covid hotspots, the local hospitals literally drowning in seriously ill patients. Weather was awful, local pox rate was awful, like a geiger counter clicking away out the window.
There's this wonderful revisionist history where all the subsequent lockdowns were pointless. And yet at the time we had Covid tearing its way through not sufficiently jabbed people and killing them in sufficient numbers to put the health service on the brink of collapse...
I’ve no doubt the NHS came under strain, I don’t dispute @Foxy’s account on that score - he was there. And yet, the Nightingale hospitals - they never got used. And the strain the NHS suffered must be measured against the long term damage lockdowns have done, to minds, lives, economies
Perhaps it is too complex a question for anyone to solve. But my sense is that the 2nd and 3rd lockdowns were a terrible if understandable error, and we should have found a better way to shield the vulnerable
The nightingale hospitals - who did they envision would be staffing them?
It's a few years behind us now, but let's be honest about the alternative choice we had - let it run riot and kill an awful lot of people who survived it. People are pack animals when it comes down to it. The alternative choice purports that we would have been able to persuade people to keep going to work as people dropped dead around them. Which we all know is cobblers.
Anyway, its only relevant with regards to how we could choose to respond to the next one. The joy of our linear corporeal existence is that we don't get to go back and change our minds.
The Nightingale Hospitals were to prevent people dying in hallways and tents in the parks. See Italy and bits of Spain…
Instead they would die in a moderately decent bed, indoors. They were to be staffed by anyone they could find with some first aid skills, backed by a percentage of doctors and nurses.
They were the lifeboats. Most people don’t realise that the lifeboats only save a fraction, and the horror stories of conditions in the lifeboats…. Better than drowning alone, sure.
“The third pandemic lockdown in the UK began on January 6, 2021, and lasted until significant restrictions were eased on April 12, 2021, meaning it spanned approximately three months.
Here’s a timeline breakdown:
1. January 6, 2021: England entered its third lockdown due to a surge in COVID-19 cases, driven by the Alpha variant. Schools were closed, and people were required to stay at home except for essential reasons.
2. March 8, 2021: Schools reopened, and some restrictions began to ease as part of the government’s staged “roadmap out of lockdown.”
3. April 12, 2021: Non-essential retail, outdoor hospitality, and personal care services (like hairdressers) reopened. This marked the end of the most severe lockdown restrictions.
4. June 21, 2021: Remaining restrictions were scheduled to end, but this was delayed to July 19, 2021, due to concerns about the Delta variant.”
So in some form it went on for over SIX months. And the most severe forms (stay in your homes, no social gatherings, no pubs no nothing) went on for over three months
It had started in mid December for parts of southern England with the restrictions steadily being moved northwards.
I remember still swimming on 5th January 2021.
Unfortunately there were too many people happy to be on furlough or working from home and the government too willing to pander to them.
Interesting. I thought I was misremembering because my recollection is lockdown 3 began in December not January. So what you say explains the discrepancy
Also means that for me lockdown 3 went on - in its most brutal form - for around four months. No wonder I was suicidally deranged by the end
I didn't mind lockdown 3.
Vaccination allowed a steadily brightening prospect as did the usual steadily lengthening days.
And as I mentioned I was affected by the restrictions a few weeks later than much of the country.
Not to mention that January and February are 'stay inside' months generally.
I do think that going to work helped me as it gave a purpose and social interaction with other people.
It was lockdown 2 that aggravated me - it felt like all the hard work in lockdown 1 had been wasted because the government had pandered to people who insisted on having their week in Benidorm.
Indeed
Lockdown was the only time I’ve ever felt envious of people with “proper jobs” that allowed them to go out daily and interact and have a purpose - like you and @foxy
I was stuck indoors in my own mind going mad. People who didn’t experience that maybe cannot grasp the horror
The pandemic was the biggest event, easily. It established state control over every aspect of life for months on end and had wide public support. Dissenters were condemned and overall it was a period of great shame both for the government and for the public who didn't do enough to rebel against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I hope if something like this ever happens again people will ignore lockdowns completely and tell the government to go as stick their vaccine mandates up their arse.
It is troubling to me how easily we acquiesced to absolutely unthinkable terms of living for something that was never particularly deadly. People said that similar measures had been used previously, sure but those pandemics had a significantly higher death rate and measures were justified. COVID had a less than 0.1% death rate for healthy adults. The demands made in our lifestyles wasn't worth it.
But lots of people aren’t healthy adults. What’s the death rate for your average PB poster? The death rate is about 0.4% for 55 year olds. I think the average PBer is older. It was 1.4% for 65 year olds.
Of course, the real tragedy is that the demands made on our lifestyles could have been avoided with better public health measures and pandemic response. Japan never needed a national lockdown because they were better at doing more targeted stuff earlier.
Lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience but most of us found ways to accommodate it. Expecting less healthy people to die to avoid it is totally unreasonable, and a step towards a society where only those who practice a healthy lifestyle and are lucky enough not to be subject to ramdom illness are considered worthy of attention.
Only a childless wealthy person living in a nice place in provincial England would say such a stupid, crass, vulgar, tone-deaf and utterly insensitive thing like “lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience”
You total fricking idiot
I was very lucky to have moved from Zone 3 London to the coast a few months before the panic. Still a flat with no garden, but plenty more pleasant places to go for a walk.
Central London was utterly dystopian during lockdown 3. Not helped by the fact that the winter of 20-21 was particularly bitter, long and grey. Unlike the amazing sunshine of lockdown 1
Just thinking about it makes me shudder with the memory. Awful
Lockdown 1 was surreal. Beautiful weather, everyone pulling together to do this thing, no vaccine and no masks mandate.
By the time we got to lockdown 3 I was living in one of the Covid hotspots, the local hospitals literally drowning in seriously ill patients. Weather was awful, local pox rate was awful, like a geiger counter clicking away out the window.
There's this wonderful revisionist history where all the subsequent lockdowns were pointless. And yet at the time we had Covid tearing its way through not sufficiently jabbed people and killing them in sufficient numbers to put the health service on the brink of collapse...
I’ve no doubt the NHS came under strain, I don’t dispute @Foxy’s account on that score - he was there. And yet, the Nightingale hospitals - they never got used. And the strain the NHS suffered must be measured against the long term damage lockdowns have done, to minds, lives, economies
Perhaps it is too complex a question for anyone to solve. But my sense is that the 2nd and 3rd lockdowns were a terrible if understandable error, and we should have found a better way to shield the vulnerable
The nightingale hospitals - who did they envision would be staffing them?
It's a few years behind us now, but let's be honest about the alternative choice we had - let it run riot and kill an awful lot of people who survived it. People are pack animals when it comes down to it. The alternative choice purports that we would have been able to persuade people to keep going to work as people dropped dead around them. Which we all know is cobblers.
Anyway, its only relevant with regards to how we could choose to respond to the next one. The joy of our linear corporeal existence is that we don't get to go back and change our minds.
But other countries did take very different approaches. And some countries with much less severe lockdowns did no worse than us
It’s a thorny question, and not one our inquiry had really addressed - unless I’ve missed it
As said upthread, we need a meta-analysis of all the Covid responses around the world, then we need to ask DeepMind which was best
People don't seem to understand that the nightingale hospitals were to isolate vast numbers of dying people, had things been only marginally worse than they actually were. Thats why they were basically to be staffed by the army. I don't know why we persist in the pretence that they were "hospitals" in the normal sense of the word, staffed by medical professionals.
My last bottle of Calon Segur 2006 to while away the afternoon. It feels like a very old fashioned sort of wine now, but it and I aren't going to seek the limelight through posts on the glam sites such as PB.
“The third pandemic lockdown in the UK began on January 6, 2021, and lasted until significant restrictions were eased on April 12, 2021, meaning it spanned approximately three months.
Here’s a timeline breakdown:
1. January 6, 2021: England entered its third lockdown due to a surge in COVID-19 cases, driven by the Alpha variant. Schools were closed, and people were required to stay at home except for essential reasons.
2. March 8, 2021: Schools reopened, and some restrictions began to ease as part of the government’s staged “roadmap out of lockdown.”
3. April 12, 2021: Non-essential retail, outdoor hospitality, and personal care services (like hairdressers) reopened. This marked the end of the most severe lockdown restrictions.
4. June 21, 2021: Remaining restrictions were scheduled to end, but this was delayed to July 19, 2021, due to concerns about the Delta variant.”
So in some form it went on for over SIX months. And the most severe forms (stay in your homes, no social gatherings, no pubs no nothing) went on for over three months
In some regions it went on WAY longer than that. Much of Lancashire (to give one example) had people locked down though all the back end of 2020 as well.
It was grim. However the people who took the biggest hit from the pandemic were those who died or nearly died from Covid. Without the lockdowns there would have been a lot more of them.
And yet I know people who nearly died of Covid who think the lockdowns were catastrophic
But the alternative was worse. That's how it is sometimes. Bad thing vs worse thing. I can think of several examples of this. Bet we all can.
The pandemic was the biggest event, easily. It established state control over every aspect of life for months on end and had wide public support. Dissenters were condemned and overall it was a period of great shame both for the government and for the public who didn't do enough to rebel against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I hope if something like this ever happens again people will ignore lockdowns completely and tell the government to go as stick their vaccine mandates up their arse.
It is troubling to me how easily we acquiesced to absolutely unthinkable terms of living for something that was never particularly deadly. People said that similar measures had been used previously, sure but those pandemics had a significantly higher death rate and measures were justified. COVID had a less than 0.1% death rate for healthy adults. The demands made in our lifestyles wasn't worth it.
But lots of people aren’t healthy adults. What’s the death rate for your average PB poster? The death rate is about 0.4% for 55 year olds. I think the average PBer is older. It was 1.4% for 65 year olds.
Of course, the real tragedy is that the demands made on our lifestyles could have been avoided with better public health measures and pandemic response. Japan never needed a national lockdown because they were better at doing more targeted stuff earlier.
Lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience but most of us found ways to accommodate it. Expecting less healthy people to die to avoid it is totally unreasonable, and a step towards a society where only those who practice a healthy lifestyle and are lucky enough not to be subject to ramdom illness are considered worthy of attention.
Only a childless wealthy person living in a nice place in provincial England would say such a stupid, crass, vulgar, tone-deaf and utterly insensitive thing like “lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience”
You total fricking idiot
I was very lucky to have moved from Zone 3 London to the coast a few months before the panic. Still a flat with no garden, but plenty more pleasant places to go for a walk.
Central London was utterly dystopian during lockdown 3. Not helped by the fact that the winter of 20-21 was particularly bitter, long and grey. Unlike the amazing sunshine of lockdown 1
Just thinking about it makes me shudder with the memory. Awful
Lockdown 1 was surreal. Beautiful weather, everyone pulling together to do this thing, no vaccine and no masks mandate.
By the time we got to lockdown 3 I was living in one of the Covid hotspots, the local hospitals literally drowning in seriously ill patients. Weather was awful, local pox rate was awful, like a geiger counter clicking away out the window.
There's this wonderful revisionist history where all the subsequent lockdowns were pointless. And yet at the time we had Covid tearing its way through not sufficiently jabbed people and killing them in sufficient numbers to put the health service on the brink of collapse...
I’ve no doubt the NHS came under strain, I don’t dispute @Foxy’s account on that score - he was there. And yet, the Nightingale hospitals - they never got used. And the strain the NHS suffered must be measured against the long term damage lockdowns have done, to minds, lives, economies
Perhaps it is too complex a question for anyone to solve. But my sense is that the 2nd and 3rd lockdowns were a terrible if understandable error, and we should have found a better way to shield the vulnerable
The nightingale hospitals - who did they envision would be staffing them?
It's a few years behind us now, but let's be honest about the alternative choice we had - let it run riot and kill an awful lot of people who survived it. People are pack animals when it comes down to it. The alternative choice purports that we would have been able to persuade people to keep going to work as people dropped dead around them. Which we all know is cobblers.
Anyway, its only relevant with regards to how we could choose to respond to the next one. The joy of our linear corporeal existence is that we don't get to go back and change our minds.
But other countries did take very different approaches. And some countries with much less severe lockdowns did no worse than us
It’s a thorny question, and not one our inquiry had really addressed - unless I’ve missed it
As said upthread, we need a meta-analysis of all the Covid responses around the world, then we need to ask DeepMind which was best
People don't seem to understand that the nightingale hospitals were to isolate vast numbers of dying people, had things been only marginally worse than they actually were. Thats why they were basically to be staffed by the army. I don't know why we persist in the pretence that they were "hospitals" in the normal sense of the word, staffed by medical professionals.
I forget so many details about Covid. And I am sure that’s because my mind WANTS to forget them. It’s a blur of pain, horror and sadness that I am not inclined to revisit
I sometimes think of this very acute article from early in the Pando
“The third pandemic lockdown in the UK began on January 6, 2021, and lasted until significant restrictions were eased on April 12, 2021, meaning it spanned approximately three months.
Here’s a timeline breakdown:
1. January 6, 2021: England entered its third lockdown due to a surge in COVID-19 cases, driven by the Alpha variant. Schools were closed, and people were required to stay at home except for essential reasons.
2. March 8, 2021: Schools reopened, and some restrictions began to ease as part of the government’s staged “roadmap out of lockdown.”
3. April 12, 2021: Non-essential retail, outdoor hospitality, and personal care services (like hairdressers) reopened. This marked the end of the most severe lockdown restrictions.
4. June 21, 2021: Remaining restrictions were scheduled to end, but this was delayed to July 19, 2021, due to concerns about the Delta variant.”
So in some form it went on for over SIX months. And the most severe forms (stay in your homes, no social gatherings, no pubs no nothing) went on for over three months
It had started in mid December for parts of southern England with the restrictions steadily being moved northwards.
I remember still swimming on 5th January 2021.
Unfortunately there were too many people happy to be on furlough or working from home and the government too willing to pander to them.
Interesting. I thought I was misremembering because my recollection is lockdown 3 began in December not January. So what you say explains the discrepancy
Also means that for me lockdown 3 went on - in its most brutal form - for around four months. No wonder I was suicidally deranged by the end
I didn't mind lockdown 3.
Vaccination allowed a steadily brightening prospect as did the usual steadily lengthening days.
And as I mentioned I was affected by the restrictions a few weeks later than much of the country.
Not to mention that January and February are 'stay inside' months generally.
I do think that going to work helped me as it gave a purpose and social interaction with other people.
It was lockdown 2 that aggravated me - it felt like all the hard work in lockdown 1 had been wasted because the government had pandered to people who insisted on having their week in Benidorm.
There is a certain irony here. Everyone keeps talking about 'Lockdown Two' and 'Lockdown Three.' But as far as I could ever see, there were only ever two lockdowns - the ones you refer to as 'Lockdown One' and 'Lockdown Three.'
Schools were kept open as normal, as far as possible, all the way through what you call 'Lockdown Two.'
This was a stupid mistake as it meant that we genuinely were wasting effort elsewhere and making things worse. Rather, we should have tried to ameliorate the situation with staggered classes, possibly by year group, to increase distancing as much as possible and reduce transmission. It would also have mitigated the severe staffing shortages we had. Even better, we could have explored those who had to stay at home for health or contact reasons doing the online learning while those of us who could go in - and even in Lockdown 3 I was in school most weeks (as somebody who was young, fit and lived alone and therefore at minimal risk I volunteered for extra shifts) kept things going for those who could be in school.
Instead by trying to keep things going under the confused, and frequently changed guidance from the DfE and an adamant requirement that all schools remained open for all children at all times, despite the disruption due to infections among children and staff, we ended up making matters a hundred times worse.
It was a total failure of understanding, leadership and imagination for which those responsible should have paid with their careers on the grounds they had demonstrated manifest unfitness for any sort of complex role.
(I might add, when teachers found most of the key politicians and civil servants were drunk while at work in the pandemic we felt that it explained many things.)
The pandemic was the biggest event, easily. It established state control over every aspect of life for months on end and had wide public support. Dissenters were condemned and overall it was a period of great shame both for the government and for the public who didn't do enough to rebel against lockdowns and vaccine mandates. I hope if something like this ever happens again people will ignore lockdowns completely and tell the government to go as stick their vaccine mandates up their arse.
It is troubling to me how easily we acquiesced to absolutely unthinkable terms of living for something that was never particularly deadly. People said that similar measures had been used previously, sure but those pandemics had a significantly higher death rate and measures were justified. COVID had a less than 0.1% death rate for healthy adults. The demands made in our lifestyles wasn't worth it.
But lots of people aren’t healthy adults. What’s the death rate for your average PB poster? The death rate is about 0.4% for 55 year olds. I think the average PBer is older. It was 1.4% for 65 year olds.
Of course, the real tragedy is that the demands made on our lifestyles could have been avoided with better public health measures and pandemic response. Japan never needed a national lockdown because they were better at doing more targeted stuff earlier.
Lockdown was indeed a moderate inconvenience but most of us found ways to accommodate it. Expecting less healthy people to die to avoid it is totally unreasonable, and a step towards a society where only those who practice a healthy lifestyle and are lucky enough not to be subject to ramdom illness are considered worthy of attention.
I agree that the lockdown was necessary to protect less healthy people and more importantly to flatten the curve on those affected so as to ensure the hospitals were not overwhelmed (or at least not overwhelmed more) and potentially society breaking down and it worked in the sense we didn't use the Nightingale hospitals.
However I wouldn't call it a mild inconvenience for some. For me it was fine. I have a big house and a big garden and my family came home (together with a partner) so we had the company of 5 of us and an outside life. BUT if you were single, sociable (partying, sporting, etc), living in a flat with no garden it must have been hell.
We do have to not blame lockdown for the effects of the pandemic itself, which was highly disruptive and economically disruptive independent of whether places locked down.
True, but neither should we ignore the fact that lockdown did itself have a severe cost that the government refused at the time to consider (and no government since has seemed the least bit interested in counting the cost either.
We're having a massive inquiry about COVID-19. The claim that "no government since has seemed the least bit interested in counting the cost" is clearly risible.
Yes, and it's deciding between "the government did the best it could" and "the government should have done more".
I'd be more interested in seeing international comparisons of what actually happened than endless speculation about what the UK did and might have done differently.
The Inquiry is focused on the UK response. If you don't like the terms of the Inquiry, blame Johnson, who set it up.
There is a very extensive academic literature doing international comparisons. most of it freely available to read, e.g.
https://www.scielo.br/j/rap/a/rZsMC9BXJMBk5L4zQBMBLYh/?lang=en is the first article in a special issue that pulled together case studies from Australia, Brazil, US, Colombia, China, Estonia, El Salvador, Ghana, Italy, Switzerland, Mexico, the Netherlands and the UK.
Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jreITHdm6NY
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1870720671254565361
Bro, American “foreign interference” is the only reason you’re not speaking German or Russian rn lmao
You total fricking idiot
I still think the tossers were right.
However I wouldn't call it a mild inconvenience for some. For me it was fine. I have a big house and a big garden and my family came home (together with a partner) so we had the company of 5 of us and an outside life. BUT if you were single, sociable (partying, sporting, etc), living in a flat with no garden it must have been hell.
The Tories have already been consumed by Farage. Labour fear they are next. The challenge is that Farage is a better conservative than today's remaining Tories, and isn't the FASCIST that so many Labour types instinctively screech at him.
It was about financial control, not quality.
I presume if it hadn’t been for the QT appearance that instead of the BNP only having its best ever result in the GE that followed 7 months later, Griffins would have gained a few MPs?
It’s mystifying to me but it seems some folk would prefer to believe in the disinfectant of sunlight rather than the more prosaic reason of the rise of the nicotine stained bullfrog Farage to soak up the enraged gammon vote.
Musk really is an utter scumbag.
It was public, evident, exposure of who and what they were. Not just QT, but that was a big part of it.
“A moderate inconvenience”
Jesus fucking Christ. I’ve come to regard NPXMP as a pleasant old geezer - and I’m glad he’s found a late life love. But that is one of the stupidest most tin-eared remarks I’ve ever read on PB
If you are insinuating that Selzer’s polling was biased… well, I’m not surprised that you should repeat a MAGA conspiracy, but isn’t accusing a reputable pollster of fiddling the results a no-no under PB’s moderation policy?
Meanwhile, away from polling, Trump is also suing CBS over their Harris interview, and Simon & Schuster over the Woodward book. He lost a suit against CNN in 2023 over their reporting of him. No US President has come anywhere close to this hostile behaviour towards the speech of others.
Sat back and watched for 3 years, only joined in after the Japs attacked them
So bloody inefficient they couldn't fly in the dark.
Totally ignoring the sacrifes made across Europe by freedom fighters and Allies not forgetting the Red Army.
Must isn't fit to be the shit on their boots.
His DNA is White supremisist Afrikanner Nazi supporting stock.
He has bought his way into office in the US. All of the President Trump gags are only partially disconnected from reality.
I don't think Trump is in the pocket of Putin. He isn't demanding NATO members increase their defence spending because he thinks Putin should just walk over them. Biden et al have been finger wagging at Putin for a decade - you Naughty Man you. Has it been successful? Trump is trying something else.
Musk? He thinks he is unstoppable. He doesn't want to hand Romania over to Putin because he thinks Putin will have to fall into line behind Him like everyone else.
Its mad, but its not pro-Putin.
My name's Trevor
We need to compulsory purchase whole areas, flatten them, and start again.
Worth noting too that the most severe parts of lockdown were relatively brief. So my department organised a social hike and pub garden meal in the May of 2020, completely within the rules. Severe lockdown didn't restart until December 2020, and even then half of children were back in face to face education for one reason or another.
I enjoyed her mad commentary (and sometimes she was quite perceptive); I quite enjoy yours, and unlike @boulay my guess is you are not @Heathener (but if you are, well done on juggling two distinct voices)
And welcome, again
We are 8 million homes behind.
Trust me, the “most severe part of lockdown” was not “relatively brief”. It went from late December 2020 deep into 2021, several long hideous winter months. Easily the worst months of my life - and much worse for other people in even more dire circumstances
The inability of some PBers to put themselves in the shoes of others - to use theory of mind to conceive how others might feel - is quite telling. Speaks to the very high levels of autism in our commenters
They should have been from the day after the general election, of course, but they've got there sooner than I thought they might.
The mortality was 50%, and no one over 65 got admitted. We had 53 patients in an 18 bedded unit at one point. It was horrible. I would have much rather been at home watching Netflix.
On topic.
The IPCC report on climate change should have been the most influential event of the last 25 years.
Comedy has no boundaries.
Just thinking about it makes me shudder with the memory. Awful
We were jailed in our homes and virtually everything was shut for several long cold bleak suicide-inducing months
Maybe it felt shorter for you because you were allowed to go to work
This is our problem. Simon Cowell Syndrome means that nobody wants to graft. A whole generation or perhaps two have been brought up to think that their choices are university (thanks New Labour) or get famous on the Telly. Some idiots even think they can bypass the telly and get famous on TikTok or even YouTube.
We want to build 1.5m houses. But don't remotely have the workforce. We want to stop the forrin coming in and taking our jobs. But we don't want to do the jobs ourselves.
And yet Starmer hasn't yet waved the magic wand and fixed this. He's a wrong'un
Of course not all banks were bailed out, the US administration let Lehmans go bust for example in 2008 after Brown and Darling blocked an immediate rescue by Barclays without full due diligence first. The play Lehmans is well worth seeing and in its final weeks
I agree with others on here that while the first lockdown was a challenge and I don’t look back on it with any joy, I felt more comfortable with it. The subsequent ones, tier system etc I found incredibly depressing and they really affected my mood, after having started to come out of lockdown and see everyone again to be plunged back into it (it felt) again and again was grim (as was following the news media who seemed to be screaming for it every single week).
I have no desire to go through it again.
“The third pandemic lockdown in the UK began on January 6, 2021, and lasted until significant restrictions were eased on April 12, 2021, meaning it spanned approximately three months.
Here’s a timeline breakdown:
1. January 6, 2021: England entered its third lockdown due to a surge in COVID-19 cases, driven by the Alpha variant. Schools were closed, and people were required to stay at home except for essential reasons.
2. March 8, 2021: Schools reopened, and some restrictions began to ease as part of the government’s staged “roadmap out of lockdown.”
3. April 12, 2021: Non-essential retail, outdoor hospitality, and personal care services (like hairdressers) reopened. This marked the end of the most severe lockdown restrictions.
4. June 21, 2021: Remaining restrictions were scheduled to end, but this was delayed to July 19, 2021, due to concerns about the Delta variant.”
So in some form it went on for over SIX months. And
the most severe forms (stay in your homes, no social gatherings, no pubs no nothing) went on for over three months
We merely changed from "things are going well so we're entitled to live beyond our means" to "things are going badly so we're entitled to live beyond our means".
By the time we got to lockdown 3 I was living in one of the Covid hotspots, the local hospitals literally drowning in seriously ill patients. Weather was awful, local pox rate was awful, like a geiger counter clicking away out the window.
There's this wonderful revisionist history where all the subsequent lockdowns were pointless. And yet at the time we had Covid tearing its way through not sufficiently jabbed people and killing them in sufficient numbers to put the health service on the brink of collapse...
(Anecdata: last week someone in the building game told me that sparks and plumbing are especially scarce right now. That might explain why they are earning Christmas money on a Sunday.)
China is keeping the Russian war machine going to weaken Russia and test the resolve of the West. It has Putin on a leash with regards to nuclear.
I remember still swimming on 5th January 2021.
Unfortunately there were too many people happy to be on furlough or working from home and the government too willing to pander to them.
Perhaps it is too complex a question for anyone to solve. But my sense is that the 2nd and 3rd lockdowns were a terrible if understandable error, and we should have found a better way to shield the vulnerable
Is Tyson Fury refusing to recognise a result, entering politics or going senile ?
It’s been portrayed that *all* building workers are Furrin. Which puts people off.
It isn’t true, but that combined with a complete lack of decent training…
Easy to blame the firms on training. But they know that the government will just import more - so they will spend money on training and then their rivals will use pre skilled labour.
Genuinely though, we need a lot of people to do a lot of grafty unsexy jobs which are going to need to be make to look desirable and sexy.
Also means that for me lockdown 3 went on - in its most brutal form - for around four months. No wonder I was suicidally deranged by the end
Actually the government was shit. Out of its depth. Beyond its competence. And had been for a decade.
The Conservative administration by small state ideological choice reduced health planning capability below a rational minimum.
And we are still paying the price .
Globally, we need to do more to discourage wet markets and bushmeat. We need to improve surveillance systems. One way of doing that is more foreign aid to improve health services in central Africa, from where HIV, Zika, ebola and mpox have come.
It's a few years behind us now, but let's be honest about the alternative choice we had - let it run riot and kill an awful lot of people who survived it. People are pack animals when it comes down to it. The alternative choice purports that we would have been able to persuade people to keep going to work as people dropped dead around them. Which we all know is cobblers.
Anyway, its only relevant with regards to how we could choose to respond to the next one. The joy of our linear corporeal existence is that we don't get to go back and change our minds.
Virologists manufacturing brand new and horribly dangerous viruses for no good reason in hideously unsafe conditions? All good. Keep at it. Aim for a lethality rate of 59% next time
👍
An unincorporated association operates based on its own rules and constitution rather than being governed by company law. It is a bunch of people and associations organised by agreed rules that it sets down in its constitution. It is not a legal entity separate from its members
Reform UK Party Limited (formerly the Brexit Party Limited) is a limited company (not a PLC: its shares aren't traded). Unlike unincorporated associations it can legally take a profit and it does not have to elect its leader. It currently has three officers (Company Secretary is Mehrtash A'Zami, Company Directors are Farage and Tice).
Reform intends (hmmm) to change its stucture, I think to a company limited by guarantee.
https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/1981/2.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_UK#Funding_and_structure
94920 - Activities of political organisations
https://consoc.org.uk/how-to-constitute-a-political-party/
Vaccination allowed a steadily brightening prospect as did the usual steadily lengthening days.
And as I mentioned I was affected by the restrictions a few weeks later than much of the country.
Not to mention that January and February are 'stay inside' months generally.
I do think that going to work helped me as it gave a purpose and social interaction with other people.
It was lockdown 2 that aggravated me - it felt like all the hard work in lockdown 1 had been wasted because the government had pandered to people who insisted on having their week in Benidorm.
Many people were living in “modern” flats. Where as a policy between government and the house builders, square footage has been massively reduced. Density is all.
At works we have people who can’t WFH, because in their 1 bed flat, their other half is WFH. And trying to live all day in the same small space drives them crazy. Drives them crazy…..
These flats were pitched thus - get up in morning, cereal, got to work. Lunch and diner are out, because Real People don’t cook. Party until late. Come home, collapse.
So no space, kitchen inadequate to the point of danger (stoves too close to other stuff).
And then came COVID….
So the US will still likely lead on foreign global intervention longer term, even with phases of isolationism as under Trump
It’s a thorny question, and not one our inquiry had really addressed - unless I’ve missed it
As said upthread, we need a meta-analysis of all the Covid responses around the world, then we need to ask DeepMind which was best
Instead they would die in a moderately decent bed, indoors. They were to be staffed by anyone they could find with some first aid skills, backed by a percentage of doctors and nurses.
They were the lifeboats. Most people don’t realise that the lifeboats only save a fraction, and the horror stories of conditions in the lifeboats…. Better than drowning alone, sure.
Lockdown was the only time I’ve ever felt envious of people with “proper jobs” that allowed them to go out daily and interact and have a purpose - like you and @foxy
I was stuck indoors in my own mind going mad. People who didn’t experience that maybe cannot grasp the horror
https://www.bild.de/politik/inland/kanzlerfrage-weidel-haengt-merz-ab-6765768afd0152318d3e848f
I sometimes think of this very acute article from early in the Pando
Why we remember wars but forget plagues
https://unherd.com/2020/05/why-we-remember-wars-but-forget-plagues/
Schools were kept open as normal, as far as possible, all the way through what you call 'Lockdown Two.'
This was a stupid mistake as it meant that we genuinely were wasting effort elsewhere and making things worse. Rather, we should have tried to ameliorate the situation with staggered classes, possibly by year group, to increase distancing as much as possible and reduce transmission. It would also have mitigated the severe staffing shortages we had. Even better, we could have explored those who had to stay at home for health or contact reasons doing the online learning while those of us who could go in - and even in Lockdown 3 I was in school most weeks (as somebody who was young, fit and lived alone and therefore at minimal risk I volunteered for extra shifts) kept things going for those who could be in school.
Instead by trying to keep things going under the confused, and frequently changed guidance from the DfE and an adamant requirement that all schools remained open for all children at all times, despite the disruption due to infections among children and staff, we ended up making matters a hundred times worse.
It was a total failure of understanding, leadership and imagination for which those responsible should have paid with their careers on the grounds they had demonstrated manifest unfitness for any sort of complex role.
(I might add, when teachers found most of the key politicians and civil servants were drunk while at work in the pandemic we felt that it explained many things.)
There is a very extensive academic literature doing international comparisons. most of it freely available to read, e.g.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016885102100169X compares the UK, Ireland, Canada and the US
https://fmch.bmj.com/content/10/2/e001608 compares Australia, South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria
https://www.scielo.br/j/rap/a/rZsMC9BXJMBk5L4zQBMBLYh/?lang=en is the first article in a special issue that pulled together case studies from Australia, Brazil, US, Colombia, China, Estonia, El Salvador, Ghana, Italy, Switzerland, Mexico, the Netherlands and the UK.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/social-policy-and-society/article/social-policy-responses-to-covid19-in-the-global-south-evidence-from-36-countries/D52112203C5D0ECABC0245F5521761F5 covers 36 countries.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00219096221137655 is a political take on the US v S Korean response.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-east-asian-studies/article/exploring-east-asias-successful-earlystage-covid19-response-an-empirical-investigation/F9EC64B6F6EAC88B9B62177487469C84 does a regression over 111 countries.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0929664623003455 focuses on the Taiwanese response, a does https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-22219-1_8