[snip for length]Hence the argument that we can never stick a foreign national on a plane and throw them out of the country because, variously...
Meanwhile, the 99.9999% of the population that isn't holding a placard waving protest or a candlelit vigil outside the Heathrow deportation facility or the Home Office thinks "good riddance to bad rubbish."
I'm not sure it's worth engaging on this as our views are so far apart, but briefly:
* You don't have to be left-wing to recognise that it's an accident of fate that we're born in a generally pleasant, prosperous country, and to acknowledge that it's reasonable for people to want to be here * If they've largely grown up here, the default assumption should be that they should stay, even if they break the law. We don't expel people for committing offences as a rule, and there is no real difference to whether we were born here or came here aged 5. This is not the same as believing that the entire population of Zambia should move to Britain, or that an adult who arrived recently should be given the same consideration. * There is a tendency, actively encouraged by the Government and sections of the press, to lump everyone in a group together instead of treating them as individuals, so that someone who was talked into minor drug offences as a teenager is lumped with murderers and rapists. Treating people as individuals is fundamental to a decent outlook, including, if I may say so, a traditional Conservative outlook. It's the hardline Marxists who are accused of treating everyone as being defined by being part of a group.
I have no problem with people being deported in principle, but we also know that there is a history of deporting people to the West Indies who do have the right to remain here.
It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to require the government to act within the law when deporting people.
If the bloke in charge of the country can't even tell who spaffed 15 grand (1,827 hours of a minimum wage workers time) on him then I worry a bit about his eye for detail in, say, commissioning a big fuck off bridge.
If the only issue is that the PM thought he was getting a £15k expense paid for but it was done for considerably cheaper than that which is the issue now then I'd hope that is continued when it comes to infrastructure too.
Those reporting on these stories also have a bad habit of leaving things out which materially affect the decision - the ‘boy who got groomed by a gang’ often turns out to be a major player in one of the gangs, with a record as long as his arm and the police are desperate to get rid of him to show the gangs who’s in charge.
That's not the least bit surprising and both bits can be true. The cycle of abuse can be hard to break.
Incidentally, grooming is often exactly the right word in such gangs. There's often a very good reason (several, normally) why these men are so damaged.
The central point for me is whether the convict has any meaningful links left with the country to which he or she is potentially to be deported. If the answer is no, it seems unfair to both the convict and more importantly the recipient country that they should have to clear up a mess that was created in Britain.
If the bloke in charge of the country can't even tell who spaffed 15 grand (1,827 hours of a minimum wage workers time) on him then I worry a bit about his eye for detail in, say, commissioning a big fuck off bridge.
If the only issue is that the PM thought he was getting a £15k expense paid for but it was done for considerably cheaper than that which is the issue now then I'd hope that is continued when it comes to infrastructure too.
Why on earth is he not paying for his own holiday?
We are still running ahead of that coronavirus forecast that was posted on Twitter
There are good possible reasons why that might be the case and it still not be a pandemic, perhaps the simplest of which is that at the time it was put together there were quite possibly a lot more cases than had been reported. But it's not encouraging.
The woman who arrived here from China and now has the virus is the most troubling. She will have been in a queue at Heathrow. How can the authorities possibly trace all the people who stood in the queue with her or the taxi driver or those on the train or tube?
They simply can't. We can only hope that she was not infectious at the time.
If the bloke in charge of the country can't even tell who spaffed 15 grand (1,827 hours of a minimum wage workers time) on him then I worry a bit about his eye for detail in, say, commissioning a big fuck off bridge.
If the only issue is that the PM thought he was getting a £15k expense paid for but it was done for considerably cheaper than that which is the issue now then I'd hope that is continued when it comes to infrastructure too.
Why on earth is he not paying for his own holiday? ...
If the bloke in charge of the country can't even tell who spaffed 15 grand (1,827 hours of a minimum wage workers time) on him then I worry a bit about his eye for detail in, say, commissioning a big fuck off bridge.
If the only issue is that the PM thought he was getting a £15k expense paid for but it was done for considerably cheaper than that which is the issue now then I'd hope that is continued when it comes to infrastructure too.
We just need to find someone who's paid for a massive bridge who no longer needs it?
If the bloke in charge of the country can't even tell who spaffed 15 grand (1,827 hours of a minimum wage workers time) on him then I worry a bit about his eye for detail in, say, commissioning a big fuck off bridge.
If the only issue is that the PM thought he was getting a £15k expense paid for but it was done for considerably cheaper than that which is the issue now then I'd hope that is continued when it comes to infrastructure too.
Why on earth is he not paying for his own holiday?
In my previous employer I had to sit through hours and hours of anti-bribery training that included the key principle of not accepting any gifts larger than a coffee.
[snip for length]Hence the argument that we can never stick a foreign national on a plane and throw them out of the country because, variously...
I'm not sure it's worth engaging on this as our views are so far apart, but briefly:
* You don't have to be left-wing to recognise that it's an accident of fate that we're born in a generally pleasant, prosperous country, and to acknowledge that it's reasonable for people to want to be here * If they've largely grown up here, the default assumption should be that they should stay, even if they break the law. We don't expel people for committing offences as a rule, and there is no real difference to whether we were born here or came here aged 5. This is not the same as believing that the entire population of Zambia should move to Britain, or that an adult who arrived recently should be given the same consideration. * There is a tendency, actively encouraged by the Government and sections of the press, to lump everyone in a group together instead of treating them as individuals, so that someone who was talked into minor drug offences as a teenager is lumped with murderers and rapists. Treating people as individuals is fundamental to a decent outlook, including, if I may say so, a traditional Conservative outlook. It's the hardline Marxists who are accused of treating everyone as being defined by being part of a group.
Though my politics are miles apart from yours, Nick, I agree with all those points.
The last one, in particular, is essential to any system of justice, and I thought the way ministers adopted that kind of rhetoric in the Commons deeply regrettable.
Re point 1: while it is reasonable to want to be here, it is not reasonable to think that a person’s wants should create an entitlement to be here. It is for the U.K. to decide who should be entitled to live here.
Re point 2: I disagree. If the offence is a serious one then if someone is not a citizen deportation is a reasonable policy. The offence needs to be serious, mind. And it should happen as soon as the sentence has been served.
Agree that people should be treated as individuals.
The issue in the recent cases is that some of the people who have been here for years may actually have been British citizens hence the concern re them being deported without getting legal advice. But if they are not British citizens then why should this country have an obligation to keep them here, if they break this country’s rules in serious ways? Should the fact of them having children or having lived here for a while trump the right of a country to say “you are no longer welcome because of your own actions”?
A good journalist would have found out who actually signed off the complimentary house rental - but it’s probably just the marketing manager at the rental company, who got a late cancellation who had paid up front, and the publicity of having the PM visit was worth the cost of the cleaner. They probably rented somewhere else to his police escorts and aides too.
Boris has declared the value of the trip correctly. A party donor said he would organise a place. Turns out the donor found a late cancellation, persuaded whoever's place it was that having the PM stay would be well worth £15k of waived rental. PM happy, donor has saved £15k himself, so donor happy, owner of place happy.
Sorry, but where in this arrangement should UK taxpayer be unhappy?
And the donor who organised it was reported properly too. The fact the donor had a convoluted way of paying for it wasn't the PM's responsibility.
David Ross was not the donor. Not his villa and he did not pay for it.
The Register records who pays the MP not who arranges the visit. So a correction of some kind is needed. This may well be no more than cock up rather than anything more sinister but still important to get the precise details right.
Yes, if a politician receives hospitality then it needs to be reported correctly. It’s important to trust in politics that we know who donates to them.
If the bloke in charge of the country can't even tell who spaffed 15 grand (1,827 hours of a minimum wage workers time) on him then I worry a bit about his eye for detail in, say, commissioning a big fuck off bridge.
If the only issue is that the PM thought he was getting a £15k expense paid for but it was done for considerably cheaper than that which is the issue now then I'd hope that is continued when it comes to infrastructure too.
Why on earth is he not paying for his own holiday?
This is not a ‘business expense’.
Boris doesn't need to follow the rules, that is the principle that governs his life.
[snip for length]Hence the argument that we can never stick a foreign national on a plane and throw them out of the country because, variously...
Meanwhile, the 99.9999% of the population that isn't holding a placard waving protest or a candlelit vigil outside the Heathrow deportation facility or the Home Office thinks "good riddance to bad rubbish."
I'm not sure it's worth engaging on this as our views are so far apart, but briefly:
* You don't have to be left-wing to recognise that it's an accident of fate that we're born in a generally pleasant, prosperous country, and to acknowledge that it's reasonable for people to want to be here * If they've largely grown up here, the default assumption should be that they should stay, even if they break the law. We don't expel people for committing offences as a rule, and there is no real difference to whether we were born here or came here aged 5. This is not the same as believing that the entire population of Zambia should move to Britain, or that an adult who arrived recently should be given the same consideration. * There is a tendency, actively encouraged by the Government and sections of the press, to lump everyone in a group together instead of treating them as individuals, so that someone who was talked into minor drug offences as a teenager is lumped with murderers and rapists. Treating people as individuals is fundamental to a decent outlook, including, if I may say so, a traditional Conservative outlook. It's the hardline Marxists who are accused of treating everyone as being defined by being part of a group.
Though my politics are miles apart from yours, Nick, I agree with all those points.
The last one, in particular, is essential to any system of justice, and I thought the way ministers adopted that kind of rhetoric in the Commons deeply regrettable.
I do too. Sadly, traditional Conservative outlooks are no longer permitted in Boris Johnson's People's Popular Front.
We are still running ahead of that coronavirus forecast that was posted on Twitter
There are good possible reasons why that might be the case and it still not be a pandemic, perhaps the simplest of which is that at the time it was put together there were quite possibly a lot more cases than had been reported. But it's not encouraging.
The woman who arrived here from China and now has the virus is the most troubling. She will have been in a queue at Heathrow. How can the authorities possibly trace all the people who stood in the queue with her or the taxi driver or those on the train or tube?
They simply can't. We can only hope that she was not infectious at the time.
Thank heavens the forces of Leave have overthrown the elite, so now we have a Prime Minister who holidays in Mustique at the expense of an unknown wellwisher.
Interesting snippet from a story on the Japanese Wuhan evacuees' release from quarantine: http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13124380 ...On the evening of Feb. 11, about 100 locals gathered on the beach near the hotel to offer the evacuees moral support by lighting about 3,000 bamboo lanterns.
Their message shown with a projector read, “Only a few more days to go. Hang in there.”
“I could quell my fears thanks to local people,” the man said.
But he said he still is not completely reassured even after being declared free of the virus and is worried about his reception back in society.
He noted that one evacuee who stayed in the hotel tested positive after twice being cleared.
“I am afraid that the test result may not be perceived as reliable by the public,” the man said. “I don’t know if they will accept my clearance.”...
Boris has declared the value of the trip correctly. A party donor said he would organise a place. Turns out the donor found a late cancellation, persuaded whoever's place it was that having the PM stay would be well worth £15k of waived rental. PM happy, donor has saved £15k himself, so donor happy, owner of place happy.
Sorry, but where in this arrangement should UK taxpayer be unhappy?
I shouldn't think most taxpayers care. But Parliamentary rules require that you state who has given you non-trivial gifts, including gifts in kind, so that people can assess whether this might have affected your judgment about an issue. We should not establish the principle that gifts in kind don't matter. Nor the principle that Prime Ministers don't need to follow the rules.
This is not to suggest that Johnson has deliberately done anything wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if he's never got round to reading the rules exactly, so he thought it was correct to put down the chap who arranged the stay. But the mistake should be corrected and (assuming the actual donor is not someone dodgy) we should then move on.
Also, if I , as a business owner, tried to make the same argument HMRC would say it was a benefit in kind. I would need to pay tax on that. Anyone know whether he will be paying BIK tax on this?
If the bloke in charge of the country can't even tell who spaffed 15 grand (1,827 hours of a minimum wage workers time) on him then I worry a bit about his eye for detail in, say, commissioning a big fuck off bridge.
If the only issue is that the PM thought he was getting a £15k expense paid for but it was done for considerably cheaper than that which is the issue now then I'd hope that is continued when it comes to infrastructure too.
Why on earth is he not paying for his own holiday?
This is not a ‘business expense’.
He wasn't - but you can follow the logic:-
Boris to David Can you sort out a cheapish holiday for me - I'm rather busy David - phones agency - our PM wants a villa for Christmas what have you got Agency - thinks a lot of free PR here so let's find one for free so does so.
At no point is anyone thinking of bribery here the Agency is thinking that's an awful, awful lot of free PR for either the villa owner or agency for very little money.
Also £15k doesn't feel like a lot for me. It's close to that for that period of time at some of the hotels I stay in in Barbados and Sandy Lane would be rather more...
Off topic, I would love to know exactly why the FCA is looking at the relationship between Jess Staley (who has not always displayed impeccable judgment, to put it mildly) and Jeffrey Epstein.
You have to hang on if you're not seated (most people aren't seated) and will be touching bars and handles others have all day. Also, forget being at least a metre away: at rush hour you're lucky if you get more than a few centimetres away from someone's face. And you'll often be down there for 15 mins or more, which is plenty of time to catch it.
Now, how do I commute from Waterloo to Stratford efficiently without touching the tube once..
Yes it's a worry. I imagine millions of journeys will be replaced by people walking, biking, scooting. Surely, anything but going on the tube. There will be a lot more working from home. For those left dependent on the tube, there will be a sense of extreme fear and panic. People will get very angry with anyone coughing or behaving oddly. There will most likely be some extreme flashes of violence with some low grade racism chucked in.
A good journalist would have found out who actually signed off the complimentary house rental - but it’s probably just the marketing manager at the rental company, who got a late cancellation who had paid up front, and the publicity of having the PM visit was worth the cost of the cleaner. They probably rented somewhere else to his police escorts and aides too.
Boris has declared the value of the trip correctly. A party donor said he would organise a place. Turns out the donor found a late cancellation, persuaded whoever's place it was that having the PM stay would be well worth £15k of waived rental. PM happy, donor has saved £15k himself, so donor happy, owner of place happy.
Sorry, but where in this arrangement should UK taxpayer be unhappy?
And the donor who organised it was reported properly too. The fact the donor had a convoluted way of paying for it wasn't the PM's responsibility.
David Ross was not the donor. Not his villa and he did not pay for it.
The Register records who pays the MP not who arranges the visit. So a correction of some kind is needed. This may well be no more than cock up rather than anything more sinister but still important to get the precise details right.
A good journalist would have found out who actually signed off the complimentary house rental - but it’s probably just the marketing manager at the rental company, who got a late cancellation who had paid up front, and the publicity of having the PM visit was worth the cost of the cleaner. They probably rented somewhere else to his police escorts and aides too.
Boris has declared the value of the trip correctly. A party donor said he would organise a place. Turns out the donor found a late cancellation, persuaded whoever's place it was that having the PM stay would be well worth £15k of waived rental. PM happy, donor has saved £15k himself, so donor happy, owner of place happy.
Sorry, but where in this arrangement should UK taxpayer be unhappy?
And the donor who organised it was reported properly too. The fact the donor had a convoluted way of paying for it wasn't the PM's responsibility.
What if donor is a crook/fraudster.........oh makes no difference to these troughers
[snip for length]Hence the argument that we can never stick a foreign national on a plane and throw them out of the country because, variously...
I'm not sure it's worth engaging on this as our views are so far apart, but briefly:
* You don't have to be left-wing to recognise that it's an accident of fate that we're born in a generally pleasant, prosperous country, and to acknowledge that it's reasonable for people to want to be here * If they've largely grown up here, the default assumption should be that they should stay, even if they break the law. We don't expel people for committing offences as a rule, and there is no real difference to whether we were born here or came here aged 5. This is not the same as believing that the entire population of Zambia should move to Britain, or that an adult who arrived recently should be given the same consideration. * There is a tendency, actively encouraged by the Government and sections of the press, to lump everyone in a group together instead of treating them as individuals, so that someone who was talked into minor drug offences as a teenager is lumped with murderers and rapists. Treating people as individuals is fundamental to a decent outlook, including, if I may say so, a traditional Conservative outlook. It's the hardline Marxists who are accused of treating everyone as being defined by being part of a group.
Though my politics are miles apart from yours, Nick, I agree with all those points.
The last one, in particular, is essential to any system of justice, and I thought the way ministers adopted that kind of rhetoric in the Commons deeply regrettable.
Re point 1: while it is reasonable to want to be here, it is not reasonable to think that a person’s wants should create an entitlement to be here. It is for the U.K. to decide who should be entitled to live here.
Re point 2: I disagree. If the offence is a serious one then if someone is not a citizen deportation is a reasonable policy. The offence needs to be serious, mind. And it should happen as soon as the sentence has been served.
Agree that people should be treated as individuals.
The issue in the recent cases is that some of the people who have been here for years may actually have been British citizens hence the concern re them being deported without getting legal advice. But if they are not British citizens then why should this country have an obligation to keep them here...
I would say that depends (and I agree with Alastair's position on that). If someone has lived here since they were a young child then probably, yes.
In my previous employer I had to sit through hours and hours of anti-bribery training that included the key principle of not accepting any gifts larger than a coffee.
Bribery Act 2010. Makes company directors responsible for how extravagant they let their sales team get with the nice dinners and invitations to sporting events.
A good journalist would have found out who actually signed off the complimentary house rental - but it’s probably just the marketing manager at the rental company, who got a late cancellation who had paid up front, and the publicity of having the PM visit was worth the cost of the cleaner. They probably rented somewhere else to his police escorts and aides too.
Boris has declared the value of the trip correctly. A party donor said he would organise a place. Turns out the donor found a late cancellation, persuaded whoever's place it was that having the PM stay would be well worth £15k of waived rental. PM happy, donor has saved £15k himself, so donor happy, owner of place happy.
Sorry, but where in this arrangement should UK taxpayer be unhappy?
And the donor who organised it was reported properly too. The fact the donor had a convoluted way of paying for it wasn't the PM's responsibility.
What if donor is a crook/fraudster.........oh makes no difference to these troughers
That would be embarrassing. Corruption would be if the donor is a bridge engineer, or has 40 brand new hospitals to offload, or, on reshuffle day, 22 PJ masks.
We are still running ahead of that coronavirus forecast that was posted on Twitter
There are good possible reasons why that might be the case and it still not be a pandemic, perhaps the simplest of which is that at the time it was put together there were quite possibly a lot more cases than had been reported. But it's not encouraging.
The woman who arrived here from China and now has the virus is the most troubling. She will have been in a queue at Heathrow. How can the authorities possibly trace all the people who stood in the queue with her or the taxi driver or those on the train or tube?
They simply can't. We can only hope that she was not infectious at the time.
Boris has declared the value of the trip correctly. A party donor said he would organise a place. Turns out the donor found a late cancellation, persuaded whoever's place it was that having the PM stay would be well worth £15k of waived rental. PM happy, donor has saved £15k himself, so donor happy, owner of place happy.
Sorry, but where in this arrangement should UK taxpayer be unhappy?
Basic ABC is where.
(Anti bribery and corruption)
What about the sense of self entitlement that he A. Thought he was entitled to a holiday on a private Caribbean island B. That it never crossed his mind that he should pay for it C. That he seems affronted that he should explain who provided what.
Did he pay for his own flights? Who picked up the bills for other items.
If the bloke in charge of the country can't even tell who spaffed 15 grand (1,827 hours of a minimum wage workers time) on him then I worry a bit about his eye for detail in, say, commissioning a big fuck off bridge.
If the only issue is that the PM thought he was getting a £15k expense paid for but it was done for considerably cheaper than that which is the issue now then I'd hope that is continued when it comes to infrastructure too.
Why on earth is he not paying for his own holiday?
This is not a ‘business expense’.
He wasn't - but you can follow the logic:-
Boris to David Can you sort out a cheapish holiday for me - I'm rather busy David - phones agency - our PM wants a villa for Christmas what have you got Agency - thinks a lot of free PR here so let's find one for free so does so.
At no point is anyone thinking of bribery here the Agency is thinking that's an awful, awful lot of free PR for either the villa owner or agency for very little money.
Also £15k doesn't feel like a lot for me. It's close to that for that period of time at some of the hotels I stay in in Barbados and Sandy Lane would be rather more...
To maximise the PR, leading the PM to mess up his declaration was a masterstroke.
So what do we infer is the death rate from that? Is it deaths divided by cases? Or deaths divided by (deaths + recovered)? What assumptions can we make about the survival rates of those confirmed cases who have neither died nor recovered?
So what do we infer is the death rate from that? Is it deaths divided by cases? Or deaths divided by (deaths + recovered)? What assumptions can we make about the survival rates of those confirmed cases who have neither died nor recovered?
We'd need more data, particularly on how long these people have had it for. The only hint there comes from the ratio of deaths to recovered.
But there may be lots of other people with minor cases recovered that never got detected.
If the bloke in charge of the country can't even tell who spaffed 15 grand (1,827 hours of a minimum wage workers time) on him then I worry a bit about his eye for detail in, say, commissioning a big fuck off bridge.
If the only issue is that the PM thought he was getting a £15k expense paid for but it was done for considerably cheaper than that which is the issue now then I'd hope that is continued when it comes to infrastructure too.
Why on earth is he not paying for his own holiday?
This is not a ‘business expense’.
because he is a troughing greedy unprincipled scumbag
So it sounds like they have been counting as Coronavirus deaths/cases only those diagnosed with a molecular diagnostic test. That test has capacity limits to how many can be done per day and so those who were suffering without the test were previously not being counted.
Now they are also classifying those where it is pretty obviously Coronavirus, a clinical diagnosis, but where there is no confirmatory test. So overnight the numbers dying per day has doubled.
Changing the diagnosis method is not necessarily a conspiracy but I would also not be surprised if separate bureaucracies are manipulating their figures.
But bottom line, it's worse than we thought it was just yesterday.
I didn't mention conspiracies. It is simply that there is no consistent basis on which figures are being reported (note the continued uncertainty about whether the new standard has been generally adopted). Couple that with an overwhelmed health system, a state organisation completely opposed to openness, and the likelihood that large numbers of infections (particularly asymptomatic) remain undiagnosed, and you can see that it is impossible to draw any reliable conclusions from the data reported.
I think we can draw the reasonable conclusion that the numbers that have been released up to now are likely to be the absolute best-case (most favourable) scenario of what is going on. What the worse-case estimate is, who knows.
If the government were taking this seriously they would have done far more by now, instead Boris is too busy playing with his train sets and thinking about bridges. It's absolutely laughable.
Our Government is doing everything it can in my view.
Looking at that, I feel isolation is simply pushing back the inevitable.
Indeed
Explaining this from the Guardian: Health bosses speculate the virus will continue to spread in the UK until it peaks in the summer – later than the previous assumption that it would peter out in the late spring.
If the bloke in charge of the country can't even tell who spaffed 15 grand (1,827 hours of a minimum wage workers time) on him then I worry a bit about his eye for detail in, say, commissioning a big fuck off bridge.
If the only issue is that the PM thought he was getting a £15k expense paid for but it was done for considerably cheaper than that which is the issue now then I'd hope that is continued when it comes to infrastructure too.
Why on earth is he not paying for his own holiday?
This is not a ‘business expense’.
He wasn't - but you can follow the logic:-
Boris to David Can you sort out a cheapish holiday for me - I'm rather busy David - phones agency - our PM wants a villa for Christmas what have you got Agency - thinks a lot of free PR here so let's find one for free so does so.
At no point is anyone thinking of bribery here the Agency is thinking that's an awful, awful lot of free PR for either the villa owner or agency for very little money.
Also £15k doesn't feel like a lot for me. It's close to that for that period of time at some of the hotels I stay in in Barbados and Sandy Lane would be rather more...
Daring to compare myself to the sort of comment Billie Eilish might make, but I really couldn't give a scoobies what free holidays the PM receives.
Not one single flying f*ck.
I DO care about numerous injustices his Government inflict.
Boris has declared the value of the trip correctly. A party donor said he would organise a place. Turns out the donor found a late cancellation, persuaded whoever's place it was that having the PM stay would be well worth £15k of waived rental. PM happy, donor has saved £15k himself, so donor happy, owner of place happy.
Sorry, but where in this arrangement should UK taxpayer be unhappy?
Basic ABC is where.
(Anti bribery and corruption)
What about the sense of self entitlement that he A. Thought he was entitled to a holiday on a private Caribbean island B. That it never crossed his mind that he should pay for it C. That he seems affronted that he should explain who provided what.
Did he pay for his own flights? Who picked up the bills for other items.
It's perfectly possible that he wanted to pay for it but all attempts to pay were rejected.
So it sounds like they have been counting as Coronavirus deaths/cases only those diagnosed with a molecular diagnostic test. That test has capacity limits to how many can be done per day and so those who were suffering without the test were previously not being counted.
Now they are also classifying those where it is pretty obviously Coronavirus, a clinical diagnosis, but where there is no confirmatory test. So overnight the numbers dying per day has doubled.
Changing the diagnosis method is not necessarily a conspiracy but I would also not be surprised if separate bureaucracies are manipulating their figures.
But bottom line, it's worse than we thought it was just yesterday.
I didn't mention conspiracies. It is simply that there is no consistent basis on which figures are being reported (note the continued uncertainty about whether the new standard has been generally adopted). Couple that with an overwhelmed health system, a state organisation completely opposed to openness, and the likelihood that large numbers of infections (particularly asymptomatic) remain undiagnosed, and you can see that it is impossible to draw any reliable conclusions from the data reported.
I think we can draw the reasonable conclusion that the numbers that have been released up to now are likely to be the absolute best-case (most favourable) scenario of what is going on. What the worse-case estimate is, who knows.
If the government were taking this seriously they would have done far more by now, instead Boris is too busy playing with his train sets and thinking about bridges. It's absolutely laughable.
Our Government is doing everything it can in my view.
So 45k have got it but are yet to be confirmed as recovered, or not?
The next few weeks will be interesting. Much bigger dataset then.
They should be (and probably are) modelling a range of scenarios for the summer and working out what preparations to take to ameliorate some of the worse case ones.
So what do we infer is the death rate from that? Is it deaths divided by cases? Or deaths divided by (deaths + recovered)? What assumptions can we make about the survival rates of those confirmed cases who have neither died nor recovered?
We had this discussion the other day. I think it is deaths/deaths+recovered. I don't think measuring it against the number of cases tells us anything useful because we don't know what the outcome of those cases will be.
But I also think that the official statistics will enormously understate the recovered. If you have modest symptoms going to a hospital is (a) probably risking a more serious infection (b) inconsiderate given the much greater need of others and (c) in China at least increasingly difficult given the travel restrictions. My guess is that very large numbers are getting infected, recovering and having minimal medical input.
Boris has declared the value of the trip correctly. A party donor said he would organise a place. Turns out the donor found a late cancellation, persuaded whoever's place it was that having the PM stay would be well worth £15k of waived rental. PM happy, donor has saved £15k himself, so donor happy, owner of place happy.
Sorry, but where in this arrangement should UK taxpayer be unhappy?
I shouldn't think most taxpayers care. But Parliamentary rules require that you state who has given you non-trivial gifts, including gifts in kind, so that people can assess whether this might have affected your judgment about an issue. We should not establish the principle that gifts in kind don't matter. Nor the principle that Prime Ministers don't need to follow the rules.
This is not to suggest that Johnson has deliberately done anything wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if he's never got round to reading the rules exactly, so he thought it was correct to put down the chap who arranged the stay. But the mistake should be corrected and (assuming the actual donor is not someone dodgy) we should then move on.
Also, if I , as a business owner, tried to make the same argument HMRC would say it was a benefit in kind. I would need to pay tax on that. Anyone know whether he will be paying BIK tax on this?
If the bloke in charge of the country can't even tell who spaffed 15 grand (1,827 hours of a minimum wage workers time) on him then I worry a bit about his eye for detail in, say, commissioning a big fuck off bridge.
If the only issue is that the PM thought he was getting a £15k expense paid for but it was done for considerably cheaper than that which is the issue now then I'd hope that is continued when it comes to infrastructure too.
Why on earth is he not paying for his own holiday?
This is not a ‘business expense’.
He wasn't - but you can follow the logic:-
Boris to David Can you sort out a cheapish holiday for me - I'm rather busy David - phones agency - our PM wants a villa for Christmas what have you got Agency - thinks a lot of free PR here so let's find one for free so does so.
At no point is anyone thinking of bribery here the Agency is thinking that's an awful, awful lot of free PR for either the villa owner or agency for very little money.
Also £15k doesn't feel like a lot for me. It's close to that for that period of time at some of the hotels I stay in in Barbados and Sandy Lane would be rather more...
To maximise the PR, leading the PM to mess up his declaration was a masterstroke.
Only a deluded Tory could justify it with crap like that.
Boris has declared the value of the trip correctly. A party donor said he would organise a place. Turns out the donor found a late cancellation, persuaded whoever's place it was that having the PM stay would be well worth £15k of waived rental. PM happy, donor has saved £15k himself, so donor happy, owner of place happy.
Sorry, but where in this arrangement should UK taxpayer be unhappy?
I shouldn't think most taxpayers care. But Parliamentary rules require that you state who has given you non-trivial gifts, including gifts in kind, so that people can assess whether this might have affected your judgment about an issue. We should not establish the principle that gifts in kind don't matter. Nor the principle that Prime Ministers don't need to follow the rules.
This is not to suggest that Johnson has deliberately done anything wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if he's never got round to reading the rules exactly, so he thought it was correct to put down the chap who arranged the stay. But the mistake should be corrected and (assuming the actual donor is not someone dodgy) we should then move on.
Also, if I , as a business owner, tried to make the same argument HMRC would say it was a benefit in kind. I would need to pay tax on that. Anyone know whether he will be paying BIK tax on this?
you are having a laugh, he is a politician
It's utterly boring.
Let him take free holidays. Fair play. Good for him and I couldn't give a shit.
I really really DO care about the hellhole of Universal Credit and the evil this Govt are inflicting on countless people.
So it sounds like they have been counting as Coronavirus deaths/cases only those diagnosed with a molecular diagnostic test. That test has capacity limits to how many can be done per day and so those who were suffering without the test were previously not being counted.
Now they are also classifying those where it is pretty obviously Coronavirus, a clinical diagnosis, but where there is no confirmatory test. So overnight the numbers dying per day has doubled.
Changing the diagnosis method is not necessarily a conspiracy but I would also not be surprised if separate bureaucracies are manipulating their figures.
But bottom line, it's worse than we thought it was just yesterday.
I didn't mention conspiracies. It is simply that there is no consistent basis on which figures are being reported (note the continued uncertainty about whether the new standard has been generally adopted). Couple that with an overwhelmed health system, a state organisation completely opposed to openness, and the likelihood that large numbers of infections (particularly asymptomatic) remain undiagnosed, and you can see that it is impossible to draw any reliable conclusions from the data reported.
I think we can draw the reasonable conclusion that the numbers that have been released up to now are likely to be the absolute best-case (most favourable) scenario of what is going on. What the worse-case estimate is, who knows.
If the government were taking this seriously they would have done far more by now, instead Boris is too busy playing with his train sets and thinking about bridges. It's absolutely laughable.
Our Government is doing everything it can in my view.
So 45k have got it but are yet to be confirmed as recovered, or not?
The next few weeks will be interesting. Much bigger dataset then.
The scary thing is that 40% of the deaths have been added in the last 3 or 4 days. Assuming it takes a month or so for people to either die or recover, remember that a month ago we were just starting to talk about it.
Ironically, it could well be that the Chinese implementing mass quarantine in the way that only they can, will have saved the world from a serious pandemic here.
Next couple of weeks are I think key. If the number of deaths continues its exponential rise then we’re in big trouble.
Boris has declared the value of the trip correctly. A party donor said he would organise a place. Turns out the donor found a late cancellation, persuaded whoever's place it was that having the PM stay would be well worth £15k of waived rental. PM happy, donor has saved £15k himself, so donor happy, owner of place happy.
Sorry, but where in this arrangement should UK taxpayer be unhappy?
Basic ABC is where.
(Anti bribery and corruption)
What about the sense of self entitlement that he A. Thought he was entitled to a holiday on a private Caribbean island B. That it never crossed his mind that he should pay for it C. That he seems affronted that he should explain who provided what.
Did he pay for his own flights? Who picked up the bills for other items.
It's perfectly possible that he wanted to pay for it but all attempts to pay were rejected.
Boris has declared the value of the trip correctly. A party donor said he would organise a place. Turns out the donor found a late cancellation, persuaded whoever's place it was that having the PM stay would be well worth £15k of waived rental. PM happy, donor has saved £15k himself, so donor happy, owner of place happy.
Sorry, but where in this arrangement should UK taxpayer be unhappy?
I shouldn't think most taxpayers care. But Parliamentary rules require that you state who has given you non-trivial gifts, including gifts in kind, so that people can assess whether this might have affected your judgment about an issue. We should not establish the principle that gifts in kind don't matter. Nor the principle that Prime Ministers don't need to follow the rules.
This is not to suggest that Johnson has deliberately done anything wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if he's never got round to reading the rules exactly, so he thought it was correct to put down the chap who arranged the stay. But the mistake should be corrected and (assuming the actual donor is not someone dodgy) we should then move on.
Also, if I , as a business owner, tried to make the same argument HMRC would say it was a benefit in kind. I would need to pay tax on that. Anyone know whether he will be paying BIK tax on this?
you are having a laugh, he is a politician
It's utterly boring.
Let him take free holidays. Fair play. Good for him and I couldn't give a shit.
I really really DO care about the hellhole of Universal Credit and the evil this Govt are inflicting on countless people.
Looking at that, I feel isolation is simply pushing back the inevitable.
I am clutching the straw that as viruses eventually mutate, we give this virus time to mutate to something milder before too many people get infected by the more virulent strain. I don't know if there's any basis to this.
What about making sure all front-line medics in the NHS are FFP3 fitted, checked and trained? Whilst the CMO was publicly declaring the NHS to be well prepared last week I was hearing stories that the NHS was not FFP3 ready. Very troubling.
How about preventing all inbound flights from China or at least mandatory quarantine for those coming from that part of the world? As we have established this morning, the molecular test is not 100% sensitive and we will quickly run out of capacity to conduct it on mass (perhaps work on that too).
So quarantine is the only way to be sure and we are going to need a lot of it. What provisions have been put in place for quarantine on a mass-scale? Who knows and some of this information should not be out there in the public. But at the same time, do you think the government is treating this with the utter seriousness that it deserves? From what I can see, a lot of the last few weeks has been focused on discussing John Bercow, the Lords, trains and bridges.
Now is the crucial time, the calm before the storm, the phoney war etc. Get ready now or there will be serious trouble.
Looking at that, I feel isolation is simply pushing back the inevitable.
I am clutching the straw that as viruses eventually mutate, we give this virus time to mutate to something milder before too many people get infected by the more virulent strain. I don't know if there's any basis to this.
Of course it could also mutate into something more deadly. #reasonstobecheerful
Looking at that, I feel isolation is simply pushing back the inevitable.
I am clutching the straw that as viruses eventually mutate, we give this virus time to mutate to something milder before too many people get infected by the more virulent strain. I don't know if there's any basis to this.
Unlike Flu, Coronavirus is very slow to mutate.
In some ways that is good as it makes a vaccine more straightforward, but time is the issue.
Boris has declared the value of the trip correctly. A party donor said he would organise a place. Turns out the donor found a late cancellation, persuaded whoever's place it was that having the PM stay would be well worth £15k of waived rental. PM happy, donor has saved £15k himself, so donor happy, owner of place happy.
Sorry, but where in this arrangement should UK taxpayer be unhappy?
Basic ABC is where.
(Anti bribery and corruption)
What about the sense of self entitlement that he A. Thought he was entitled to a holiday on a private Caribbean island B. That it never crossed his mind that he should pay for it C. That he seems affronted that he should explain who provided what.
Did he pay for his own flights? Who picked up the bills for other items.
Agree with all this. Johnson has no sense of responsibility or the value of money and where it comes from. That's why amongst other bad things, he's the most wasteful of politicians, with his bridges and so on. The most wasteful thing of all being Brexit.
Boris has declared the value of the trip correctly. A party donor said he would organise a place. Turns out the donor found a late cancellation, persuaded whoever's place it was that having the PM stay would be well worth £15k of waived rental. PM happy, donor has saved £15k himself, so donor happy, owner of place happy.
Sorry, but where in this arrangement should UK taxpayer be unhappy?
Basic ABC is where.
(Anti bribery and corruption)
What about the sense of self entitlement that he A. Thought he was entitled to a holiday on a private Caribbean island B. That it never crossed his mind that he should pay for it C. That he seems affronted that he should explain who provided what.
Did he pay for his own flights? Who picked up the bills for other items.
£15,000 seems a pretty good rate for such a holiday at peak time, or is that not including his mistress?
If the bloke in charge of the country can't even tell who spaffed 15 grand (1,827 hours of a minimum wage workers time) on him then I worry a bit about his eye for detail in, say, commissioning a big fuck off bridge.
If the only issue is that the PM thought he was getting a £15k expense paid for but it was done for considerably cheaper than that which is the issue now then I'd hope that is continued when it comes to infrastructure too.
Why on earth is he not paying for his own holiday?
This is not a ‘business expense’.
He wasn't - but you can follow the logic:-
Boris to David Can you sort out a cheapish holiday for me - I'm rather busy David - phones agency - our PM wants a villa for Christmas what have you got Agency - thinks a lot of free PR here so let's find one for free so does so.
At no point is anyone thinking of bribery here the Agency is thinking that's an awful, awful lot of free PR for either the villa owner or agency for very little money.
Also £15k doesn't feel like a lot for me. It's close to that for that period of time at some of the hotels I stay in in Barbados and Sandy Lane would be rather more...
To maximise the PR, leading the PM to mess up his declaration was a masterstroke.
Only a deluded Tory could justify it with crap like that.
Boris has declared the value of the trip correctly. A party donor said he would organise a place. Turns out the donor found a late cancellation, persuaded whoever's place it was that having the PM stay would be well worth £15k of waived rental. PM happy, donor has saved £15k himself, so donor happy, owner of place happy.
Sorry, but where in this arrangement should UK taxpayer be unhappy?
Basic ABC is where.
(Anti bribery and corruption)
What about the sense of self entitlement that he A. Thought he was entitled to a holiday on a private Caribbean island B. That it never crossed his mind that he should pay for it C. That he seems affronted that he should explain who provided what.
Did he pay for his own flights? Who picked up the bills for other items.
Agree with all this. Johnson has no sense of responsibility or the value of money and where it comes from. That's why amongst other bad things, he's the most wasteful of politicians, with his bridges and so on. The most wasteful thing of all being Brexit.
He's worth a few quid, is our Boris, and fifteen grand to stay in Mustique for 10 days at a villa at peak new year period isn't the most expensive holiday in the world. I'm guessing he thought it would "all be sorted". More an indication of his lack of attention to detail than anything else.
Also £15k doesn't feel like a lot for me. It's close to that for that period of time at some of the hotels I stay in in Barbados and Sandy Lane would be rather more...
£15,000 equates to the annual salary of someone working a 35 hour week at minimum wage.
Boris has declared the value of the trip correctly. A party donor said he would organise a place. Turns out the donor found a late cancellation, persuaded whoever's place it was that having the PM stay would be well worth £15k of waived rental. PM happy, donor has saved £15k himself, so donor happy, owner of place happy.
Sorry, but where in this arrangement should UK taxpayer be unhappy?
I shouldn't think most taxpayers care. But Parliamentary rules require that you state who has given you non-trivial gifts, including gifts in kind, so that people can assess whether this might have affected your judgment about an issue. We should not establish the principle that gifts in kind don't matter. Nor the principle that Prime Ministers don't need to follow the rules.
This is not to suggest that Johnson has deliberately done anything wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if he's never got round to reading the rules exactly, so he thought it was correct to put down the chap who arranged the stay. But the mistake should be corrected and (assuming the actual donor is not someone dodgy) we should then move on.
Also, if I , as a business owner, tried to make the same argument HMRC would say it was a benefit in kind. I would need to pay tax on that. Anyone know whether he will be paying BIK tax on this?
you are having a laugh, he is a politician
It's utterly boring.
Let him take free holidays. Fair play. Good for him and I couldn't give a shit.
I really really DO care about the hellhole of Universal Credit and the evil this Govt are inflicting on countless people.
You don't mind him implementing these policies whilst he is freeloading on the beach, strange ideas on outrage.
Nope.
His beach holiday doesn't interest me. Couldn't care a less. In fact, let him take some free backhander holidays. He's a politician. It's what they do. Meh.
Also £15k doesn't feel like a lot for me. It's close to that for that period of time at some of the hotels I stay in in Barbados and Sandy Lane would be rather more...
£15,000 equates to the annual salary of someone working a 35 hour week at minimum wage.
Should Boris also move into a one-bed flat in Bolton?
Looking at that, I feel isolation is simply pushing back the inevitable.
I am clutching the straw that as viruses eventually mutate, we give this virus time to mutate to something milder before too many people get infected by the more virulent strain. I don't know if there's any basis to this.
Didn't SARS burn out very suddenly? Reading Wiki it doesn't seem clear why, but I'm assuming it wasn't (as now) only the standard response of better hygiene, isolation and quarantine that did it.
Also £15k doesn't feel like a lot for me. It's close to that for that period of time at some of the hotels I stay in in Barbados and Sandy Lane would be rather more...
£15,000 equates to the annual salary of someone working a 35 hour week at minimum wage.
And I know that - it was more a comment that to me even £15k doesn't feel right for that type of villa at that time of year. I would not be surprised if it actually cost twice that.
That's not to say I think anything dodgy has gone on here. The PR (even before this additional screwup publicity) is worth more than any rental figure would be.
That is not surprising. If we support a conclusion then it is likely and at least possible that we have engaged some thought process to come to that conclusion. If someone else comes to that same conclusion via a different means we are more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt as we have independently (whatever that means) worked it out first for ourselves.
Also £15k doesn't feel like a lot for me. It's close to that for that period of time at some of the hotels I stay in in Barbados and Sandy Lane would be rather more...
£15,000 equates to the annual salary of someone working a 35 hour week at minimum wage.
Should Boris also move into a one-bed flat in Bolton?
He should perhaps do something about the disparity of incomes. And those saying that £15,000 is not a lot of money might consider that their experience is unusual.
Also £15k doesn't feel like a lot for me. It's close to that for that period of time at some of the hotels I stay in in Barbados and Sandy Lane would be rather more...
£15,000 equates to the annual salary of someone working a 35 hour week at minimum wage.
Should Boris also move into a one-bed flat in Bolton?
He should perhaps do something about the disparity of incomes. And those saying that £15,000 is not a lot of money might consider that their experience is unusual.
It's not a lot of money to spend 10 days at peak period on Mustique.
Just like £50,000 would not be a lot of money to buy a Rolls Royce Phantom.
No one has said that £15,000 or £50,000 is not a lot of money.
I'm sure he is trying to do something on the disparity of incomes. I yield to no one in my dislike of Boris as a solipsistic twat, indeed I'm looking at lack of giving a fuck cock up here rather than conspiracy. But I don't think we can draw any more conclusions from this than we already know.
Looking at that, I feel isolation is simply pushing back the inevitable.
I am clutching the straw that as viruses eventually mutate, we give this virus time to mutate to something milder before too many people get infected by the more virulent strain. I don't know if there's any basis to this.
Didn't SARS burn out very suddenly? Reading Wiki it doesn't seem clear why, but I'm assuming it wasn't (as now) only the standard response of better hygiene, isolation and quarantine that did it.
Shorter incubation period, and not infectious until patients were symptomatic, so it was much easier to identify and quarantine infected individuals.
Boris has declared the value of the trip correctly. A party donor said he would organise a place. Turns out the donor found a late cancellation, persuaded whoever's place it was that having the PM stay would be well worth £15k of waived rental. PM happy, donor has saved £15k himself, so donor happy, owner of place happy.
Sorry, but where in this arrangement should UK taxpayer be unhappy?
Basic ABC is where.
(Anti bribery and corruption)
What about the sense of self entitlement that he A. Thought he was entitled to a holiday on a private Caribbean island B. That it never crossed his mind that he should pay for it C. That he seems affronted that he should explain who provided what.
Did he pay for his own flights? Who picked up the bills for other items.
Agree with all this. Johnson has no sense of responsibility or the value of money and where it comes from. That's why amongst other bad things, he's the most wasteful of politicians, with his bridges and so on. The most wasteful thing of all being Brexit.
He's worth a few quid, is our Boris, and fifteen grand to stay in Mustique for 10 days at a villa at peak new year period isn't the most expensive holiday in the world. I'm guessing he thought it would "all be sorted". More an indication of his lack of attention to detail than anything else.
That might suggest the amount is a second misstatement in this declaration.
I'm interested in Norse mythology but not really researched it, that story was new to me - but it bears a striking similarity to Shylock's "pound of flesh" in the Merchant of Venice.
I wonder whether the Norse story quoted is authentic and whether it was inspiration for Shakespeare, or if the Shakespeare story was original and the Norse story is a bastardised twist on that?
Also £15k doesn't feel like a lot for me. It's close to that for that period of time at some of the hotels I stay in in Barbados and Sandy Lane would be rather more...
£15,000 equates to the annual salary of someone working a 35 hour week at minimum wage.
Should Boris also move into a one-bed flat in Bolton?
He should perhaps do something about the disparity of incomes. And those saying that £15,000 is not a lot of money might consider that their experience is unusual.
If that is aimed at me I think you may need to read what I wrote.
On both occasions I've not said £15k isn't a lot of money, what I said was that £15k wouldn't even purchase a posh hotel room in Barbados for 10 days (Sandy Lane would be more, I believe some of the Elegant hotel chain would be more as well, there will be others but I don't know).
Iraq is ancient history for most voters, in the same way as the entire IRA issue did no harm either to Corbyn or Sinn Fein.
If the Labour candidates really are having a Barney over it then this says more about the contemporary Left's maniacal obsession with the Middle East than anything else. They're clearly only interested in talking to the occupants of their little bubble, not the country.
Some of us hold with there being no statute of limitations for war crimes. I think all MPs who voted for it should be in jail, along with their journo cheerleaders. Labour and Tory parties should both be out of power for generations.
But most voters don't seem to have that opinion. There is no accountability in this country. Unless you're poor and black.
Referring to the positive impact he believes immigration has had, Keir Starmer said last night that we should be giving future generations the same opportunity to benefit as he had
So Grammar schools and government funded places at Private schools?
Boris has declared the value of the trip correctly. A party donor said he would organise a place. Turns out the donor found a late cancellation, persuaded whoever's place it was that having the PM stay would be well worth £15k of waived rental. PM happy, donor has saved £15k himself, so donor happy, owner of place happy.
Sorry, but where in this arrangement should UK taxpayer be unhappy?
Basic ABC is where.
(Anti bribery and corruption)
What about the sense of self entitlement that he A. Thought he was entitled to a holiday on a private Caribbean island B. That it never crossed his mind that he should pay for it C. That he seems affronted that he should explain who provided what.
Did he pay for his own flights? Who picked up the bills for other items.
Agree with all this. Johnson has no sense of responsibility or the value of money and where it comes from. That's why amongst other bad things, he's the most wasteful of politicians, with his bridges and so on. The most wasteful thing of all being Brexit.
He's worth a few quid, is our Boris, and fifteen grand to stay in Mustique for 10 days at a villa at peak new year period isn't the most expensive holiday in the world. I'm guessing he thought it would "all be sorted". More an indication of his lack of attention to detail than anything else.
That might suggest the amount is a second misstatement in this declaration.
Looking at that, I feel isolation is simply pushing back the inevitable.
I am clutching the straw that as viruses eventually mutate, we give this virus time to mutate to something milder before too many people get infected by the more virulent strain. I don't know if there's any basis to this.
Didn't SARS burn out very suddenly? Reading Wiki it doesn't seem clear why, but I'm assuming it wasn't (as now) only the standard response of better hygiene, isolation and quarantine that did it.
I believe from memory it turned out to have a very short period of contagion. If somebody is contagious for 11 days then they can pass on the illness to a lot more people, if they're only contagious for 3 days then it becomes harder for the virus to spread. Plus from memory symptoms struck quicker so they were less likely to be asymptomatic but spreading it and more likely to self-isolate sooner.
I think Keir Starmer is going to be a slightly more competent version of Nicola Murray. He will end up jumping on every possibly bandwagon and stand for nothing.
I see the BBC might stop spending money on UK Athletics.
A nation weeps (as it switches over to The Masked Singer).
I've worked out, anecdotally, that there seems to be a complete lack of structure and resources for youth in this country outside of football and perhaps cricket. Certainly compared to the US in athletics.
Looking at that, I feel isolation is simply pushing back the inevitable.
I am clutching the straw that as viruses eventually mutate, we give this virus time to mutate to something milder before too many people get infected by the more virulent strain. I don't know if there's any basis to this.
Didn't SARS burn out very suddenly? Reading Wiki it doesn't seem clear why, but I'm assuming it wasn't (as now) only the standard response of better hygiene, isolation and quarantine that did it.
I believe from memory it turned out to have a very short period of contagion. If somebody is contagious for 11 days then they can pass on the illness to a lot more people, if they're only contagious for 3 days then it becomes harder for the virus to spread. Plus from memory symptoms struck quicker so they were less likely to be asymptomatic but spreading it and more likely to self-isolate sooner.
Also from what I recall it was that only the symptomatic were infectious. The new bug is much sneakier, as we've already documented several times over.
Looking at that, I feel isolation is simply pushing back the inevitable.
I am clutching the straw that as viruses eventually mutate, we give this virus time to mutate to something milder before too many people get infected by the more virulent strain. I don't know if there's any basis to this.
Didn't SARS burn out very suddenly? Reading Wiki it doesn't seem clear why, but I'm assuming it wasn't (as now) only the standard response of better hygiene, isolation and quarantine that did it.
I believe from memory it turned out to have a very short period of contagion. If somebody is contagious for 11 days then they can pass on the illness to a lot more people, if they're only contagious for 3 days then it becomes harder for the virus to spread. Plus from memory symptoms struck quicker so they were less likely to be asymptomatic but spreading it and more likely to self-isolate sooner.
Also from what I recall it was that only the symptomatic were infectious. The new bug is much sneakier, as we've already documented several times over.
Makes a very big difference.
COVID19 has a much lower morbidity rate than SARS but is better evolved at spreading itself so will kill more people.
I see the BBC might stop spending money on UK Athletics.
A nation weeps (as it switches over to The Masked Singer).
I've worked out, anecdotally, that there seems to be a complete lack of structure and resources for youth in this country outside of football and perhaps cricket. Certainly compared to the US in athletics.
I'm not sure this evidence on how we change our opinions is any case for celebration. Basically most of us will put up with any old shit, once it has started to happen...
Trump currently has the lowest approval ratings of any US President since World War II. You might expect that this reflects that the people who didn’t vote for him dislike him even more now that he is president.
But that’s not what happened. Laurin’s team found that just a couple of days after his inauguration, those same people felt more positively about him.
One explanation might be that their confidence in him was boosted by his inaugural speech. But this wasn’t the case, said Laurin, speaking to me on the BBC’s All in the Mind. “It actually turned out, even with the people in our sample who said he did really badly at the inauguration and hated how he performed there, [that] their attitudes moved in a positive direction.
“This again suggests this isn’t something that you’re learning once this new policy or this new official comes into effect.” Instead, “your brain is scrambling to make you feel okay and allow you to get on with your life”...
I'm not sure this evidence on how we change our opinions is any case for celebration. Basically most of us will put up with any old shit, once it has started to happen...
Trump currently has the lowest approval ratings of any US President since World War II. You might expect that this reflects that the people who didn’t vote for him dislike him even more now that he is president.
But that’s not what happened. Laurin’s team found that just a couple of days after his inauguration, those same people felt more positively about him.
One explanation might be that their confidence in him was boosted by his inaugural speech. But this wasn’t the case, said Laurin, speaking to me on the BBC’s All in the Mind. “It actually turned out, even with the people in our sample who said he did really badly at the inauguration and hated how he performed there, [that] their attitudes moved in a positive direction.
“This again suggests this isn’t something that you’re learning once this new policy or this new official comes into effect.” Instead, “your brain is scrambling to make you feel okay and allow you to get on with your life”...
I think there's a reversion to mean effect and a fear of the unknown effect. Once something has happened it becomes a new normal, whether you like it or not, and if you didn't like it then your fear of it happening will typically be worse than the aftereffects of it happening.
Smith, Leadsom and McVey out of the Cabinet then with the reshuffle under way
Harsh on Smith.
By getting Stormont up and running Boris now has something that will be showing how bad his deal is for Northern Ireland. I suspect Boris would prefer it not to have re-opened.
Smith, Leadsom and McVey out of the Cabinet then with the reshuffle under way
Harsh on Smith.
By getting Stormont up and running Boris now has something that will be showing how bad his deal is for Northern Ireland. I suspect Boris would prefer it not to have re-opened.
I don't think that's right at all. Smith has been sacked because his raison d'etre is complete.
Smith, Leadsom and McVey out of the Cabinet then with the reshuffle under way
Harsh on Smith.
By getting Stormont up and running Boris now has something that will be showing how bad his deal is for Northern Ireland. I suspect Boris would prefer it not to have re-opened.
The deal is not bad for plenty of people in Northern Ireland!
Comments
It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to require the government to act within the law when deporting people.
Incidentally, grooming is often exactly the right word in such gangs. There's often a very good reason (several, normally) why these men are so damaged.
The central point for me is whether the convict has any meaningful links left with the country to which he or she is potentially to be deported. If the answer is no, it seems unfair to both the convict and more importantly the recipient country that they should have to clear up a mess that was created in Britain.
If the answer is yes, put them on the next plane.
This is not a ‘business expense’.
We can only hope that she was not infectious at the time.
Re point 2: I disagree. If the offence is a serious one then if someone is not a citizen deportation is a reasonable policy. The offence needs to be serious, mind. And it should happen as soon as the sentence has been served.
Agree that people should be treated as individuals.
The issue in the recent cases is that some of the people who have been here for years may actually have been British citizens hence the concern re them being deported without getting legal advice. But if they are not British citizens then why should this country have an obligation to keep them here, if they break this country’s rules in serious ways? Should the fact of them having children or having lived here for a while trump the right of a country to say “you are no longer welcome because of your own actions”?
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13124380
...On the evening of Feb. 11, about 100 locals gathered on the beach near the hotel to offer the evacuees moral support by lighting about 3,000 bamboo lanterns.
Their message shown with a projector read, “Only a few more days to go. Hang in there.”
“I could quell my fears thanks to local people,” the man said.
But he said he still is not completely reassured even after being declared free of the virus and is worried about his reception back in society.
He noted that one evacuee who stayed in the hotel tested positive after twice being cleared.
“I am afraid that the test result may not be perceived as reliable by the public,” the man said. “I don’t know if they will accept my clearance.”...
Boris to David Can you sort out a cheapish holiday for me - I'm rather busy
David - phones agency - our PM wants a villa for Christmas what have you got
Agency - thinks a lot of free PR here so let's find one for free so does so.
At no point is anyone thinking of bribery here the Agency is thinking that's an awful, awful lot of free PR for either the villa owner or agency for very little money.
Also £15k doesn't feel like a lot for me. It's close to that for that period of time at some of the hotels I stay in in Barbados and Sandy Lane would be rather more...
https://twitter.com/COVID19__News/status/1227849389038690305
A. Thought he was entitled to a holiday on a private Caribbean island
B. That it never crossed his mind that he should pay for it
C. That he seems affronted that he should explain who provided what.
Did he pay for his own flights?
Who picked up the bills for other items.
But there may be lots of other people with minor cases recovered that never got detected.
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Hat tip to someone on here a couple weeks back.
What more would you have them do? So 45k have got it but are yet to be confirmed as recovered, or not?
The next few weeks will be interesting. Much bigger dataset then.
Not one single flying f*ck.
I DO care about numerous injustices his Government inflict.
But I also think that the official statistics will enormously understate the recovered. If you have modest symptoms going to a hospital is (a) probably risking a more serious infection (b) inconsiderate given the much greater need of others and (c) in China at least increasingly difficult given the travel restrictions. My guess is that very large numbers are getting infected, recovering and having minimal medical input.
Let him take free holidays. Fair play. Good for him and I couldn't give a shit.
I really really DO care about the hellhole of Universal Credit and the evil this Govt are inflicting on countless people.
https://twitter.com/RespectIsVital/status/1227650493620654080?s=20
Ironically, it could well be that the Chinese implementing mass quarantine in the way that only they can, will have saved the world from a serious pandemic here.
Next couple of weeks are I think key. If the number of deaths continues its exponential rise then we’re in big trouble.
What about making sure all front-line medics in the NHS are FFP3 fitted, checked and trained? Whilst the CMO was publicly declaring the NHS to be well prepared last week I was hearing stories that the NHS was not FFP3 ready. Very troubling.
How about preventing all inbound flights from China or at least mandatory quarantine for those coming from that part of the world? As we have established this morning, the molecular test is not 100% sensitive and we will quickly run out of capacity to conduct it on mass (perhaps work on that too).
So quarantine is the only way to be sure and we are going to need a lot of it. What provisions have been put in place for quarantine on a mass-scale? Who knows and some of this information should not be out there in the public. But at the same time, do you think the government is treating this with the utter seriousness that it deserves? From what I can see, a lot of the last few weeks has been focused on discussing John Bercow, the Lords, trains and bridges.
Now is the crucial time, the calm before the storm, the phoney war etc. Get ready now or there will be serious trouble.
In some ways that is good as it makes a vaccine more straightforward, but time is the issue.
"No, no PM, I have always had a deep interest in the affairs of NI, honestly".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-51487171
HS2 minister should be someone who lives in the North.
His beach holiday doesn't interest me. Couldn't care a less. In fact, let him take some free backhander holidays. He's a politician. It's what they do. Meh.
We have FAR more important issues to focus on.
https://twitter.com/g_s_bhogal/status/1225561131122597896?s=21
An important lesson I was taught during A level politics. Everything slots into place once you embrace the paradigm.
That's not to say I think anything dodgy has gone on here. The PR (even before this additional screwup publicity) is worth more than any rental figure would be.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1225561131122597896.html
A nation weeps (as it switches over to The Masked Singer).
He is, I assume, to be replaced with the newly-enobled David Ross.
Just like £50,000 would not be a lot of money to buy a Rolls Royce Phantom.
No one has said that £15,000 or £50,000 is not a lot of money.
I'm sure he is trying to do something on the disparity of incomes. I yield to no one in my dislike of Boris as a solipsistic twat, indeed I'm looking at lack of giving a fuck cock up here rather than conspiracy. But I don't think we can draw any more conclusions from this than we already know.
I wonder whether the Norse story quoted is authentic and whether it was inspiration for Shakespeare, or if the Shakespeare story was original and the Norse story is a bastardised twist on that?
Could be a coincidence but I doubt it.
On both occasions I've not said £15k isn't a lot of money, what I said was that £15k wouldn't even purchase a posh hotel room in Barbados for 10 days (Sandy Lane would be more, I believe some of the Elegant hotel chain would be more as well, there will be others but I don't know).
But most voters don't seem to have that opinion. There is no accountability in this country. Unless you're poor and black.
So Grammar schools and government funded places at Private schools?
COVID19 has a much lower morbidity rate than SARS but is better evolved at spreading itself so will kill more people.
Basically most of us will put up with any old shit, once it has started to happen...
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180622-the-surprising-reason-people-change-their-minds
...Then came a biggest test: views on President Trump before and after his inauguration.
Trump currently has the lowest approval ratings of any US President since World War II. You might expect that this reflects that the people who didn’t vote for him dislike him even more now that he is president.
But that’s not what happened. Laurin’s team found that just a couple of days after his inauguration, those same people felt more positively about him.
One explanation might be that their confidence in him was boosted by his inaugural speech. But this wasn’t the case, said Laurin, speaking to me on the BBC’s All in the Mind. “It actually turned out, even with the people in our sample who said he did really badly at the inauguration and hated how he performed there, [that] their attitudes moved in a positive direction.
“This again suggests this isn’t something that you’re learning once this new policy or this new official comes into effect.” Instead, “your brain is scrambling to make you feel okay and allow you to get on with your life”...