Slightly OT, this is probably the biggest test of his usefulness Cummings has ever experienced in his whole life. Rather than the arguably self-imposed chaos of Brexit, he has a chance to conclusively prove whether his ideas of brutally streamlining governmental functioning in line with science can make a difference.
An interesting thought occurs.
Both Blair and Cameron would have done yesterdays press conference alone. Just the PM at the podium. Having crammed a superficial knowledge of the subject - inhaling 1000 pages of briefing in an all nighter. The answers would have revealed to those who looked closely that they were simply cramming statements, lawyer style.
Boris chose to put the experts front and centre (well, left and right). To defer to them. In public.
This is straight out of Cummings ideas - the politicians we think we want, the Masters of The Brief. All answers and no knowledge. The Camerons and Blairs. Vs the enablers of the provable.
Yes. As soon as I saw the prominence of the Chief Medical Officer I thought Cummings.
Let's see if he knows what he's doing.
The Chief Medical Officer or our Dom?
Our Dom.
I shall ask my civil service friends - I rather imagine there is considerable anger at the technocrats being put above the "Properly Qualified" managers.
On Grayling, isn't all Boris can actually do is put him on the Committee? Who chairs it is up to the Committee - and if enough of them feel strongly enough about it they can elect someone else.
Tell that to the fecking Don't Panickers. They will end up killing us all.
Don’t panic is good advice. Just take it seriously.
No, mild panic is advisable, and has been advisable for weeks. The Chinese panicked, so did the Taiwanese, as did the Japanese, and it has worked.
Western nonchalance is going to be our downfall, if we are not very very careful.
"Meh, it's just the flu"
Idiots.
Losing control and acting irrationally helps no one. We need the Apollo 13 mindset and calmly work out the problem. Details matter and they’re the first to go when you panic.
I guess it depends how you define panic.
We certainly need a higher level of alarm, concern and fearful awareness amongst the general population, so they will adopt social distancing, wash their hands, wear masks, etc. Everything tells us that this works. We can beat this.
It is time to give the people a rather nasty wake up call.
*Waving*
You didn't answer my question.
Why was Angela Merkel's immigration policy so bad?
Ooh, ooh, I know this one!
Because it was in direct contravention of established EU protocols. Specifically, the so-called Dublin rules. She made the decision, apparently, on the spur of the moment, without consultation, because of some pictures she saw on the news.
What do I win?
The Dublin Convention would have obligated the arrival states to process asylum applications. Suspending the rules was intended to relieve the arrival states of that burden. And of course she received consultation, and not from the TV.
Obliged, not obligated. Not being patronising - your English is amazing. This is just a pet peeve of mine.
Obligated in this sense is perfectly good English. Stacks of examples in OED, earliest 1668.
It isn't good English in any sense. People made mistakes in 1668 too. You're welcome.
Nope, Obligated is actually a much better fit in this sentence than obliged. Past tense of the legal or moral sense of obligate. Synonymous with required.
I mean you have to be pretty determined and/or addicted and/or stupid to smoke now.
This is an interesting question and I believe the evidence base is still patchy on exactly why smokers choose to quit (at that particular moment in time). Especially complicated by the fact many smokers consistently claim they want to quit (though they may just be telling researchers what they want to hear!) but do not actually attempt to do so.
In what little research I've seen on this (there's far more out there on how to quit successfully than on how to trigger smokers to initiate an attempt at cessation) it seems the abstract possibility of poor health in the future was less strong a driver than a more concrete health event like being given a diagnosis of poor health by a doctor. Which makes a lot of psychological sense; if you've smoked for a while already, why not, in the former case, decide "I'll give up, just not today, maybe later this year" or similar? And then naturally, whichever day you're in is not the day you're going to quit... Whereas the latter case suggests, if you're going to quit at all, then right now is the time to do so. Would the possibility of an imminent pandemic be sufficiently concrete and undeferrable to cause anyone to quit? Dunno. Don't even know if there's relevant research out there. Neither health promotion nor psychology lies near my specialist area I'm afraid.
There is a separate ethical argument that people deserve to be told - those people who possess this information should make an active effort to convey it to them - what steps they can take to improve their chances of survival in a pandemic. Which they may, quite likely, ignore entirely, but at least they were informed.
(There's also a more draconian ethical argument that, since smoking is now slightly more dangerous than we previously knew, and smokers' capacity to make free, informed decisions about cigarette use is limited by their addictive nature, the government should introduce further restrictions on the sale of tobacco. This is the kind of line that TMay might have bought but I'd be surprised if BoJo did! Though if tobacco sin taxes do get hiked up, I wonder if we'll hear this reasoning/excuse.)
I do hope Boris hasn’t got meetings with any nonagenarians planned...
Every Wednesday with Her Majesty.
Surely Liz is going to locked away now for the next 6 months. And Prince Philip, he is already in terrible health.
Yes can't be long before they fly them up to Balmoral?
I think if they did succumb, we won't hear about it. I think it will be covered up for as long as possible, as it will just have people come out onto the streets.
I assume HM and HRH are being kept in isolation pods at this moment.
I do hope Boris hasn’t got meetings with any nonagenarians planned...
Every Wednesday with Her Majesty.
Surely Liz is going to locked away now for the next 6 months. And Prince Philip, he is already in terrible health.
Yes can't be long before they fly them up to Balmoral?
I think if they did succumb, we won't hear about it. I think it will be covered up for as long as possible, as it will just have people come out onto the streets.
I assume HM and HRH are being kept in isolation pods at this moment.
I mean you have to be pretty determined and/or addicted and/or stupid to smoke now.
This is an interesting question and I believe the evidence base is still patchy on exactly why smokers choose to quit (at that particular moment in time). Especially complicated by the fact many smokers consistently claim they want to quit (though they may just be telling researchers what they want to hear!) but do not actually attempt to do so.
In what little research I've seen on this (there's far more out there on how to quit successfully than on how to trigger smokers to initiate an attempt at cessation) it seems the abstract possibility of poor health in the future was less strong a driver than a more concrete health event like being given a diagnosis of poor health by a doctor. Which makes a lot of psychological sense; if you've smoked for a while already, why not, in the former case, decide "I'll give up, just not today, maybe later this year" or similar? And then naturally, whichever day you're in is not the day you're going to quit... Whereas the latter case suggests, if you're going to quit at all, then right now is the time to do so. Would the possibility of an imminent pandemic be sufficiently concrete and undeferrable to cause anyone to quit? Dunno. Don't even know if there's relevant research out there. Neither health promotion nor psychology lies near my specialist area I'm afraid.
There is a separate ethical argument that people deserve to be told - those people who possess this information should make an active effort to convey it to them - what steps they can take to improve their chances of survival in a pandemic. Which they may, quite likely, ignore entirely, but at least they were informed.
(There's also a more draconian ethical argument that, since smoking is now slightly more dangerous than we previously knew, and smokers' capacity to make free, informed decisions about cigarette use is limited by their addictive nature, the government should introduce further restrictions on the sale of tobacco. This is the kind of line that TMay might have bought but I'd be surprised if BoJo did! Though if tobacco sin taxes do get hiked up, I wonder if we'll hear this reasoning/excuse.)
We'll be at the point soon where homeless people will be lighting up Partagas as the relative difference between them and Lambert and Butler or whatever people smoke now won't be that much.
What’s interesting here is the length of time for results both neg and positive. Brother and family of work colleague back from Italy 9 days since tested still waiting for result
If Sanders can get a win or two, and even if he can't, the next debate event will be dominated by healthcare. He won't give up the fight easily and will use the next debate as a national health platform.
That may be influential on what Biden, or his replacement , does later in the year.
Does anyone else feel the press (and ITN early evening news) like reporting the top end of government predictions health service has to plan for as though that’s the certainty to happen? Reminds me of previous health scares British press went to town on.
Early 90s, Mad Cow Disease. All over the media for weeks in an attempt to scare us shitless. If you missed it, started harmless enough in local media laughing at cows stumbling along. What, are they drunk. No their brains turned into sponge. And enough of these cows have been slipped into the food chain now we have all eaten some. As heartbreaking stories of mothers nursing their twenty year olds who had been bubbly and well till diagnosis, as the brain now turns to sponge and dribbling gibberish death fill the papers, government minister stuffing beef into his kids mouthsin public to save farming industry. I’m not making this up.
Also 90s, was it 94, Flesh Eating Space Bug. Oh boy the press loved reporting a spike in these cases you could have been fooled into thinking we were on verge of a pandemic. a severe disease of sudden onset that spreads rapidly. ... Typically, the infection enters the body through a break in the skin such as a cut or burn. One minute you had a sore throat next your arm is gone, the flesh eaten away, or it’s knawing rapidly through your neck or head. Technically not a flesh eating virus, nor a pandemic, and nor did it come from space. It actually comes from the oysters you had as starter. Amusingly the tabloids still like a bit of space bug from time to time.
Oh for fuck’s sake - Chris Grayling to be Chair of the Intelligence Committee!!
Please tell me this isn’t true.
Don't the MPs on the Committee elect the chair - so technically only membership of the committee is within Johnson's gift? If Committee members feel strongly enough about it, they can choose someone else. We've already had our first Tory rebellion....
EDIT - its all MPs:
A secret ballot using the alternative vote system is used to elect committee chairs, and all MPs (irrespective of party) have a vote on every chair. Despite the introduction of elections for committee chairs in 2010, it is common for many candidates to stand unopposed, somewhat undermining the principle of election and suggesting the choice of committee chair is left to internal party politics.
In 2017, the chair of 17 committees was not contested, up from 11 in 2015. Both SNP chairs (Angus MacNeil for international trade and Pete Wishart for Scottish affairs) were elected unopposed
Does anyone else feel the press (and ITN early evening news) like reporting the top end of government predictions health service has to plan for as though that’s the certainty to happen? Reminds me of previous health scares British press went to town on.
Early 90s, Mad Cow Disease. All over the media for weeks in an attempt to scare us shitless. If you missed it, started harmless enough in local media laughing at cows stumbling along. What, are they drunk. No their brains turned into sponge. And enough of these cows have been slipped into the food chain now we have all eaten some. As heartbreaking stories of mothers nursing their twenty year olds who had been bubbly and well till diagnosis, as the brain now turns to sponge and dribbling gibberish death fill the papers, government minister stuffing beef into his kids mouthsin public to save farming industry. I’m not making this up.
Also 90s, was it 94, Flesh Eating Space Bug. Oh boy the press loved reporting a spike in these cases you could have been fooled into thinking we were on verge of a pandemic. a severe disease of sudden onset that spreads rapidly. ... Typically, the infection enters the body through a break in the skin such as a cut or burn. One minute you had a sore throat next your arm is gone, the flesh eaten away, or it’s knawing rapidly through your neck or head. Technically not a flesh eating virus, nor a pandemic, and nor did it come from space. It actually comes from the oysters you had as starter. Amusingly the tabloids still like a bit of space bug from time to time.
No example tops these two?
Re the BSE epidemic, there were some huge unknowns in the modelling, particularly how long it would take for vCJD to actually afflict someone. What if people were still dying from it forty years later? I actually have a book on this on my shelf devoted to this subject! Digging it out, I can see that as late as 2003, by which point a lot more was known, the 95% confidence interval for the best model of what the final death toll of the epidemic would be still ranged from from ten (as in, count-it-on-your-fingertips) to seven thousand. The central estimate was 200. Guess which figure grabbed the media attention?
This time around, the government's focus has been on the reasonable worst-case scenario and they've refused several opportunities to release their central estimate. So I wouldn't lay the blame on the media for now. It's an interesting strategy - does it suggest the government don't want us to become too complacent, and for all those "don't panic" messages, they're deliberately trying to get us to take this thing seriously?
Oh for fuck’s sake - Chris Grayling to be Chair of the Intelligence Committee!!
Please tell me this isn’t true.
Don't the MPs on the Committee elect the chair - so technically only membership of the committee is within Johnson's gift? If Committee members feel strongly enough about it, they can choose someone else. We've already had our first Tory rebellion....
EDIT - its all MPs:
A secret ballot using the alternative vote system is used to elect committee chairs, and all MPs (irrespective of party) have a vote on every chair. Despite the introduction of elections for committee chairs in 2010, it is common for many candidates to stand unopposed, somewhat undermining the principle of election and suggesting the choice of committee chair is left to internal party politics.
In 2017, the chair of 17 committees was not contested, up from 11 in 2015. Both SNP chairs (Angus MacNeil for international trade and Pete Wishart for Scottish affairs) were elected unopposed
Does anyone else feel the press (and ITN early evening news) like reporting the top end of government predictions health service has to plan for as though that’s the certainty to happen? Reminds me of previous health scares British press went to town on.
Early 90s, Mad Cow Disease. All over the media for weeks in an attempt to scare us shitless. If you missed it, started harmless enough in local media laughing at cows stumbling along. What, are they drunk. No their brains turned into sponge. And enough of these cows have been slipped into the food chain now we have all eaten some. As heartbreaking stories of mothers nursing their twenty year olds who had been bubbly and well till diagnosis, as the brain now turns to sponge and dribbling gibberish death fill the papers, government minister stuffing beef into his kids mouthsin public to save farming industry. I’m not making this up.
Also 90s, was it 94, Flesh Eating Space Bug. Oh boy the press loved reporting a spike in these cases you could have been fooled into thinking we were on verge of a pandemic. a severe disease of sudden onset that spreads rapidly. ... Typically, the infection enters the body through a break in the skin such as a cut or burn. One minute you had a sore throat next your arm is gone, the flesh eaten away, or it’s knawing rapidly through your neck or head. Technically not a flesh eating virus, nor a pandemic, and nor did it come from space. It actually comes from the oysters you had as starter. Amusingly the tabloids still like a bit of space bug from time to time.
No example tops these two?
Re the BSE epidemic, there were some huge unknowns in the modelling, particularly how long it would take for vCJD to actually afflict someone. What if people were still dying from it forty years later? I actually have a book on this on my shelf devoted to this subject! Digging it out, I can see that as late as 2003, by which point a lot more was known, the 95% confidence interval for the best model of what the final death toll of the epidemic would be still ranged from from ten (as in, count-it-on-your-fingertips) to seven thousand. The central estimate was 200. Guess which figure grabbed the media attention?
This time around, the government's focus has been on the reasonable worst-case scenario and they've refused several opportunities to release their central estimate. So I wouldn't lay the blame on the media for now. It's an interesting strategy - does it suggest the government don't want us to become too complacent, and for all those "don't panic" messages, they're deliberately trying to get us to take this thing seriously?
For comparison, the vCJD estimates from earlier on, when data was sparser and uncertainty greater, left a massive amount of wiggle room in their predictions. The upper 95% limit, which you might treat as a kind of "worst-case scenario", as estimated in 2002 was fifty thousand deaths, and in 1997 was ten million deaths!
Bernie bros in my twitters generally speaking about the race in the past tense. Everyone knows it's over, Sanders is going to find it hard to justify keeping it going now there are health risks involved.
I can confirm that Portcullis House was still packed yesterday. And still plenty of handshakes from MPs.
And as I said the day before, the Houses of Parliament still seemed to have masses of young people wandering around the place in groups. Not all of which were British, by the sound of them. Maybe the time to curtail those at least?
I can confirm that Portcullis House was still packed yesterday. And still plenty of handshakes from MPs.
And as I said the day before, the Houses of Parliament still seemed to have masses of young people wandering around the place in groups. Not all of which were British, by the sound of them. Maybe the time to curtail those at least?
If only to protect the young.
The inability of the British government to look 3 weeks into the future is just astonishing. I could understand it when it was just people with spreadsheets theorizing about what *might* happen, but the future has already come to a bunch of other countries. WTF is wrong with these people?
The Democrats pick the one candidate guaranteed to debate - and match up poorly with - Trump. Did Walter Mondale not feel like coming out of retirement?
I can confirm that Portcullis House was still packed yesterday. And still plenty of handshakes from MPs.
And as I said the day before, the Houses of Parliament still seemed to have masses of young people wandering around the place in groups. Not all of which were British, by the sound of them. Maybe the time to curtail those at least?
If only to protect the young.
Sorry to repeat what I said downthread, but purely from a risk management point of view, looking not just at likelihood but the severity of consequences, it would make sense to apply stricter rules (compared to what the general public are being advised to do) around MPs and particularly the Cabinet. We have quite a lot of older MPs, MPs seem to mix a lot with each other and with other senior figures which looks like a ripe situation for spreading viruses (and indeed virus spreading among the elite seems to have happened in Iran, France, Italy...) and this would not be an ideal time for senior leadership (not just politicos but the top end of the civil service) being sent home to self-isolate, let alone ending up in hospital.
The fact that even fairly simple measures don't seem to be being taken makes me wonder whether separate risk assessments for our top tier of government are not being undertaken? Or if they are, whether the risk has been deemed to be very low, e.g. because community transmission is considered highly unlikely?
The Democrats pick the one candidate guaranteed to debate - and match up poorly with - Trump. Did Walter Mondale not feel like coming out of retirement?
I disagree, I think he'll do well in a debate with Trump.
He won't be over-awed by him - which was a risk with Mayor Pete or Baemy - and he's had 9 months of practice, while Trump has systematically eliminated anyone who disagrees with him. Biden's got noticeably sharper during that time, and the weak parts - when the moderator says "what are you going to do about biofuels" and he has to remember a list of minor things his advisors told him he's going to do about biofuels - won't really apply. He does fine on the big themes, and to the extent that it'll be a mess, both candidates will be a mess.
The Democrats pick the one candidate guaranteed to debate - and match up poorly with - Trump. Did Walter Mondale not feel like coming out of retirement?
I disagree, I think he'll do well in a debate with Trump.
He won't be over-awed by him - which was a risk with Mayor Pete or Baemy - and he's had 9 months of practice, while Trump has systematically eliminated anyone who disagrees with him. Biden's got noticeably sharper during that time, and the weak parts - when the moderator says "what are you going to do about biofuels" and he has to remember a list of minor things his advisors told him he's going to do about biofuels - won't really apply. He does fine on the big themes, and to the extent that it'll be a mess, both candidates will be a mess.
I watched the debates. He was not good. Shaky on detail, tending to sputter. A lot of deer in headlights moments. His "best" moments were when he went into full "get off my lawn" shouting mode.
Expert pandemic advice: yes please Reliance on models at the expense of much maligned common sense: no thanks
Some of the pronouncements of the gov do leave one wondering I for one, just cannot get my head around the fact that incoming flights from Italy are not being met with officials handing out ope(otherrs protective equipment). Getting on an airplane at all just now would seem fecking daft. Maybe we want to make sure we suffer thw financial economic impact as one with rest of the world rather than avoiding the worst now only to suffer it later as other countries recover and thrive?
For those thinking trvel to and from countries with simmilar Infection rates of the UK I'd wonder about,(apart from the above), whether you wouldn't be increasing your susceptibility to becoming infected. I mean, in a way it's similar to Russian roulette? Or maybe there's several aquariums that each contain the same number of infectious fish that tend to stay in a specific region of aquarium, why, if wanting to not increase the odds of becoming infected dive into more than the one you are in.
Not good that a health minister got the virus, and she’s a trained nurse who will have followed advice - but has also spent a lot of time in hospitals and around infected people in recent weeks.
I suspect we’re going to see an escalation in that government advice today, with a lot more self-isolation and working from home advised.
I can confirm that Portcullis House was still packed yesterday. And still plenty of handshakes from MPs.
And as I said the day before, the Houses of Parliament still seemed to have masses of young people wandering around the place in groups. Not all of which were British, by the sound of them. Maybe the time to curtail those at least?
If only to protect the young.
The inability of the British government to look 3 weeks into the future is just astonishing. I could understand it when it was just people with spreadsheets theorizing about what *might* happen, but the future has already come to a bunch of other countries. WTF is wrong with these people?
Yes, it’s not longer calm caution, so much as dickering around.
Expert pandemic advice: yes please Reliance on models at the expense of much maligned common sense: no thanks
Some of the pronouncements of the gov do leave one wondering I for one, just cannot get my head around the fact that incoming flights from Italy are not being met with officials handing out ope(otherrs protective equipment). Getting on an airplane at all just now would seem fecking daft. Maybe we want to make sure we suffer thw financial economic impact as one with rest of the world rather than avoiding the worst now only to suffer it later as other countries recover and thrive?
For those thinking trvel to and from countries with simmilar Infection rates of the UK I'd wonder about,(apart from the above), whether you wouldn't be increasing your susceptibility to becoming infected. I mean, in a way it's similar to Russian roulette? Or maybe there's several aquariums that each contain the same number of infectious fish that tend to stay in a specific region of aquarium, why, if wanting to not increase the odds of becoming infected dive into more than the one you are in.
Welcome to PB.
The expert article on CNN, linked below, is worth a read. He thinks travel restrictions are a waste of time, now that the virus is everywhere,
I can confirm that Portcullis House was still packed yesterday. And still plenty of handshakes from MPs.
And as I said the day before, the Houses of Parliament still seemed to have masses of young people wandering around the place in groups. Not all of which were British, by the sound of them. Maybe the time to curtail those at least?
If only to protect the young.
Sorry to repeat what I said downthread, but purely from a risk management point of view, looking not just at likelihood but the severity of consequences, it would make sense to apply stricter rules (compared to what the general public are being advised to do) around MPs and particularly the Cabinet. We have quite a lot of older MPs, MPs seem to mix a lot with each other and with other senior figures which looks like a ripe situation for spreading viruses (and indeed virus spreading among the elite seems to have happened in Iran, France, Italy...) and this would not be an ideal time for senior leadership (not just politicos but the top end of the civil service) being sent home to self-isolate, let alone ending up in hospital.
The fact that even fairly simple measures don't seem to be being taken makes me wonder whether separate risk assessments for our top tier of government are not being undertaken? Or if they are, whether the risk has been deemed to be very low, e.g. because community transmission is considered highly unlikely?
No, it’s because they know already that the virus can’t be stopped. The purpose of the isolation and the rest is now delay, to buy time and spread the load on the NHS. They will want to make an exception for themselves, give their “key” role and the difficulty of going into isolation, and one small group won’t make that much difference on the global impact on health services.
The challenge they are going to have is persuading people to do one thing whilst doing something different themselves,
Still in Israel. Hoping to fly back to the UK today. Spoke to my wife last night. She’s not feeling well. Thinks it’s just a cold. I hope she’s right. Stay safe everyone and stay at home. Do not be a total dick like me!
Oh for fuck’s sake - Chris Grayling to be Chair of the Intelligence Committee!!
Please tell me this isn’t true.
Don't the MPs on the Committee elect the chair - so technically only membership of the committee is within Johnson's gift? If Committee members feel strongly enough about it, they can choose someone else. We've already had our first Tory rebellion....
EDIT - its all MPs:
A secret ballot using the alternative vote system is used to elect committee chairs, and all MPs (irrespective of party) have a vote on every chair. Despite the introduction of elections for committee chairs in 2010, it is common for many candidates to stand unopposed, somewhat undermining the principle of election and suggesting the choice of committee chair is left to internal party politics.
In 2017, the chair of 17 committees was not contested, up from 11 in 2015. Both SNP chairs (Angus MacNeil for international trade and Pete Wishart for Scottish affairs) were elected unopposed
This one is an exception to the election rules, because of its critical nature. Left to an election, MPs might make the mistake of electing an accident prone numpty into thr position.
Still in Israel. Hoping to fly back to the UK today. Spoke to my wife last night. She’s not feeling well. Thinks it’s just a cold. I hope she’s right. Stay safe everyone and stay at home. Do not be a total dick like me!
Hope you have a safe and uneventful trip back, and that Mrs SO is okay.
Great news for oil importers, petrol prices to come flying down in the next few weeks.
Brent Crude at $37 this morning, down 20% on the week but recovering slightly from earlier lows. Close to 50% down since the start of the year.
I wonder if the Saudis see this as a good chance to hit Iran when they are down
I think it’s more about Russia, after they didn’t go along with the OPEC plan to limit production in the wake of reduced demand. Russia wanted to keep prices down (to around $50) to hit US shale, but the Saudis are driving the price down further to where Russia is also going to be taking losses. Saudi Aramco reckon their marginal cost is $2.80 a barrel, so they don’t care how low the price goes in the short term.
Iran is a nice side-effect though, as far as the Saudis are concerned. The Persian Economy must be very close to total collapse now.
I can confirm that Portcullis House was still packed yesterday. And still plenty of handshakes from MPs.
And as I said the day before, the Houses of Parliament still seemed to have masses of young people wandering around the place in groups. Not all of which were British, by the sound of them. Maybe the time to curtail those at least?
If only to protect the young.
The inability of the British government to look 3 weeks into the future is just astonishing. I could understand it when it was just people with spreadsheets theorizing about what *might* happen, but the future has already come to a bunch of other countries. WTF is wrong with these people?
"Business as usual" is clearly not an appropriate message for the legislators to be sending out. For the past fortnight, it should have required an exceptional reason for a face-to-face business meeting with an MP. All meetings should have been done on the phone.
And third party access to Westminster should have stopped.
These measures should certainly be in place as of today. We need our MPs fit and able to be taking tough decisions for the nation.
Still in Israel. Hoping to fly back to the UK today. Spoke to my wife last night. She’s not feeling well. Thinks it’s just a cold. I hope she’s right. Stay safe everyone and stay at home. Do not be a total dick like me!
Hope you have a safe and uneventful trip back, and that Mrs SO is okay.
Biden now backed into 1.07 for the nomination, Sanders right out to 110.
Usually you'd say that it was all over now, but this is the Democrat nomination race and anything can still happen!
Hillary Clinton is only 36 (second favourite!), and Michelle Obama 65.
Lay HRC at 40, pays 2.5% in three months!
Utter insanity
Except - the Democrat primary voters now don't want Sanders. Yet there are reasonable grounds for worrying that Biden's mental faculties are slipping away. Three months, there could be a vacancy for the job of candidate.
HRC v Michelle at the Convention. C'mon, who wouldn't love to see that play out.....
Biden now backed into 1.07 for the nomination, Sanders right out to 110.
Usually you'd say that it was all over now, but this is the Democrat nomination race and anything can still happen!
Hillary Clinton is only 36 (second favourite!), and Michelle Obama 65.
Lay HRC at 40, pays 2.5% in three months!
Utter insanity
Biden is heading for a convincing win at convention, but comes down with the virus beforehand. Doesn’t Clinton stand some chance of being a last minute replacement? Rather than putting up a decisively defeated loser. She has at least won a convention.
SO, really sorry to hear that and I hope Mrs SO is okay.
Eadric, under normal circumstances I think you'd be right. However, the virus isn't aware of social status and seems to be finding its way to cross our barriers.
The Government are idiots. Not quite as bad as Trump but still displaying cavalier disregard to the nation's health.
Biden now backed into 1.07 for the nomination, Sanders right out to 110.
Usually you'd say that it was all over now, but this is the Democrat nomination race and anything can still happen!
Hillary Clinton is only 36 (second favourite!), and Michelle Obama 65.
Lay HRC at 40, pays 2.5% in three months!
Utter insanity
Except - the Democrat primary voters now don't want Sanders. Yet there are reasonable grounds for worrying that Biden's mental faculties are slipping away. Three months, there could be a vacancy for the job of candidate.
HRC v Michelle at the Convention. C'mon, who wouldn't love to see that play out.....
Comments
In what little research I've seen on this (there's far more out there on how to quit successfully than on how to trigger smokers to initiate an attempt at cessation) it seems the abstract possibility of poor health in the future was less strong a driver than a more concrete health event like being given a diagnosis of poor health by a doctor. Which makes a lot of psychological sense; if you've smoked for a while already, why not, in the former case, decide "I'll give up, just not today, maybe later this year" or similar? And then naturally, whichever day you're in is not the day you're going to quit... Whereas the latter case suggests, if you're going to quit at all, then right now is the time to do so. Would the possibility of an imminent pandemic be sufficiently concrete and undeferrable to cause anyone to quit? Dunno. Don't even know if there's relevant research out there. Neither health promotion nor psychology lies near my specialist area I'm afraid.
There is a separate ethical argument that people deserve to be told - those people who possess this information should make an active effort to convey it to them - what steps they can take to improve their chances of survival in a pandemic. Which they may, quite likely, ignore entirely, but at least they were informed.
(There's also a more draconian ethical argument that, since smoking is now slightly more dangerous than we previously knew, and smokers' capacity to make free, informed decisions about cigarette use is limited by their addictive nature, the government should introduce further restrictions on the sale of tobacco. This is the kind of line that TMay might have bought but I'd be surprised if BoJo did! Though if tobacco sin taxes do get hiked up, I wonder if we'll hear this reasoning/excuse.)
https://www.itv.com/news/channel/2020-03-10/first-case-of-coronavirus-confirmed-in-jersey/
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/f94c3c90da5b4e9f9a0b19484dd4bb14
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1237531124848414720?s=20
https://gov.gg/selfisolate
Moves like missing Selma, and bottling out of the Flint speech not playing too well.
Sanders 51%
Biden 46%
https://edition.cnn.com/election/2020/state/michigan
https://www.thelocal.no/20200310/coronavirus-cases-in-norway-at-192-as-first-patients-admitted-to-hospital
https://twitter.com/NewLondonTimes/status/1237473832623116291?s=20
https://edition.cnn.com/election/2020/state/michigan
Sanders 49%
Biden 46%
https://edition.cnn.com/election/2020/state/michigan
https://edition.cnn.com/election/2020/state/michigan
That may be influential on what Biden, or his replacement , does later in the year.
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1237216654242635777?s=20
Please tell me this isn’t true.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/mi/michigan_trump_vs_biden-6761.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/mi/michigan_trump_vs_sanders-6768.html
Early 90s, Mad Cow Disease. All over the media for weeks in an attempt to scare us shitless. If you missed it, started harmless enough in local media laughing at cows stumbling along. What, are they drunk. No their brains turned into sponge. And enough of these cows have been slipped into the food chain now we have all eaten some. As heartbreaking stories of mothers nursing their twenty year olds who had been bubbly and well till diagnosis, as the brain now turns to sponge and dribbling gibberish death fill the papers, government minister stuffing beef into his kids mouthsin public to save farming industry. I’m not making this up.
Also 90s, was it 94, Flesh Eating Space Bug. Oh boy the press loved reporting a spike in these cases you could have been fooled into thinking we were on verge of a pandemic. a severe disease of sudden onset that spreads rapidly. ... Typically, the infection enters the body through a break in the skin such as a cut or burn. One minute you had a sore throat next your arm is gone, the flesh eaten away, or it’s knawing rapidly through your neck or head. Technically not a flesh eating virus, nor a pandemic, and nor did it come from space. It actually comes from the oysters you had as starter. Amusingly the tabloids still like a bit of space bug from time to time.
No example tops these two?
EDIT - its all MPs:
A secret ballot using the alternative vote system is used to elect committee chairs, and all MPs (irrespective of party) have a vote on every chair. Despite the introduction of elections for committee chairs in 2010, it is common for many candidates to stand unopposed, somewhat undermining the principle of election and suggesting the choice of committee chair is left to internal party politics.
In 2017, the chair of 17 committees was not contested, up from 11 in 2015. Both SNP chairs (Angus MacNeil for international trade and Pete Wishart for Scottish affairs) were elected unopposed
https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/election-select-committees
Key will be to get another Tory to stand.
This time around, the government's focus has been on the reasonable worst-case scenario and they've refused several opportunities to release their central estimate. So I wouldn't lay the blame on the media for now. It's an interesting strategy - does it suggest the government don't want us to become too complacent, and for all those "don't panic" messages, they're deliberately trying to get us to take this thing seriously?
And as I said the day before, the Houses of Parliament still seemed to have masses of young people wandering around the place in groups. Not all of which were British, by the sound of them. Maybe the time to curtail those at least?
If only to protect the young.
https://twitter.com/awzurcher/status/1237565189366501378?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1237565189366501378&ref_url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-us-canada-51808352
The fact that even fairly simple measures don't seem to be being taken makes me wonder whether separate risk assessments for our top tier of government are not being undertaken? Or if they are, whether the risk has been deemed to be very low, e.g. because community transmission is considered highly unlikely?
https://twitter.com/Fyrishsunset/status/1237522557139640320?s=20
He won't be over-awed by him - which was a risk with Mayor Pete or Baemy - and he's had 9 months of practice, while Trump has systematically eliminated anyone who disagrees with him. Biden's got noticeably sharper during that time, and the weak parts - when the moderator says "what are you going to do about biofuels" and he has to remember a list of minor things his advisors told him he's going to do about biofuels - won't really apply. He does fine on the big themes, and to the extent that it'll be a mess, both candidates will be a mess.
https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1237570187102048256?s=20
Reliance on models at the expense of much maligned common sense: no thanks
Some of the pronouncements of the gov do leave one wondering
I for one, just cannot get my head around the fact that incoming flights from Italy are not being met with officials handing out ope(otherrs protective equipment).
Getting on an airplane at all just now would seem fecking daft.
Maybe we want to make sure we suffer thw financial economic impact as one with rest of the world rather than avoiding the worst now only to suffer it later as other countries recover and thrive?
For those thinking trvel to and from countries with simmilar Infection rates of the UK I'd wonder about,(apart from the above), whether you wouldn't be increasing your susceptibility to becoming infected. I mean, in a way it's similar to Russian roulette? Or maybe there's several aquariums that each contain the same number of infectious fish that tend to stay in a specific region of aquarium, why, if wanting to not increase the odds of becoming infected dive into more than the one you are in.
We're all done here.
Hopefully I'll be able to use the opportunity to pick up an electric car at a discount.
Arsenal players came into contact with Olympiakos owner who has Coronavirus (at Arsenal v Olympiakos).
14 days expires tomorrow so Arsenal can play on Saturday.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/51829511
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3074496/southeast-asia-risk-missing-coronavirus-cases-amid
Not good that a health minister got the virus, and she’s a trained nurse who will have followed advice - but has also spent a lot of time in hospitals and around infected people in recent weeks.
I suspect we’re going to see an escalation in that government advice today, with a lot more self-isolation and working from home advised.
Usually you'd say that it was all over now, but this is the Democrat nomination race and anything can still happen!
Hillary Clinton is only 36 (second favourite!), and Michelle Obama 65.
Lay HRC at 40, pays 2.5% in three months!
Brent Crude at $37 this morning, down 20% on the week but recovering slightly from earlier lows. Close to 50% down since the start of the year.
The expert article on CNN, linked below, is worth a read. He thinks travel restrictions are a waste of time, now that the virus is everywhere,
The challenge they are going to have is persuading people to do one thing whilst doing something different themselves,
EDIT: Ah, International Women's Day - there's a fucking surprise.
Iran is a nice side-effect though, as far as the Saudis are concerned. The Persian Economy must be very close to total collapse now.
And third party access to Westminster should have stopped.
These measures should certainly be in place as of today. We need our MPs fit and able to be taking tough decisions for the nation.
HRC v Michelle at the Convention. C'mon, who wouldn't love to see that play out.....
Eadric, under normal circumstances I think you'd be right. However, the virus isn't aware of social status and seems to be finding its way to cross our barriers.
The Government are idiots. Not quite as bad as Trump but still displaying cavalier disregard to the nation's health.
Let's change the subject.
What will be in the budget and how much will fuel duty get ramped?
Me - I'm off out to hoard a tank of diesel.