So I turn Sky on - they telling me that Labour has labelled the government "a disgrace"
Then they play an interview from Ashworth saying that certain employers are a disgrace......
I'm begining to hate our media
Kay Burley is a disgrace. Full of her own importance and crass questions
I honestly struggle to understand why you ever watch Sky @Big_G_NorthWales; it cannot be good for your blood pressure.
Other news outlets are available - switch from Sky and do your health a favour!
Just get the news from PB like the rest of us. It has a wide variety of intelligent, well-informed people, a constant link to the latest updates from Twitter frequently courtesy of ScottP, and comes with free awesome punning from me.
What more could anyone want?
Is there a premium subscription that comes without the puns?
Yes, but it comes instead with extra posts from @TSE on AV and pineapple pizza.
In that case, I'll Napoli carry on with the free service.
Come on BigG. With the total absense of an opposition someone has to question Boris' judgement.
By and large people are on board with Boris, even those who normally would not be in the tent. That isn't to say criticism where it is due and justification for decisions made should be off limits.
One doctor saying things are fine, does not mean others are not having difficulties.
Please curtail the partisanship. If all constructive dissent from Boris' decision making is seen to be unacceptable, we are in the realms of Donald Trump-land.
Burley along with a few others are poor journalists
I am not suggesting criticism is wrong, far from it when it is constructive, and Boris is not a messiah and does make mistakes.
As far as Trump is concerned, if you follow my posts I have consistently condemned him 100% and he will be responsible for thousands of unnecessary deaths
You are rarely shy to use the c word doctor, the most special c word, so what is your prognosis for the English cricket season?
Here’s my thoughts to set discussion rolling. No cricket till end of May, eight rounds of the championship was meant to be complete then. Revenue will be an issue, so if any cricket it will emphasis on the tv contracts, very short games like T20 and 100. Even 28 of May seems optimistic, surely the 4 day season will need to be rolled over till next year as there will be no time for that competition be anything realistic or fair? However there could be time, and some crowds, for local 4 day friendlies? York’s v lancs, Surrey v Kent, glos v som, wors v Warwick etc, to keep the 4 day hand in for a proper resumption next year.
Situation might not even allow cricket in June or July?
It's easy to practice social distancing at a county cricket match. So perhaps it will be back before most other sports?
It is at a four day match. Not in the Blast, or a Test.
So I turn Sky on - they telling me that Labour has labelled the government "a disgrace"
Then they play an interview from Ashworth saying that certain employers are a disgrace......
I'm begining to hate our media
Kay Burley is a disgrace. Full of her own importance and crass questions
I honestly struggle to understand why you ever watch Sky @Big_G_NorthWales; it cannot be good for your blood pressure.
Other news outlets are available - switch from Sky and do your health a favour!
Just get the news from PB like the rest of us. It has a wide variety of intelligent, well-informed people, a constant link to the latest updates from Twitter frequently courtesy of ScottP, and comes with free awesome punning from me.
What more could anyone want?
To be honest PB is a first class news medium
And I think you queried re a covid 19 vaccine. Dr Foxy confirmed one will be available sometime in the future but when is a different question
No one has "confirmed" any such thing.
Dr Foxy did to me last night but the timeline is impossible to predict
You are rarely shy to use the c word doctor, the most special c word, so what is your prognosis for the English cricket season?
Here’s my thoughts to set discussion rolling. No cricket till end of May, eight rounds of the championship was meant to be complete then. Revenue will be an issue, so if any cricket it will emphasis on the tv contracts, very short games like T20 and 100. Even 28 of May seems optimistic, surely the 4 day season will need to be rolled over till next year as there will be no time for that competition be anything realistic or fair? However there could be time, and some crowds, for local 4 day friendlies? York’s v lancs, Surrey v Kent, glos v som, wors v Warwick etc, to keep the 4 day hand in for a proper resumption next year.
Situation might not even allow cricket in June or July?
It's easy to practice social distancing at a county cricket match. So perhaps it will be back before most other sports?
It's easy to practice social distancing at a county cricket match until the captain brings the spinner on.
So I turn Sky on - they telling me that Labour has labelled the government "a disgrace"
Then they play an interview from Ashworth saying that certain employers are a disgrace......
I'm begining to hate our media
Kay Burley is a disgrace. Full of her own importance and crass questions
I honestly struggle to understand why you ever watch Sky @Big_G_NorthWales; it cannot be good for your blood pressure.
Other news outlets are available - switch from Sky and do your health a favour!
Just get the news from PB like the rest of us. It has a wide variety of intelligent, well-informed people, a constant link to the latest updates from Twitter frequently courtesy of ScottP, and comes with free awesome punning from me.
What more could anyone want?
To be honest PB is a first class news medium
And I think you queried re a covid 19 vaccine. Dr Foxy confirmed one will be available sometime in the future but when is a different question
Thanks. That is some comfort. However, time frames with vaccines are likely to be pretty long as I understand it.
So I turn Sky on - they telling me that Labour has labelled the government "a disgrace"
Then they play an interview from Ashworth saying that certain employers are a disgrace......
I'm begining to hate our media
Kay Burley is a disgrace. Full of her own importance and crass questions
I honestly struggle to understand why you ever watch Sky @Big_G_NorthWales; it cannot be good for your blood pressure.
Other news outlets are available - switch from Sky and do your health a favour!
Just get the news from PB like the rest of us. It has a wide variety of intelligent, well-informed people, a constant link to the latest updates from Twitter frequently courtesy of ScottP, and comes with free awesome punning from me.
What more could anyone want?
Is there a premium subscription that comes without the puns?
Yes, but it comes instead with extra posts from @TSE on AV and pineapple pizza.
In that case, I'll Napoli carry on with the free service.
So I turn Sky on - they telling me that Labour has labelled the government "a disgrace"
Then they play an interview from Ashworth saying that certain employers are a disgrace......
I'm begining to hate our media
Kay Burley is a disgrace. Full of her own importance and crass questions
I honestly struggle to understand why you ever watch Sky @Big_G_NorthWales; it cannot be good for your blood pressure.
Other news outlets are available - switch from Sky and do your health a favour!
Just get the news from PB like the rest of us. It has a wide variety of intelligent, well-informed people, a constant link to the latest updates from Twitter frequently courtesy of ScottP, and comes with free awesome punning from me.
What more could anyone want?
Is there a premium subscription that comes without the puns?
Yes, but it comes instead with extra posts from @TSE on AV and pineapple pizza.
In that case, I'll Napoli carry on with the free service.
That is a pun for four seasons.
How are you and Mrs Foxy doing? - last I saw you were worried you might be coming down with somethng. Hope you are both ok.
If the last 24 hours are repeated then the US will go top of the table (for cases) above China and Italy in 24 hours from now.
Re Trump approval - I do get the sense that most people in the US currently have no idea of the scale of the virus. It is surely going to be a very big moment and a shock to most Americans when they hear the US is top of the table.
Obviously deaths trail cases, but USA is still at 3 deaths/1M, which is the same as South Korea, half the UK rate, and 1/40 of the Italian figure.
Daily deaths are around 0.75/1M. Italy has had more than 10 deaths/1M for the last six days, also 10+ in Spain since 3 days.
Countries closer to Spain/Italian levels than the US include the Netherlands (5/1M daily) and France (4/1M).
Some parts of the US are at similar levels, notably Louisana (4/1M/day), and I believe New York City (where the cases are concentrated, not the rural regions) is close to 10/1M/day, although clearly still short of Lombardy levels.
So at the moment the US is far from top of the table, and attention still focused on blue New York. Time will come, but the virus is a way behind Europe in the US.
The fact that much of the US is low population density works massively in their favour. If you drive from Denver to Salt Lake City you'll go 500 miles without passing anywhere bigger than... well, Beford.
It'd be like going from London to Edinburgh and passing... almost nothing of note...
But the counter to that is that the US has done bugger all social distancing (outside New York, Washington and California). They have a massive number of people who will go to work whatever, because there's no social system. And there's no public healthcare.
Put those together with a government that is largely in denial, and I think CV-19 could be the first crisis ever that European countries handle better than the US.
Hmm. Doesn't that just mean that even in the wide open spaces of the American West and Mountains, that the population is highly urbanised, and at risk?
From this map we see that Wyoming has 29 cases in a population of 577,000, and California 2,500 in 40 million. Per Capita, that is pretty similar.
California still higher, 0.00006% of the population have it compared to 0.00005% in Wyoming (and of course New York city is the biggest city in the US with the most cases, not Los Angeles)
So I turn Sky on - they telling me that Labour has labelled the government "a disgrace"
Then they play an interview from Ashworth saying that certain employers are a disgrace......
I'm begining to hate our media
Kay Burley is a disgrace. Full of her own importance and crass questions
I honestly struggle to understand why you ever watch Sky @Big_G_NorthWales; it cannot be good for your blood pressure.
Other news outlets are available - switch from Sky and do your health a favour!
Just get the news from PB like the rest of us. It has a wide variety of intelligent, well-informed people, a constant link to the latest updates from Twitter frequently courtesy of ScottP, and comes with free awesome punning from me.
What more could anyone want?
To be honest PB is a first class news medium
And I think you queried re a covid 19 vaccine. Dr Foxy confirmed one will be available sometime in the future but when is a different question
No one has "confirmed" any such thing.
Dr Foxy did to me last night but the timeline is impossible to predict
I very much doubt he did. They could fail to find one that works (like the common cold), or find one that works but isn't safe, or find one that works, but not for long, or find one that only partly works (like for normal flu). Foxy may be our resident medic but he doesn't have a crystal ball.
Sky reporting figures from Indonesia seem to be underplaying the outbreak and it has been suggested it is suffering worse than Iran !!!
I don't think this is true yet.
Certainly Jakarta is pretty screwed, and now they've closed it down, people are turning to their villages (where being penniless is generally better than in a big city), which they would do in a month or so's time anyway, for the end of Ramadan.
Officially there are only 55 deaths, but that includes seven doctors, which is an absurdly low ratio. My guess is the real figure of deaths is much higher, BUT Indonesia has 260 million people, so even then it's not a castrophe.
I would note that Bali has been lying about Corona and claiming to have very few cases, but probably this is because they don't have a lab and test results take 11 days from Jakarta if they come. There was a case detected in Singapore of a woman who had visited her sister suffering pneumonia in Jakarta back in February. There was thus certainly significant covid-19 in Jakarta at that time.
My feeling is that covid-19 is in large cities all over Sumatra, Java and Bali, but not yet in the smaller towns in Sumatra or rural Java. So it has a way to go.
Also note that at least 1000 of 15,000 at a Koran recital event in Malaysia were found + COVID-19, including almost half the 80 Bruneian attendees, but out of 700 Indonesians I've not seen one confirmed case reported WITHIN Indonesia (there are reported cases from Malaysia of Indonesians).
If there was a split - which, I am honest, I do not expect there to be - the more dangerous scenario would be the two sides splitting the Nationalist vote (which let us not forget, is a minority of the overall electorate) and letting Unionist candidates through the middle.
But my suspicion is all that will happen is a lot of damaging mud slinging, which may topple Sturgeon and cost the SNP ten seats next year but would not be fatal to it. Ultimately, there are huge policy differences over just about everything in the SNP - Europe, Education, Health, Policing - but because they all want independence everything else is secondary. This will just be another sore.
It will be interesting what becomes of the SNP once the goal of independence is achieved. At the moment they are able to secure the votes of people with very different politics - e.g. our own @malcolmg and @Theuniondivvie who I sense from their posts are right and left (of centre) respectively - drawn together by a shared belief that Scotland does not belong in the UK. Such people, and there must be loads, will probably not be voting for the same party post indy.
They have to get independence first and still most Scots are not voting SNP
If there was a split - which, I am honest, I do not expect there to be - the more dangerous scenario would be the two sides splitting the Nationalist vote (which let us not forget, is a minority of the overall electorate) and letting Unionist candidates through the middle.
But my suspicion is all that will happen is a lot of damaging mud slinging, which may topple Sturgeon and cost the SNP ten seats next year but would not be fatal to it. Ultimately, there are huge policy differences over just about everything in the SNP - Europe, Education, Health, Policing - but because they all want independence everything else is secondary. This will just be another sore.
It will be interesting what becomes of the SNP once the goal of independence is achieved. At the moment they are able to secure the votes of people with very different politics - e.g. our own @malcolmg and @Theuniondivvie who I sense from their posts are right and left (of centre) respectively - drawn together by a shared belief that Scotland does not belong in the UK. Such people, and there must be loads, will probably not be voting for the same party post indy.
Come on BigG. With the total absense of an opposition someone has to question Boris' judgement.
By and large people are on board with Boris, even those who normally would not be in the tent. That isn't to say criticism where it is due and justification for decisions made should be off limits.
One doctor saying things are fine, does not mean others are not having difficulties.
Please curtail the partisanship. If all constructive dissent from Boris' decision making is seen to be unacceptable, we are in the realms of Donald Trump-land.
Burley along with a few others are poor journalists
I am not suggesting criticism is wrong, far from it when it is constructive, and Boris is not a messiah and does make mistakes.
As far as Trump is concerned, if you follow my posts I have consistently condemned him 100% and he will be responsible for thousands of unnecessary deaths
Boris is not Trump in any fair comparison
Firstly: Burley gives everyone a hard time, it is her job.
Secondly: Boris is not the Messiah, he is a very naughty boy.
Thirdly and fourthly: I was not comparing Johnson to Trump. I was merely highlighting the direction of travel if constructive criticism of Boris is to be curtailed. Besides which Trump is beyond comparison.
I would note that Bali has been lying about Corona and claiming to have very few cases, but probably this is because they don't have a lab and test results take 11 days from Jakarta if they come. There was a case detected in Singapore of a woman who had visited her sister suffering pneumonia in Jakarta back in February. There was thus certainly significant covid-19 in Jakarta at that time.
Their claims were always going to be bali credible.
Come on BigG. With the total absense of an opposition someone has to question Boris' judgement.
By and large people are on board with Boris, even those who normally would not be in the tent. That isn't to say criticism where it is due and justification for decisions made should be off limits.
One doctor saying things are fine, does not mean others are not having difficulties.
Please curtail the partisanship. If all constructive dissent from Boris' decision making is seen to be unacceptable, we are in the realms of Donald Trump-land.
Burley along with a few others are poor journalists
I am not suggesting criticism is wrong, far from it when it is constructive, and Boris is not a messiah and does make mistakes.
As far as Trump is concerned, if you follow my posts I have consistently condemned him 100% and he will be responsible for thousands of unnecessary deaths
Boris is not Trump in any fair comparison
Any journalist who is asking why is testing not at the levels you promised are doing there job.
Most journalists are now asking. Not that they are getting a proper answer though.
WHO 9 days ago.
If you do one thing test test and test again.
Our levels are pathetic. Let's hope next week means next week this time.
So I turn Sky on - they telling me that Labour has labelled the government "a disgrace"
Then they play an interview from Ashworth saying that certain employers are a disgrace......
I'm begining to hate our media
Kay Burley is a disgrace. Full of her own importance and crass questions
I honestly struggle to understand why you ever watch Sky @Big_G_NorthWales; it cannot be good for your blood pressure.
Other news outlets are available - switch from Sky and do your health a favour!
Just get the news from PB like the rest of us. It has a wide variety of intelligent, well-informed people, a constant link to the latest updates from Twitter frequently courtesy of ScottP, and comes with free awesome punning from me.
What more could anyone want?
To be honest PB is a first class news medium
And I think you queried re a covid 19 vaccine. Dr Foxy confirmed one will be available sometime in the future but when is a different question
No one has "confirmed" any such thing.
Dr Foxy did to me last night but the timeline is impossible to predict
I very much doubt he did. They could fail to find one that works (like the common cold), or find one that works but isn't safe, or find one that works, but not for long, or find one that only partly works (like for normal flu). Foxy may be our resident medic but he doesn't have a crystal ball.
I think it highly likely. It is certainly getting all the attention that it needs, but it is of course not certain.
I am isolating with a dry cough, but no fever. O2 sats fine. Trying to get tested...
"Dyson gets order to produce 10,000 newly-designed ventilators for NHS" according to the Guardian.
I hope they are also going to place an order with Ventilator Challenge UK too - wouldn't want to see us putting all our eggs in one untested basket.
It would also be sensible to take up the UK's allocation of the EU's procurement. Guaranteed delivery of a proven product in two weeks time. If you don't need it, you can sell or pass it on.
So there were several dozen corona infections arriving mostly in North Sumatra from Malaysia in early March, and spreading from there.
Local officials are varying between 'we get priority testing' and 'I'm an important official, I don't need to be tested'.
There is little social distancing as for example yesterday I saw people playing football, volleyball, and in the last weeks there have been mass Islamic marches against Corona (chanting useless words in Arabic, essentially, while spreading the virus). But there is definitely less movement of people than normal.
The small town hospitals in Indonesia are a bit like the small town schools - utterly useless, so I imagine people are dying of covid-19 without being tested.
I don't see this as an orchestrated cover-up but more like par-for-the-course Indonesian incompetence.
Until there is a real instant test then deaths will be understated (especially as people do their own burials - ok you pay a grave digger, but otherwise it's a family affair - so there's not necessarily a cause of death beyond 'terhendak Tuhan' (god's will))
I don't believe Indonesia is yet Iran not least because it's far too large. Certainly no sign of mass deaths in rural villages far from Jakarta yet.
So I turn Sky on - they telling me that Labour has labelled the government "a disgrace"
Then they play an interview from Ashworth saying that certain employers are a disgrace......
I'm begining to hate our media
Kay Burley is a disgrace. Full of her own importance and crass questions
I honestly struggle to understand why you ever watch Sky @Big_G_NorthWales; it cannot be good for your blood pressure.
Other news outlets are available - switch from Sky and do your health a favour!
Just get the news from PB like the rest of us. It has a wide variety of intelligent, well-informed people, a constant link to the latest updates from Twitter frequently courtesy of ScottP, and comes with free awesome punning from me.
What more could anyone want?
To be honest PB is a first class news medium
And I think you queried re a covid 19 vaccine. Dr Foxy confirmed one will be available sometime in the future but when is a different question
Thanks. That is some comfort. However, time frames with vaccines are likely to be pretty long as I understand it.
And success isn't guaranteed. People have been searching for a vaccine for the common cold for a lifetime.
Not really. The 'common cold' is a number of different viruses and a universal vaccine would be extraordinarily difficult if not impossible. (There have been various efforts to produce antivirals, which is what people talk about when referring to a "cure for the common cold".)
There have been few vaccine research efforts against individual viruses, but such a vaccine would not be a commercially viable prospect. It's hard enough to get uptake of the seasonal flu vaccine, which saves lives; who is going to spend up to a billion dollars on developing a vaccine available in bulk, which gives immunity to perhaps a quarter or a fifth of that season's colds ? And how many would get vaccinated even if it were available ?
In contrast, there are something like forty different efforts ongoing to come up with a vaccine for this thing. Success is reasonably likely - but we've no good idea how long immunity might last.
If the last 24 hours are repeated then the US will go top of the table (for cases) above China and Italy in 24 hours from now.
Re Trump approval - I do get the sense that most people in the US currently have no idea of the scale of the virus. It is surely going to be a very big moment and a shock to most Americans when they hear the US is top of the table.
Obviously deaths trail cases, but USA is still at 3 deaths/1M, which is the same as South Korea, half the UK rate, and 1/40 of the Italian figure.
Daily deaths are around 0.75/1M. Italy has had more than 10 deaths/1M for the last six days, also 10+ in Spain since 3 days.
Countries closer to Spain/Italian levels than the US include the Netherlands (5/1M daily) and France (4/1M).
Some parts of the US are at similar levels, notably Louisana (4/1M/day), and I believe New York City (where the cases are concentrated, not the rural regions) is close to 10/1M/day, although clearly still short of Lombardy levels.
So at the moment the US is far from top of the table, and attention still focused on blue New York. Time will come, but the virus is a way behind Europe in the US.
The fact that much of the US is low population density works massively in their favour. If you drive from Denver to Salt Lake City you'll go 500 miles without passing anywhere bigger than... well, Beford.
It'd be like going from London to Edinburgh and passing... almost nothing of note...
But the counter to that is that the US has done bugger all social distancing (outside New York, Washington and California). They have a massive number of people who will go to work whatever, because there's no social system. And there's no public healthcare.
Put those together with a government that is largely in denial, and I think CV-19 could be the first crisis ever that European countries handle better than the US.
Hmm. Doesn't that just mean that even in the wide open spaces of the American West and Mountains, that the population is highly urbanised, and at risk?
From this map we see that Wyoming has 29 cases in a population of 577,000, and California 2,500 in 40 million. Per Capita, that is pretty similar.
A nine-fold increase in a week? Wow, that's scary!
Re: the US low population density. To support @Foxy's point, the US urbanisation rate (which is surely the significant factor) is almost identical to the UK's... and higher than Italy, Spain and France's.
Easily done with most diseases if you dont test much one week and then suddenly do loads the next. So much analysis goes into the numbers by commentators, very naturally, but far too little weight is given to remembering that the numbers we have are rarely consistent or comparable.
So I turn Sky on - they telling me that Labour has labelled the government "a disgrace"
Then they play an interview from Ashworth saying that certain employers are a disgrace......
I'm begining to hate our media
Kay Burley is a disgrace. Full of her own importance and crass questions
I honestly struggle to understand why you ever watch Sky @Big_G_NorthWales; it cannot be good for your blood pressure.
Other news outlets are available - switch from Sky and do your health a favour!
Just get the news from PB like the rest of us. It has a wide variety of intelligent, well-informed people, a constant link to the latest updates from Twitter frequently courtesy of ScottP, and comes with free awesome punning from me.
What more could anyone want?
To be honest PB is a first class news medium
And I think you queried re a covid 19 vaccine. Dr Foxy confirmed one will be available sometime in the future but when is a different question
No one has "confirmed" any such thing.
Dr Foxy did to me last night but the timeline is impossible to predict
I very much doubt he did. They could fail to find one that works (like the common cold), or find one that works but isn't safe, or find one that works, but not for long, or find one that only partly works (like for normal flu). Foxy may be our resident medic but he doesn't have a crystal ball.
I think it highly likely. It is certainly getting all the attention that it needs, but it is of course not certain.
I am isolating with a dry cough, but no fever. O2 sats fine. Trying to get tested...
If there was a split - which, I am honest, I do not expect there to be - the more dangerous scenario would be the two sides splitting the Nationalist vote (which let us not forget, is a minority of the overall electorate) and letting Unionist candidates through the middle.
But my suspicion is all that will happen is a lot of damaging mud slinging, which may topple Sturgeon and cost the SNP ten seats next year but would not be fatal to it. Ultimately, there are huge policy differences over just about everything in the SNP - Europe, Education, Health, Policing - but because they all want independence everything else is secondary. This will just be another sore.
It will be interesting what becomes of the SNP once the goal of independence is achieved. At the moment they are able to secure the votes of people with very different politics - e.g. our own @malcolmg and @Theuniondivvie who I sense from their posts are right and left (of centre) respectively - drawn together by a shared belief that Scotland does not belong in the UK. Such people, and there must be loads, will probably not be voting for the same party post indy.
Posts like this will be the closest we come to it.
So I turn Sky on - they telling me that Labour has labelled the government "a disgrace"
Then they play an interview from Ashworth saying that certain employers are a disgrace......
I'm begining to hate our media
Kay Burley is a disgrace. Full of her own importance and crass questions
I honestly struggle to understand why you ever watch Sky @Big_G_NorthWales; it cannot be good for your blood pressure.
Other news outlets are available - switch from Sky and do your health a favour!
Just get the news from PB like the rest of us. It has a wide variety of intelligent, well-informed people, a constant link to the latest updates from Twitter frequently courtesy of ScottP, and comes with free awesome punning from me.
What more could anyone want?
Is there a premium subscription that comes without the puns?
Yes, but it comes instead with extra posts from @TSE on AV and pineapple pizza.
Dear god, now we know what hell looks like.
Indeed. A place with no puns.
We need a vote on the whole Pineapple Pizza thing. Now obviously, the first thing to decide is the voting system....
Pineapple on Pizzas is great.
Pineapple Bansturbators should be fed compulsory grapefruit on their pizzas.
And even if the death stats are understated (which they are), then even 55 x 4 is still far from Iran's 2077, with a population four times larger. Not to say things won't get horribly worse, but do note that the idiot religious nutters here love Saudi Arabia, which, er banned Indonesians going there for piligrmages many months ago, and then followed up by closing all the mosques.
And they have now only ONE death.
The Saudis are smart at extracting $1 billion+ a year from Indonesians going over there to impress the neighbours that they are rich enough to go on pilgrimage, and they are smart enough to have shut things down before people died. Their Indonesian admirers are not so clever, and the mosques here are still open....
If there was a split - which, I am honest, I do not expect there to be - the more dangerous scenario would be the two sides splitting the Nationalist vote (which let us not forget, is a minority of the overall electorate) and letting Unionist candidates through the middle.
But my suspicion is all that will happen is a lot of damaging mud slinging, which may topple Sturgeon and cost the SNP ten seats next year but would not be fatal to it. Ultimately, there are huge policy differences over just about everything in the SNP - Europe, Education, Health, Policing - but because they all want independence everything else is secondary. This will just be another sore.
It will be interesting what becomes of the SNP once the goal of independence is achieved. At the moment they are able to secure the votes of people with very different politics - e.g. our own @malcolmg and @Theuniondivvie who I sense from their posts are right and left (of centre) respectively - drawn together by a shared belief that Scotland does not belong in the UK. Such people, and there must be loads, will probably not be voting for the same party post indy.
The point is they fear independence won't happen at all. Coronavirus is a disaster for them as is Brexit. They represent huge barriers which did not exist in 2014 and Sturgeon is being blamed for letting the momentum slip, despite her obvious successes and credibility so far as the public is concerned. This is stressing the coalition and Salmond's massive sense of entitlement and grievance is a match about to be dropped into a tinder-box.
All the old uglies, misogynists and bampots are re-appearing who they need to keep under wraps (Macneil, Cherry, Neil et al) and this is horrifying the more moderate members not to mention the women who are appalled at Salmond's behaviour.
We are indeed part of a conspiracy to pay 0% interest to our depositors while charging up to 40% on loans, an international licence to print money.
The excesses of Global Capitalism. Seem to be getting a few converts on the level of and quick access to benefits too from people who haven't shown the slightest interest in it before.
So I turn Sky on - they telling me that Labour has labelled the government "a disgrace"
Then they play an interview from Ashworth saying that certain employers are a disgrace......
I'm begining to hate our media
Kay Burley is a disgrace. Full of her own importance and crass questions
I honestly struggle to understand why you ever watch Sky @Big_G_NorthWales; it cannot be good for your blood pressure.
Other news outlets are available - switch from Sky and do your health a favour!
Just get the news from PB like the rest of us. It has a wide variety of intelligent, well-informed people, a constant link to the latest updates from Twitter frequently courtesy of ScottP, and comes with free awesome punning from me.
What more could anyone want?
To be honest PB is a first class news medium
And I think you queried re a covid 19 vaccine. Dr Foxy confirmed one will be available sometime in the future but when is a different question
No one has "confirmed" any such thing.
Dr Foxy did to me last night but the timeline is impossible to predict
I very much doubt he did. They could fail to find one that works (like the common cold), or find one that works but isn't safe, or find one that works, but not for long, or find one that only partly works (like for normal flu). Foxy may be our resident medic but he doesn't have a crystal ball.
My money is on the "find one that works, but not for long". There are many strains of the Corona virus out there in this pandemic and the Europe dominant "variants" are, to the virologists at least, different to the Wuhan "variants". The really imporant questions are are these different variants identified as the same by our immune systems? And can a Corona vaccine be developed which covers all these strains? Or are the mutation steps so large that after a few months the vaccine has to be tweaked/redeveloped/started anew?
So I turn Sky on - they telling me that Labour has labelled the government "a disgrace"
Then they play an interview from Ashworth saying that certain employers are a disgrace......
I'm begining to hate our media
Kay Burley is a disgrace. Full of her own importance and crass questions
I honestly struggle to understand why you ever watch Sky @Big_G_NorthWales; it cannot be good for your blood pressure.
Other news outlets are available - switch from Sky and do your health a favour!
Just get the news from PB like the rest of us. It has a wide variety of intelligent, well-informed people, a constant link to the latest updates from Twitter frequently courtesy of ScottP, and comes with free awesome punning from me.
What more could anyone want?
Is there a premium subscription that comes without the puns?
Yes, but it comes instead with extra posts from @TSE on AV and pineapple pizza.
Dear god, now we know what hell looks like.
Indeed. A place with no puns.
We need a vote on the whole Pineapple Pizza thing. Now obviously, the first thing to decide is the voting system....
Pineapple on Pizzas is great.
Pineapple Bansturbators should be fed compulsory grapefruit on their pizzas.
"Dyson gets order to produce 10,000 newly-designed ventilators for NHS" according to the Guardian.
I hope they are also going to place an order with Ventilator Challenge UK too - wouldn't want to see us putting all our eggs in one untested basket.
Serious observation.
Our Dyson V6 Absolute is so unreliable, a victory for style over substance, that we have bought a G-Tech Air ram, which although a bit fragile works perfectly.
So I turn Sky on - they telling me that Labour has labelled the government "a disgrace"
Then they play an interview from Ashworth saying that certain employers are a disgrace......
I'm begining to hate our media
Kay Burley is a disgrace. Full of her own importance and crass questions
I honestly struggle to understand why you ever watch Sky @Big_G_NorthWales; it cannot be good for your blood pressure.
Other news outlets are available - switch from Sky and do your health a favour!
Just get the news from PB like the rest of us. It has a wide variety of intelligent, well-informed people, a constant link to the latest updates from Twitter frequently courtesy of ScottP, and comes with free awesome punning from me.
What more could anyone want?
To be honest PB is a first class news medium
And I think you queried re a covid 19 vaccine. Dr Foxy confirmed one will be available sometime in the future but when is a different question
No one has "confirmed" any such thing.
Dr Foxy did to me last night but the timeline is impossible to predict
I very much doubt he did. They could fail to find one that works (like the common cold), or find one that works but isn't safe, or find one that works, but not for long, or find one that only partly works (like for normal flu). Foxy may be our resident medic but he doesn't have a crystal ball.
I think it highly likely. It is certainly getting all the attention that it needs, but it is of course not certain.
I am isolating with a dry cough, but no fever. O2 sats fine. Trying to get tested...
Get well soon!
Thanks for the confirmation that it is NOT "confirmed". We are of course rightly hopeful.
So I turn Sky on - they telling me that Labour has labelled the government "a disgrace"
Then they play an interview from Ashworth saying that certain employers are a disgrace......
I'm begining to hate our media
Kay Burley is a disgrace. Full of her own importance and crass questions
I honestly struggle to understand why you ever watch Sky @Big_G_NorthWales; it cannot be good for your blood pressure.
Other news outlets are available - switch from Sky and do your health a favour!
Just get the news from PB like the rest of us. It has a wide variety of intelligent, well-informed people, a constant link to the latest updates from Twitter frequently courtesy of ScottP, and comes with free awesome punning from me.
What more could anyone want?
To be honest PB is a first class news medium
And I think you queried re a covid 19 vaccine. Dr Foxy confirmed one will be available sometime in the future but when is a different question
No one has "confirmed" any such thing.
Dr Foxy did to me last night but the timeline is impossible to predict
I very much doubt he did. They could fail to find one that works (like the common cold), or find one that works but isn't safe, or find one that works, but not for long, or find one that only partly works (like for normal flu). Foxy may be our resident medic but he doesn't have a crystal ball.
I think it highly likely. It is certainly getting all the attention that it needs, but it is of course not certain.
I am isolating with a dry cough, but no fever. O2 sats fine. Trying to get tested...
It is a disgrace you and others working with Covid 19 victims haven't been tested.
LBC reporting the likes of HSBC and Lloyds charging <12% interest and personal guarantees on government backed business interruption loans.
Another triumph for HYUFD!</p>
What loans do not come with guarantees?
The ones that have a Gov't guarantee shouldn't need a personal guarantee but banks can do what they like . It's their money.
The loans were a smokescreen to give an impression of doing something, on the day everyone thought wow £300bn, thats a lot. A couple of days later, when people had thought about it, it was clear the vast majority of businesses that needed help would rather go bust and start again, than take on this debt. By then they had the 80% furloughed wages plan which is much much better - still need details though!!
For this reason Id imagine the loans are actually pretty low risk for the banks, the ones that apply will have a strong belief that they can repay them. For those that really couldnt make it, they are generally better off letting the business go bust, avoid having to pay employees, suppliers and rents, and then simply start again with a different name. Unfortunately there are way too many businesses doing this repetitively in good times regardless of a crisis, the rules clearly need strengthening to make this option harder.
The other day I was mentioning that my faith in humanity had been given a real knock by the way some people had been behaving over the last few weeks. For fairly obvious reasons this thread header - or rather the story behind it - goes a long way to repairing that damage. And it is humanity as a whole, not just our own island. Even where not officially organised, you can see examples of this from all around the world at the moment.
Over the last few weeks my facebook page has had a few of people posting a quote from the late Margaret Mead the anthropologist. I have no idea how true the quote actually is in this day of fake news but in a way it doesn't matter as the underlying principle remains.
"Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about clay pots, tools for hunting, grinding-stones, or religious artefacts.
Mead instead said that the first evidence of civilization was a 15,000 years old fractured femur found in an archaeological site. In societies without the benefits of modern medicine, it takes about six weeks of rest for a fractured femur to heal. This particular bone had been broken and had healed.
Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, you cannot drink or hunt for food.
A broken femur that has healed is evidence that another person has taken time to stay with the fallen, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended them through recovery. A healed femur indicates that someone has helped a fellow human, rather than abandoning them to save their own life."
As I said I have no idea how true the story is but there is an underlying truth to it even if it is nothing more than an allegory.
It is at a four day match. Not in the Blast, or a Test.
Yes, I did mean the county game specifically. I sometimes pay a fiver on the gate at Lords to go to a day 4 of a Middx game. It's one of the things I do when I have the urge to get away from everybody and take stock.
Come on BigG. With the total absense of an opposition someone has to question Boris' judgement.
By and large people are on board with Boris, even those who normally would not be in the tent. That isn't to say criticism where it is due and justification for decisions made should be off limits.
One doctor saying things are fine, does not mean others are not having difficulties.
Please curtail the partisanship. If all constructive dissent from Boris' decision making is seen to be unacceptable, we are in the realms of Donald Trump-land.
Burley along with a few others are poor journalists
I am not suggesting criticism is wrong, far from it when it is constructive, and Boris is not a messiah and does make mistakes.
As far as Trump is concerned, if you follow my posts I have consistently condemned him 100% and he will be responsible for thousands of unnecessary deaths
Boris is not Trump in any fair comparison
Firstly: Burley gives everyone a hard time, it is her job.
Secondly: Boris is not the Messiah, he is a very naughty boy.
Thirdly and fourthly: I was not comparing Johnson to Trump. I was merely highlighting the direction of travel if constructive criticism of Boris is to be curtailed. Besides which Trump is beyond comparison.
I have no problem with the media giving power a good grilling. But Burley is very poor at that job.
More forensic enquiry, less gotcha! entertainment required.
So I turn Sky on - they telling me that Labour has labelled the government "a disgrace"
Then they play an interview from Ashworth saying that certain employers are a disgrace......
I'm begining to hate our media
Kay Burley is a disgrace. Full of her own importance and crass questions
I honestly struggle to understand why you ever watch Sky @Big_G_NorthWales; it cannot be good for your blood pressure.
Other news outlets are available - switch from Sky and do your health a favour!
Just get the news from PB like the rest of us. It has a wide variety of intelligent, well-informed people, a constant link to the latest updates from Twitter frequently courtesy of ScottP, and comes with free awesome punning from me.
What more could anyone want?
To be honest PB is a first class news medium
And I think you queried re a covid 19 vaccine. Dr Foxy confirmed one will be available sometime in the future but when is a different question
No one has "confirmed" any such thing.
Dr Foxy did to me last night but the timeline is impossible to predict
I very much doubt he did. They could fail to find one that works (like the common cold), or find one that works but isn't safe, or find one that works, but not for long, or find one that only partly works (like for normal flu). Foxy may be our resident medic but he doesn't have a crystal ball.
My money is on the "find one that works, but not for long". There are many strains of the Corona virus out there in this pandemic and the Europe dominant "variants" are, to the virologists at least, different to the Wuhan "variants". The really imporant questions are are these different variants identified as the same by our immune systems? And can a Corona vaccine be developed which covers all these strains? Or are the mutation steps so large that after a few months the vaccine has to be tweaked/redeveloped/started anew?
"Dyson gets order to produce 10,000 newly-designed ventilators for NHS" according to the Guardian.
I hope they are also going to place an order with Ventilator Challenge UK too - wouldn't want to see us putting all our eggs in one untested basket.
Serious observation.
Our Dyson V6 Absolute is so unreliable, a victory for style over substance, that we have bought a G-Tech Air ram, which although a bit fragile works perfectly.
Indeed. Which would you rather have if you were reliant on a ventilator, relaibility ot style?
It is truly jaw dropping. My favourite bit is where they changed the size of the grills in their Mexican branch because they couldn't get large enough suitcases of drug money through them.
It is at a four day match. Not in the Blast, or a Test.
Yes, I did mean the county game specifically. I sometimes pay a fiver on the gate at Lords to go to a day 4 of a Middx game. It's one of the things I do when I have the urge to get away from everybody and take stock.
I predict no 4 day County Cricket in 2020. I am a life member of @Derbyshireccc but my payback period already reached.
So I turn Sky on - they telling me that Labour has labelled the government "a disgrace"
Then they play an interview from Ashworth saying that certain employers are a disgrace......
I'm begining to hate our media
Kay Burley is a disgrace. Full of her own importance and crass questions
I honestly struggle to understand why you ever watch Sky @Big_G_NorthWales; it cannot be good for your blood pressure.
Other news outlets are available - switch from Sky and do your health a favour!
Just get the news from PB like the rest of us. It has a wide variety of intelligent, well-informed people, a constant link to the latest updates from Twitter frequently courtesy of ScottP, and comes with free awesome punning from me.
What more could anyone want?
Is there a premium subscription that comes without the puns?
Yes, but it comes instead with extra posts from @TSE on AV and pineapple pizza.
Dear god, now we know what hell looks like.
Indeed. A place with no puns.
We need a vote on the whole Pineapple Pizza thing. Now obviously, the first thing to decide is the voting system....
Pineapple on Pizzas is great.
Pineapple Bansturbators should be fed compulsory grapefruit on their pizzas.
So I turn Sky on - they telling me that Labour has labelled the government "a disgrace"
Then they play an interview from Ashworth saying that certain employers are a disgrace......
I'm begining to hate our media
Kay Burley is a disgrace. Full of her own importance and crass questions
I honestly struggle to understand why you ever watch Sky @Big_G_NorthWales; it cannot be good for your blood pressure.
Other news outlets are available - switch from Sky and do your health a favour!
Just get the news from PB like the rest of us. It has a wide variety of intelligent, well-informed people, a constant link to the latest updates from Twitter frequently courtesy of ScottP, and comes with free awesome punning from me.
What more could anyone want?
To be honest PB is a first class news medium
And I think you queried re a covid 19 vaccine. Dr Foxy confirmed one will be available sometime in the future but when is a different question
Thanks. That is some comfort. However, time frames with vaccines are likely to be pretty long as I understand it.
And success isn't guaranteed. People have been searching for a vaccine for the common cold for a lifetime.
And successful vaccines were made against rhinoviruses, which cause most colds, but they only worked against one or a few similar types so they gave up when they realised there were over 160 different rhinoviruses.
So I turn Sky on - they telling me that Labour has labelled the government "a disgrace"
Then they play an interview from Ashworth saying that certain employers are a disgrace......
I'm begining to hate our media
Kay Burley is a disgrace. Full of her own importance and crass questions
I honestly struggle to understand why you ever watch Sky @Big_G_NorthWales; it cannot be good for your blood pressure.
Other news outlets are available - switch from Sky and do your health a favour!
Just get the news from PB like the rest of us. It has a wide variety of intelligent, well-informed people, a constant link to the latest updates from Twitter frequently courtesy of ScottP, and comes with free awesome punning from me.
What more could anyone want?
To be honest PB is a first class news medium
And I think you queried re a covid 19 vaccine. Dr Foxy confirmed one will be available sometime in the future but when is a different question
No one has "confirmed" any such thing.
Dr Foxy did to me last night but the timeline is impossible to predict
I very much doubt he did. They could fail to find one that works (like the common cold), or find one that works but isn't safe, or find one that works, but not for long, or find one that only partly works (like for normal flu). Foxy may be our resident medic but he doesn't have a crystal ball.
My money is on the "find one that works, but not for long". There are many strains of the Corona virus out there in this pandemic and the Europe dominant "variants" are, to the virologists at least, different to the Wuhan "variants". The really imporant questions are are these different variants identified as the same by our immune systems? And can a Corona vaccine be developed which covers all these strains? Or are the mutation steps so large that after a few months the vaccine has to be tweaked/redeveloped/started anew?
I dont know anything about virology but if you are right that there are significantly different variants, it is plausible that most of the international variations in growth and death rates are due to how the virus mutates locally, and little to do with how governments are responding. Another reason to judge govts responses by comparison of each countries data (without detailed context) of very low value.
So I turn Sky on - they telling me that Labour has labelled the government "a disgrace"
Then they play an interview from Ashworth saying that certain employers are a disgrace......
I'm begining to hate our media
Kay Burley is a disgrace. Full of her own importance and crass questions
I honestly struggle to understand why you ever watch Sky @Big_G_NorthWales; it cannot be good for your blood pressure.
Other news outlets are available - switch from Sky and do your health a favour!
Just get the news from PB like the rest of us. It has a wide variety of intelligent, well-informed people, a constant link to the latest updates from Twitter frequently courtesy of ScottP, and comes with free awesome punning from me.
What more could anyone want?
To be honest PB is a first class news medium
And I think you queried re a covid 19 vaccine. Dr Foxy confirmed one will be available sometime in the future but when is a different question
Thanks. That is some comfort. However, time frames with vaccines are likely to be pretty long as I understand it.
And success isn't guaranteed. People have been searching for a vaccine for the common cold for a lifetime.
Not really. The 'common cold' is a number of different viruses and a universal vaccine would be extraordinarily difficult if not impossible. (There have been various efforts to produce antivirals, which is what people talk about when referring to a "cure for the common cold".)
There have been few vaccine research efforts against individual viruses, but such a vaccine would not be a commercially viable prospect. It's hard enough to get uptake of the seasonal flu vaccine, which saves lives; who is going to spend up to a billion dollars on developing a vaccine available in bulk, which gives immunity to perhaps a quarter or a fifth of that season's colds ? And how many would get vaccinated even if it were available ?
In contrast, there are something like forty different efforts ongoing to come up with a vaccine for this thing. Success is reasonably likely - but we've no good idea how long immunity might last.
I saw a statement a while ago that for other coronaviruses reinfection is rare in the same or the following season.
You are rarely shy to use the c word doctor, the most special c word, so what is your prognosis for the English cricket season?
Here’s my thoughts to set discussion rolling. No cricket till end of May, eight rounds of the championship was meant to be complete then. Revenue will be an issue, so if any cricket it will emphasis on the tv contracts, very short games like T20 and 100. Even 28 of May seems optimistic, surely the 4 day season will need to be rolled over till next year as there will be no time for that competition be anything realistic or fair? However there could be time, and some crowds, for local 4 day friendlies? York’s v lancs, Surrey v Kent, glos v som, wors v Warwick etc, to keep the 4 day hand in for a proper resumption next year.
Situation might not even allow cricket in June or July?
It's easy to practice social distancing at a county cricket match. So perhaps it will be back before most other sports?
It is at a four day match. Not in the Blast, or a Test.
It won’t be when it’s the only sport on in the country and no one is at work!
We are indeed part of a conspiracy to pay 0% interest to our depositors while charging up to 40% on loans, an international licence to print money.
The excesses of Global Capitalism. Seem to be getting a few converts on the level of and quick access to benefits too from people who haven't shown the slightest interest in it before.
With the economic crisis and unemployment threatening millions of small businesses, self employed and middle class the whole base of the Conservative vote is in a place normally occupied by non voters and voters for other parties. The response we are seeing is right but it is also about politics and the next election.
If there was a split - which, I am honest, I do not expect there to be - the more dangerous scenario would be the two sides splitting the Nationalist vote (which let us not forget, is a minority of the overall electorate) and letting Unionist candidates through the middle.
But my suspicion is all that will happen is a lot of damaging mud slinging, which may topple Sturgeon and cost the SNP ten seats next year but would not be fatal to it. Ultimately, there are huge policy differences over just about everything in the SNP - Europe, Education, Health, Policing - but because they all want independence everything else is secondary. This will just be another sore.
It will be interesting what becomes of the SNP once the goal of independence is achieved. At the moment they are able to secure the votes of people with very different politics - e.g. our own @malcolmg and @Theuniondivvie who I sense from their posts are right and left (of centre) respectively - drawn together by a shared belief that Scotland does not belong in the UK. Such people, and there must be loads, will probably not be voting for the same party post indy.
The point is they fear independence won't happen at all. Coronavirus is a disaster for them as is Brexit. They represent huge barriers which did not exist in 2014 and Sturgeon is being blamed for letting the momentum slip, despite her obvious successes and credibility so far as the public is concerned. This is stressing the coalition and Salmond's massive sense of entitlement and grievance is a match about to be dropped into a tinder-box.
All the old uglies, misogynists and bampots are re-appearing who they need to keep under wraps (Macneil, Cherry, Neil et al) and this is horrifying the more moderate members not to mention the women who are appalled at Salmond's behaviour.
Nicola has conducted herself well so far during the Coronavirus, but for the SNP's long term objectives it's horrific. The UK Government is being seen as the Government again, for better or worse. Anyone living in England will not understand quite what a change that is. The Scottish Government is struggling for airtime. The EU is appearing as an irrelevance at best. When we get through this the celebration will be nationwide.
Those looking for an amusing diversion from Covid-19 could do worse than contemplate the brewing civil war in the SNP following the Salmond trial. There is an extraordinary op-ed in the Aberdeen Press and Journal this morning by Alex Bell, former speechwriter and head of policy for Salmond, which explains the conspiracy theory behind Salmond's protestations and also amounts to a forensic character assassination of his former boss. Summary: "Alex Salmond won't stop, because he can't, his insecurity drives him to never stop." See here for the gory details: https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/opinion/columnists/alex-bell/2101624/alex-bell-when-your-best-defence-is-im-sleazy-but-not-criminal-its-nothing-to-smile-about/
On one side of the divide, a party for paranoid sex-pests. On the other.....
If there was a split - which, I am honest, I do not expect there to be - the more dangerous scenario would be the two sides splitting the Nationalist vote (which let us not forget, is a minority of the overall electorate) and letting Unionist candidates through the middle.
But my suspicion is all that will happen is a lot of damaging mud slinging, which may topple Sturgeon and cost the SNP ten seats next year but would not be fatal to it. Ultimately, there are huge policy differences over just about everything in the SNP - Europe, Education, Health, Policing - but because they all want independence everything else is secondary. This will just be another sore.
One of the problems the splitters have (and I rate the chance of a split moderately high) is that they are all chiefs. Salmond is too much of a twat to take a back seat, Cherry clearly wants to be first minister, Angus McNeil and other assorted roasters are too loose cannon to have any sort of discipline to form an effective breakaway. Some of them might be mad enough to think they have a personal vote rather than getting in on the SNP name recognition but most inthi k recognise that it is SNP or Bust to maintain their job.
As a result it will likely all be proxy wars within the SNP, but that still leaves only one vacancy for head of the SNP and Salmond and Cherry can't both fill it.
If there was a split - which, I am honest, I do not expect there to be - the more dangerous scenario would be the two sides splitting the Nationalist vote (which let us not forget, is a minority of the overall electorate) and letting Unionist candidates through the middle.
But my suspicion is all that will happen is a lot of damaging mud slinging, which may topple Sturgeon and cost the SNP ten seats next year but would not be fatal to it. Ultimately, there are huge policy differences over just about everything in the SNP - Europe, Education, Health, Policing - but because they all want independence everything else is secondary. This will just be another sore.
It will be interesting what becomes of the SNP once the goal of independence is achieved. At the moment they are able to secure the votes of people with very different politics - e.g. our own @malcolmg and @Theuniondivvie who I sense from their posts are right and left (of centre) respectively - drawn together by a shared belief that Scotland does not belong in the UK. Such people, and there must be loads, will probably not be voting for the same party post indy.
More than once, they have both hinted they would expect a split in the SNP after independence, with the right absorbing some unionists and the left the remains of Labour, to form two new parties. Bit like the in Sinn Fein from 1922-28 once independence was de facto achieved, but hopefully without the thousands of deaths.
The SNP would shatter into at least 3 parties within seconds of independence being achieved.
Not on my knowledge of Scots and remember I was schooled in Berwick onTweed and when I was 9 the nationalists were marking Scotland across the border bridge. Indeed Berwick has changed hands 13 times
Furthermore I married a Scot and lived in Edinburgh for 5 years
I just cannot see a pathway to it especially now the economic damage will need the whole union working together
LBC reporting the likes of HSBC and Lloyds charging <12% interest and personal guarantees on government backed business interruption loans.
Another triumph for HYUFD!</p>
What loans do not come with guarantees?
Oodles of loans don't have guarantees. In fact the only loans I have taken out in my 65 years with a guarantee have been my past mortgages (which of course is what mortgage means). I currently owe several tens of thousand pound (because I play the 0% interest game). None are secured.
"Dyson gets order to produce 10,000 newly-designed ventilators for NHS" according to the Guardian.
I hope they are also going to place an order with Ventilator Challenge UK too - wouldn't want to see us putting all our eggs in one untested basket.
Dyson: House Engineer for the Brexit wing of the Conservative Party.
Dyson are merely making them, the design engineering was from the Technology Partnership in strongly Remain South Cambs. In this we really are all in it together.
It is at a four day match. Not in the Blast, or a Test.
Yes, I did mean the county game specifically. I sometimes pay a fiver on the gate at Lords to go to a day 4 of a Middx game. It's one of the things I do when I have the urge to get away from everybody and take stock.
I predict no 4 day County Cricket in 2020. I am a life member of @Derbyshireccc but my payback period already reached.
Perhaps a 4 day knockout cup could be squeezed in ?
"Dyson gets order to produce 10,000 newly-designed ventilators for NHS" according to the Guardian.
I hope they are also going to place an order with Ventilator Challenge UK too - wouldn't want to see us putting all our eggs in one untested basket.
Serious observation.
Our Dyson V6 Absolute is so unreliable, a victory for style over substance, that we have bought a G-Tech Air ram, which although a bit fragile works perfectly.
Indeed. Which would you rather have if you were reliant on a ventilator, relaibility ot style?
If I needed a ventilator, I reckon I'd take one that has a 51% chance of getting me through the day, if the alternative is no ventilator at all....
So I turn Sky on - they telling me that Labour has labelled the government "a disgrace"
Then they play an interview from Ashworth saying that certain employers are a disgrace......
I'm begining to hate our media
Kay Burley is a disgrace. Full of her own importance and crass questions
I honestly struggle to understand why you ever watch Sky @Big_G_NorthWales; it cannot be good for your blood pressure.
Other news outlets are available - switch from Sky and do your health a favour!
Just get the news from PB like the rest of us. It has a wide variety of intelligent, well-informed people, a constant link to the latest updates from Twitter frequently courtesy of ScottP, and comes with free awesome punning from me.
What more could anyone want?
Is there a premium subscription that comes without the puns?
Yes, but it comes instead with extra posts from @TSE on AV and pineapple pizza.
In that case, I'll Napoli carry on with the free service.
I slept for 12 hours last night which is completely bizarre.
My emails and phone calls (and stress levels!) have fallen off a cliff. I live on 24/7 call and get a few hundred emails a day - all accessible on the omnipotent smart-phone. I think I realise now how afflicting it is on your mental health to have a constant work-phone.
I don't think I've ever slept for 12 hours in my life!
So I turn Sky on - they telling me that Labour has labelled the government "a disgrace"
Then they play an interview from Ashworth saying that certain employers are a disgrace......
I'm begining to hate our media
Kay Burley is a disgrace. Full of her own importance and crass questions
I honestly struggle to understand why you ever watch Sky @Big_G_NorthWales; it cannot be good for your blood pressure.
Other news outlets are available - switch from Sky and do your health a favour!
To be honest Ben it just runs in the background all day and it is good for breaking news
Fortunately, my blood pressure is controlled even when listening to Burley
Fair enough - I do worry for you though!
That is so nice of you but I am fine and truely blessed
Well, I hope you are having similar weather ours. Yet another glorious day here in Dorset.
Yes and here in Llandudno but the planes and vapour trails have all but gone
Oddly, they are back here this morning - two planes overhead and a series of other contrails.
Noticed more air freight according to flight radar
Since a lot of airfreight went in passenger planes the widespread groundings have sent freight rates through the roof. Some airlines (Cathay) are returning some of their passenger planes to service carrying freight only in their holds.
Not on my knowledge of Scots and remember I was schooled in Berwick onTweed and when I was 9 the nationalists were marking Scotland across the border bridge. Indeed Berwick has changed hands 13 times
Furthermore I married a Scot and lived in Edinburgh for 5 years
I just cannot see a pathway to it especially now the economic damage will need the whole union working together
The virus would seem to have lessened the chances. I agree on that.
If there was a split - which, I am honest, I do not expect there to be - the more dangerous scenario would be the two sides splitting the Nationalist vote (which let us not forget, is a minority of the overall electorate) and letting Unionist candidates through the middle.
But my suspicion is all that will happen is a lot of damaging mud slinging, which may topple Sturgeon and cost the SNP ten seats next year but would not be fatal to it. Ultimately, there are huge policy differences over just about everything in the SNP - Europe, Education, Health, Policing - but because they all want independence everything else is secondary. This will just be another sore.
It will be interesting what becomes of the SNP once the goal of independence is achieved. At the moment they are able to secure the votes of people with very different politics - e.g. our own @malcolmg and @Theuniondivvie who I sense from their posts are right and left (of centre) respectively - drawn together by a shared belief that Scotland does not belong in the UK. Such people, and there must be loads, will probably not be voting for the same party post indy.
The point is they fear independence won't happen at all. Coronavirus is a disaster for them as is Brexit. They represent huge barriers which did not exist in 2014 and Sturgeon is being blamed for letting the momentum slip, despite her obvious successes and credibility so far as the public is concerned. This is stressing the coalition and Salmond's massive sense of entitlement and grievance is a match about to be dropped into a tinder-box.
All the old uglies, misogynists and bampots are re-appearing who they need to keep under wraps (Macneil, Cherry, Neil et al) and this is horrifying the more moderate members not to mention the women who are appalled at Salmond's behaviour.
Nicola has conducted herself well so far during the Coronavirus, but for the SNP's long term objectives it's horrific. The UK Government is being seen as the Government again, for better or worse. Anyone living in England will not understand quite what a change that is. The Scottish Government is struggling for airtime. The EU is appearing as an irrelevance at best. When we get through this the celebration will be nationwide.
The "window" of what is politically possible has just shrunk dramatically. And it does not stretch to a massive constitutional upheaval like Scottish independence.
And, even if bumbling Boris seems unattractive to centre-left Scots, they will soon have a Labour Party led by a grown-up to vote for as an alternative.
The premise of IndyRef2 is to rejoin the EU. Not sure that will look hugely attractive in the wash-up after coronavirus. Many of the weaker members will be knackered and will be looking for assistance. Who would want to resign from the UK to join that? (Apart from MalcG, of course. Well, maybe not actually, he seems to have a sensible attachment to his wonga).
"Dyson gets order to produce 10,000 newly-designed ventilators for NHS" according to the Guardian.
I hope they are also going to place an order with Ventilator Challenge UK too - wouldn't want to see us putting all our eggs in one untested basket.
Dyson: House Engineer for the Brexit wing of the Conservative Party.
Dyson are merely making them, the design engineering was from the Technology Partnership in strongly Remain South Cambs. In this we really are all in it together.
Mr. Tyndall, African hunting dogs will help their injured, allowing three-legged family members to turn up late and feed at kill sites.
In the excellent Painted Wolves (another name from the surprisingly enormous list for the species) episode of Dynasties, the mate of the alpha female, who was too old to escape lions, chose to stay with her and die at her side.
[NB that part was not captured on camera but was stated during the programme].
I slept for 12 hours last night which is completely bizarre.
My emails and phone calls (and stress levels!) have fallen off a cliff. I live on 24/7 call and get a few hundred emails a day - all accessible on the omnipotent smart-phone. I think I realise now how afflicting it is on your mental health to have a constant work-phone.
I don't think I've ever slept for 12 hours in my life!
I don't understand why and how it became acceptable to expect people to answer work emails/calls outside work hours, (except that it probably started in New York City and/or San Francisco).
On topic, my understanding from a skim read of the volunteer scheme documents is that recipients who will pay for food will potentially be called from the supermarket to pay via telephone using a code word to reassure individuals there is no fraud going on. There was also reference to cash payments, keeping distance, and sanitising cash also.
Are they all going to be CRB checked ? Seems a huge task if so. However you have to protect vulnerable people.
It's DBS
Those who volunteer to transport patients will be checked. Others essentially running errands wont be.
How the hell are they going to check everyone. Strikes me as impossible in the timeframe
Some (e.g. teachers, taxi drivers) may already have DBS clearance of course. You can make it portable.
The law says it cannot be portable afaik. Yiu need a separate check for each job.. ludicrous i know. They should be time based.. I am volunteering in the tea shop at the local.hospital post retirement... but its been impossible to meet the guy who does the check paperwork and i am in limbo at the moment. I hope he diesnt have to check 5000 applicatoons...
No, you can make them portable. You have been able to do so for four years.
The snag is, as it costs extra most people don't bother to.
The update service you refer to is free for volunteers but £13 per year those who need a DBS check for their job. If you subscribe to the update service your check is definitely portable.
If you don't subscribe to the update service it is up to your employer or voluntary organisation whether or not to accept a previous DBS check. If they choose to do so they need to see your certificate, get certain details from it and contact the organisation involved to find out if the DBS gave them any additional information that isn't on the certificate. Most organisations won't accept previous DBS checks simply because it is easier to get a new one and means they will get the most up to date information.
So I turn Sky on - they telling me that Labour has labelled the government "a disgrace"
Then they play an interview from Ashworth saying that certain employers are a disgrace......
I'm begining to hate our media
Kay Burley is a disgrace. Full of her own importance and crass questions
I honestly struggle to understand why you ever watch Sky @Big_G_NorthWales; it cannot be good for your blood pressure.
Other news outlets are available - switch from Sky and do your health a favour!
Just get the news from PB like the rest of us. It has a wide variety of intelligent, well-informed people, a constant link to the latest updates from Twitter frequently courtesy of ScottP, and comes with free awesome punning from me.
What more could anyone want?
Is there a premium subscription that comes without the puns?
Yes, but it comes instead with extra posts from @TSE on AV and pineapple pizza.
In that case, I'll Napoli carry on with the free service.
The money is expected only to be available to those self-employed people who can prove they have been directly affected, estimated at about 1.7 million out of nearly five million.
Workers are likely to have to demonstrate they have suffered a loss of earnings by comparing to past income tax receipts.
I slept for 12 hours last night which is completely bizarre.
My emails and phone calls (and stress levels!) have fallen off a cliff. I live on 24/7 call and get a few hundred emails a day - all accessible on the omnipotent smart-phone. I think I realise now how afflicting it is on your mental health to have a constant work-phone.
I don't think I've ever slept for 12 hours in my life!
Always switch your phone at least half an hour off before bedtime and don't take it to your bedroom. The best way of getting a good night's sleep.
Comments
I hope they are also going to place an order with Ventilator Challenge UK too - wouldn't want to see us putting all our eggs in one untested basket.
I am not suggesting criticism is wrong, far from it when it is constructive, and Boris is not a messiah and does make mistakes.
As far as Trump is concerned, if you follow my posts I have consistently condemned him 100% and he will be responsible for thousands of unnecessary deaths
Boris is not Trump in any fair comparison
edit: 1989 new cases and 16 deaths
Great.
Today, when I tried to book another slot, I was told I am not on their list of vulnerable customers.
Certainly Jakarta is pretty screwed, and now they've closed it down, people are turning to their villages (where being penniless is generally better than in a big city), which they would do in a month or so's time anyway, for the end of Ramadan.
https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/03/26/families-start-idul-fitri-mudik-early-despite-covid-19-warning.html
Officially there are only 55 deaths, but that includes seven doctors, which is an absurdly low ratio. My guess is the real figure of deaths is much higher, BUT Indonesia has 260 million people, so even then it's not a castrophe.
I would note that Bali has been lying about Corona and claiming to have very few cases, but probably this is because they don't have a lab and test results take 11 days from Jakarta if they come. There was a case detected in Singapore of a woman who had visited her sister suffering pneumonia in Jakarta back in February. There was thus certainly significant covid-19 in Jakarta at that time.
My feeling is that covid-19 is in large cities all over Sumatra, Java and Bali, but not yet in the smaller towns in Sumatra or rural Java. So it has a way to go.
Also note that at least 1000 of 15,000 at a Koran recital event in Malaysia were found + COVID-19, including almost half the 80 Bruneian attendees, but out of 700 Indonesians I've not seen one confirmed case reported WITHIN Indonesia (there are reported cases from Malaysia of Indonesians).
Secondly: Boris is not the Messiah, he is a very naughty boy.
Thirdly and fourthly: I was not comparing Johnson to Trump. I was merely highlighting the direction of travel if constructive criticism of Boris is to be curtailed. Besides which Trump is beyond comparison.
Most journalists are now asking. Not that they are getting a proper answer though.
WHO 9 days ago.
If you do one thing test test and test again.
Our levels are pathetic.
Let's hope next week means next week this time.
I am isolating with a dry cough, but no fever. O2 sats fine. Trying to get tested...
Local officials are varying between 'we get priority testing' and 'I'm an important official, I don't need to be tested'.
There is little social distancing as for example yesterday I saw people playing football, volleyball, and in the last weeks there have been mass Islamic marches against Corona (chanting useless words in Arabic, essentially, while spreading the virus). But there is definitely less movement of people than normal.
The small town hospitals in Indonesia are a bit like the small town schools - utterly useless, so I imagine people are dying of covid-19 without being tested.
I don't see this as an orchestrated cover-up but more like par-for-the-course Indonesian incompetence.
Until there is a real instant test then deaths will be understated (especially as people do their own burials - ok you pay a grave digger, but otherwise it's a family affair - so there's not necessarily a cause of death beyond 'terhendak Tuhan' (god's will))
I don't believe Indonesia is yet Iran not least because it's far too large. Certainly no sign of mass deaths in rural villages far from Jakarta yet.
Heads they win tails we lose.
(There have been various efforts to produce antivirals, which is what people talk about when referring to a "cure for the common cold".)
There have been few vaccine research efforts against individual viruses, but such a vaccine would not be a commercially viable prospect.
It's hard enough to get uptake of the seasonal flu vaccine, which saves lives; who is going to spend up to a billion dollars on developing a vaccine available in bulk, which gives immunity to perhaps a quarter or a fifth of that season's colds ?
And how many would get vaccinated even if it were available ?
In contrast, there are something like forty different efforts ongoing to come up with a vaccine for this thing.
Success is reasonably likely - but we've no good idea how long immunity might last.
Pineapple Bansturbators should be fed compulsory grapefruit on their pizzas.
And they have now only ONE death.
The Saudis are smart at extracting $1 billion+ a year from Indonesians going over there to impress the neighbours that they are rich enough to go on pilgrimage, and they are smart enough to have shut things down before people died. Their Indonesian admirers are not so clever, and the mosques here are still open....
All the old uglies, misogynists and bampots are re-appearing who they need to keep under wraps (Macneil, Cherry, Neil et al) and this is horrifying the more moderate members not to mention the women who are appalled at Salmond's behaviour.
Seem to be getting a few converts on the level of and quick access to benefits too from people who haven't shown the slightest interest in it before.
Our Dyson V6 Absolute is so unreliable, a victory for style over substance, that we have bought a G-Tech Air ram, which although a bit fragile works perfectly.
Thanks for the confirmation that it is NOT "confirmed". We are of course rightly hopeful.
Hope you are OK. Society needs you.
For this reason Id imagine the loans are actually pretty low risk for the banks, the ones that apply will have a strong belief that they can repay them. For those that really couldnt make it, they are generally better off letting the business go bust, avoid having to pay employees, suppliers and rents, and then simply start again with a different name. Unfortunately there are way too many businesses doing this repetitively in good times regardless of a crisis, the rules clearly need strengthening to make this option harder.
Over the last few weeks my facebook page has had a few of people posting a quote from the late Margaret Mead the anthropologist. I have no idea how true the quote actually is in this day of fake news but in a way it doesn't matter as the underlying principle remains.
"Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about clay pots, tools for hunting, grinding-stones, or religious artefacts.
Mead instead said that the first evidence of civilization was a 15,000 years old fractured femur found in an archaeological site. In societies without the benefits of modern medicine, it takes about six weeks of rest for a fractured femur to heal. This particular bone had been broken and had healed.
Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, you cannot drink or hunt for food.
A broken femur that has healed is evidence that another person has taken time to stay with the fallen, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended them through recovery. A healed femur indicates that someone has helped a fellow human, rather than abandoning them to save their own life."
As I said I have no idea how true the story is but there is an underlying truth to it even if it is nothing more than an allegory.
More forensic enquiry, less gotcha! entertainment required.
It also seems to be mutating relatively slowly:
https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/25/new-coronavirus-research-suggests-vaccines-developed-to-treat-it-could-be-long-lasting/
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/gangster-bankers-too-big-to-jail-102004/
It is truly jaw dropping. My favourite bit is where they changed the size of the grills in their Mexican branch because they couldn't get large enough suitcases of drug money through them.
Big big chance of it this decade surely.
I am a life member of @Derbyshireccc but my payback period already reached.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/oct/06/why-cant-we-cure-the-common-cold
And successful vaccines were made against rhinoviruses, which cause most colds, but they only worked against one or a few similar types so they gave up when they realised there were over 160 different rhinoviruses.
Brexit makes it more desirable (from a Scot's PoV) but harder to achieve.
And the virus makes it ... well not sure.
As a result it will likely all be proxy wars within the SNP, but that still leaves only one vacancy for head of the SNP and Salmond and Cherry can't both fill it.
"Two thirds of patients who die of coronavirus would have died this year anyway, government advisor says
Professor Neil Ferguson said experts were now expecting around 20,000 deaths, although said it may turn out to be a lot less"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/25/two-thirds-patients-die-coronavirus-would-have-died-year-anyway
Furthermore I married a Scot and lived in Edinburgh for 5 years
I just cannot see a pathway to it especially now the economic damage will need the whole union working together
I shall be heading back later to collect the empty bin.
I used the last of the milk at breakfast; more should arrive tomorrow. So it is fruit tea for the rest of the day.
https://twitter.com/BBCHughPym/status/1242961455567290370?s=09
My emails and phone calls (and stress levels!) have fallen off a cliff. I live on 24/7 call and get a few hundred emails a day - all accessible on the omnipotent smart-phone. I think I realise now how afflicting it is on your mental health to have a constant work-phone.
I don't think I've ever slept for 12 hours in my life!
With hindsight, the decision to allow mass gatherings in early March looks like a terrible mistake" (£)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/26/spains-outbreak-got-bad-governments-delay-instituting-lockdowns/
And, even if bumbling Boris seems unattractive to centre-left Scots, they will soon have a Labour Party led by a grown-up to vote for as an alternative.
The premise of IndyRef2 is to rejoin the EU. Not sure that will look hugely attractive in the wash-up after coronavirus. Many of the weaker members will be knackered and will be looking for assistance. Who would want to resign from the UK to join that? (Apart from MalcG, of course. Well, maybe not actually, he seems to have a sensible attachment to his wonga).
EDIT: Sorry. @bigjohnowls is the quicker man.
In the excellent Painted Wolves (another name from the surprisingly enormous list for the species) episode of Dynasties, the mate of the alpha female, who was too old to escape lions, chose to stay with her and die at her side.
[NB that part was not captured on camera but was stated during the programme].
We do have Mrs BJs nurse and twice a day carers to look forward to but they do not have any PPE so a bit worrying.
If you don't subscribe to the update service it is up to your employer or voluntary organisation whether or not to accept a previous DBS check. If they choose to do so they need to see your certificate, get certain details from it and contact the organisation involved to find out if the DBS gave them any additional information that isn't on the certificate. Most organisations won't accept previous DBS checks simply because it is easier to get a new one and means they will get the most up to date information.
The money is expected only to be available to those self-employed people who can prove they have been directly affected, estimated at about 1.7 million out of nearly five million.
Workers are likely to have to demonstrate they have suffered a loss of earnings by comparing to past income tax receipts.