I'm not normally an INEOS fan, but well done Jim Ratcliffe on the hand sanitiser production. You take what you can and from wherever you can in these situations.
On banks, they have cancelled the dividends but are arguing over bankers bonuses.
Somethings never change, time to put 100% emergency tax on all these bonuses
Bonuses are part of wages for many of those employees. Do you want a 100% tax on other sectors employees wages?
Are you defending bankers bonuses at a time of economic armageddon
If the banks can afford to pay their staff their bonuses then yes absolutely. I'd say the same for any other business in the country.
If they can't, then no.
If they cannot pay dividends saving 9.5 billion then the bankers bonuses should and must go
So shareholders take a higher priority than staff?
Nobody told me you'd converted to socialism, Phil!
LOL I'm not.
But people fail to understand how dividends work sometimes. If shareholders forego their dividends then they don't lose that money, the dividend stays within the business they own the shares to and is there to be used by their own business in the future if required - or can be paid out in the future as a dividend. The idea the shareholders are losing out is the most short-termist garbage imaginable.
Worth noting that if you'd eg bought Amazon stock a long time ago you wouldn't have been getting dividends from that but would have gained a lot of wealth.
If you fail to pay the staff their wages they've worked for that's a completely different matter. The staff won't get their wages made up in the future.
It is not staff we are talking about, it is the CEO's and others refusing to resile their bonuses that is just so wrong
That's not what you said, unless you're being overly vague with "and others". You said "bankers bonuses" not "CEOs bonuses".
If you mean executives then say executives, not bankers, because there are thousands of bankers employed by their banks and due bonuses - why should they be cancelled if they've reached the conditions set to earn them?
Because part of signing up to be a banker includes the risk that your bonus will be forfeited for any number of reasons including, and especially since 2008, because the government says so.
I don't necessarily agree that governments should do this but it is priced in to the bankers' salary (many of which, if you can remember, were hiked substantially when the first bankers' bonus regs came in).
Also, after lockdown, if a bunch of hotels at a tourist hotspot have failed... well, hey, the beaches there will still be just as good, the business case for starting new hotels in the same spot is just as good. If a business is fundamentally good, it should be reborn from the ashes- perhaps under a different name and with a different owner, but so what?
Can't say the same about the people who die.
This is the economic Darwinist argument and it recognises that many businesses fail even when times are good because they are poorly run or a competitor comes along doing it better and cheaper or a better widget is designed elsewhere.
As we've seen the supermarkets took on thousands of extra staff and were able to recruit from a pool of those laid off by other employers. Sunak seems anxious to preserve, conserve and protect but capitalism is and always been brutal and adversarial.
As we saw with manufacturing industry in the UK, nothing has a right to exist in perpetuity. We saw manufacturing wither and die and the response was to allow new businesses to emerge - it wasn't pretty, indeed it was painful but throughout history out of such disasters new opportunities have arisen.
Though what you're looking at now is systemic risk, rather than any given business in isolation. What happens, for example, when 800K small businesses pop their clogs over the next couple of months ?
On banks, they have cancelled the dividends but are arguing over bankers bonuses.
Somethings never change, time to put 100% emergency tax on all these bonuses
Bonuses are part of wages for many of those employees. Do you want a 100% tax on other sectors employees wages?
Are you defending bankers bonuses at a time of economic armageddon
If the banks can afford to pay their staff their bonuses then yes absolutely. I'd say the same for any other business in the country.
If they can't, then no.
If they cannot pay dividends saving 9.5 billion then the bankers bonuses should and must go
So shareholders take a higher priority than staff?
Nobody told me you'd converted to socialism, Phil!
LOL I'm not.
But people fail to understand how dividends work sometimes. If shareholders forego their dividends then they don't lose that money, the dividend stays within the business they own the shares to and is there to be used by their own business in the future if required - or can be paid out in the future as a dividend. The idea the shareholders are losing out is the most short-termist garbage imaginable.
Worth noting that if you'd eg bought Amazon stock a long time ago you wouldn't have been getting dividends from that but would have gained a lot of wealth.
If you fail to pay the staff their wages they've worked for that's a completely different matter. The staff won't get their wages made up in the future.
It is not staff we are talking about, it is the CEO's and others refusing to resile their bonuses that is just so wrong
From a theoretical perspective, why should they?
They have delivered the criteria set out by the remuneration committee and been paid accordingly, like any other employee. (This is completely independent of whether you think their remuneration is too high or too low).
Then an exogenous event like coronavirus knocks the the company sideways.
I can get the idea it is tin eared/bad PR, but why is it "so wrong"?
It is morally wrong and will add to growing resentment
We should perhaps remember Fred the Shred. Legally his £700,000 a year pension was valid. Morally, it was a bit difficult to justify for a fifty year old whose egomania, stupidity and narcissism had caused a bank to lose £24 billion in one year.
That is odd. "Gove tells truth" is a "Man bites dog" story and so you'd expect it to be all over the place.
Sounds like Peston has been asking the wrong people again.
Perhaps he asked the Chemical Industry Association about the Chancellors plans for helping people, and contacts at the Treasury if they'd been asked to increase supply or laboratory reagents?
This huge dispersion in death rates cannot be solely due to how cases and deaths are recorded. There must be something else explaining the 30-fold difference between Israel and Italy for example.
WORLD Cases Deaths Death rate Italy 106,128 12,443 11.72% Spain 95,923 8,464 8.82% Nethds 12,595 1,039 8.25% UK 25,150 1,808 7.19% France 52,128 3,523 6.76% Iran 44,606 2,898 6.50% Belgium 12,775 705 5.52% China 83,095 3,312 3.99% Sweden 4,028 146 3.62% Brazil 5,812 202 3.48% Switz 16,176 388 2.40% Portug 7,443 160 2.15% USA 188,588 4,043 2.14% SKorea 9,887 165 1.67% Turkey 13,531 214 1.58% Austria 9,920 128 1.29% Canada 8,504 96 1.13% Germany 72,680 797 1.10% Austral 4,862 20 0.41% Israel 5,591 21 0.38%
This huge dispersion in death rates cannot be solely due to how cases and deaths are recorded. There must be something else explaining the 30-fold difference between Israel and Italy for example.
WORLD Cases Deaths Death rate Italy 106,128 12,443 11.72% Spain 95,923 8,464 8.82% Nethds 12,595 1,039 8.25% UK 25,150 1,808 7.19% France 52,128 3,523 6.76% Iran 44,606 2,898 6.50% Belgium 12,775 705 5.52% China 83,095 3,312 3.99% Sweden 4,028 146 3.62% Brazil 5,812 202 3.48% Switz 16,176 388 2.40% Portug 7,443 160 2.15% USA 188,588 4,043 2.14% SKorea 9,887 165 1.67% Turkey 13,531 214 1.58% Austria 9,920 128 1.29% Canada 8,504 96 1.13% Germany 72,680 797 1.10% Austral 4,862 20 0.41% Israel 5,591 21 0.38%
Some of it will be the delay in when the virus arrived/spreed in a nation, because there is often a 2 week lag between testing and death. and psoibly some other bits like the demographicks of a nation.
But I think its mostly an indication of how many people are being tested. the more you test the more miled cases you get, if you are only testing people who get to hospitall then a lot of your cases will die.
What would be good is to have this % on a graph against the % of people who are found to have the virus out of total number of tests, I think in the UK is about 35% I suspect that would be linear.
Very difficult to understand why random testing isn't being done (if it isn't). Even 100 random tests a day would quite quickly give us a much better handle on how many cases there really are.
Tne UK did a lot of random testing in early February and it was really useful. It showed that the prevelane of the disease accross the UK as a whole was as good as zero. The cases that had been found were either in Italy or China or had linkt to them.
I can understand the argument that at the moment you need all tests possible to be for peope with symptoms and contact of positive cases.
This is also what I find strange. The initial testing and contact tracing was really good.
Then for whatever reason they decided that going from doing a few 1000 tests to 10,000s of tests wasn't a priority or possible, and they would concentrate solely on testing hospital admissions.
I assume they expected a big ramp in admissions and wanted to focus on staff and patients.
Unfortunately yesterdays excuse about reagent shortage has fallen apart already as the UK Chemical industry say they can supply but are still waiting for them to be ordered.
Similarly Labs with capacity are having to ring round the NHS to offer their services.
Its a fiasco that is costing lives
It is all so simple for the keyboard warriors BJO
It must be relatively simple after all almost Every other Govt seems to have managed it
At what point will a defend at all costs warrior like yourself admit Govt mistakes.
Well the Welsh government haven't managed it either. They promised 5000 a day by now and doing 800.
And the Spanish deployed a load of tests that were only 30% accurate in rush to expand capacity.
There is clearly an issue.
Well the Welsh Government are shit as well then.
There you are Big G Philip Thompson and all the cheerleaders its easy to criticise your own side when they get the most important thing wrong.
PT you are in detention as you failed to show your over 10,000 already workings (which your own Govt now admits it hasnt reached BTW)
If it is as simple as ordering the chemicals - why did the company that was contracting to do 5K tests a day for NHS Wales pull out, on the grounds they couldn't get the materials required?
Roche decided to prioritise the larger order (presumably so they can fill it), so withdrew from the smaller one. That's a question of practicality and customer satisfaction, not money.
The 4 governments got together and agreed to procure centrally.
Exactly what should happen.
Unlike (for example) in the US, where the Federal government is bidding against States...
@TOPPING in addition to my point about how we would react if every flu death had been reported as Coronavirus deaths are, what if every day this flu season had been reported as the massive reduction it was? I think it is possible we are getting all the bad news in big headlines whilst the good news went unreported and forgotten
Agree, but I think that's just a journalism 1.01 man bites dog thing.
Imagine a country where people only die in Jan and Feb each year, 50,000 in each month all from Disease A, and number of deaths are never noticed by the public or reported by the media . Then, one year, only 30,000 die in each month, no media report the downturn, but in March 40,000 die from a new illness called Disease B, the NHS aren’t equipped to deal with more than 30,000 and the headlines in every paper are ‘First deaths in March ever’ ‘40 thousand more deaths this month than in any March-Dec period in history’
Its because in reality nobody has any established treatments known to help. It has been said numerous times even given top quality care, full ICU settings, ventilator, the works, and seeing very few recoveries among the old.
There was the Italian professor who said under his care, over a period of 2 weeks, he only had 1 person who showed any improvement. And yes many people in ICU die, but the comparison to his typical case load of other pneumonias and repository issues he would see a decent percentage show good improvement.
Dr Foxy has mentioned just how many people end up with hearts (and other vital organs) getting seriously damaged on top of the lungs.
On banks, they have cancelled the dividends but are arguing over bankers bonuses.
Somethings never change, time to put 100% emergency tax on all these bonuses
Bonuses are part of wages for many of those employees. Do you want a 100% tax on other sectors employees wages?
Are you defending bankers bonuses at a time of economic armageddon
If the banks can afford to pay their staff their bonuses then yes absolutely. I'd say the same for any other business in the country.
If they can't, then no.
If they cannot pay dividends saving 9.5 billion then the bankers bonuses should and must go
So shareholders take a higher priority than staff?
Nobody told me you'd converted to socialism, Phil!
LOL I'm not.
But people fail to understand how dividends work sometimes. If shareholders forego their dividends then they don't lose that money, the dividend stays within the business they own the shares to and is there to be used by their own business in the future if required - or can be paid out in the future as a dividend. The idea the shareholders are losing out is the most short-termist garbage imaginable.
Worth noting that if you'd eg bought Amazon stock a long time ago you wouldn't have been getting dividends from that but would have gained a lot of wealth.
If you fail to pay the staff their wages they've worked for that's a completely different matter. The staff won't get their wages made up in the future.
It is not staff we are talking about, it is the CEO's and others refusing to resile their bonuses that is just so wrong
From a theoretical perspective, why should they?
They have delivered the criteria set out by the remuneration committee and been paid accordingly, like any other employee. (This is completely independent of whether you think their remuneration is too high or too low).
Then an exogenous event like coronavirus knocks the the company sideways.
I can get the idea it is tin eared/bad PR, but why is it "so wrong"?
Because it might represent a significant percentage of a given bank's costs - and that bank might be relying on government support fairly soon ? We haven't yet paid off the debts accumulated on behalf of the banks from a decade back.
That is odd. "Gove tells truth" is a "Man bites dog" story and so you'd expect it to be all over the place.
Sounds like Peston has been asking the wrong people again.
Perhaps he asked the Chemical Industry Association about the Chancellors plans for helping people, and contacts at the Treasury if they'd been asked to increase supply or laboratory reagents?
I think it is becoming clear Peston was being Peston. But it does ask an interesting question, in that with other bits of essential kit the government have been very proactive in securing addition supply and willing to go down the scrapheap challenge route.
Why not on reagent chemicals. I know nothing about this stuff, is it really complicated to make, given we do have a sizeable chemical industry?
I am increasingly becoming convinced that they placed a huge amount of faith in the anti-body tests being ready and there is a delay with those due to some sort of accuracy issue. The eggheads talked about these 2+ weeks ago in a way that made it clear they thought they would have them deployed in a short timeframe.
On banks, they have cancelled the dividends but are arguing over bankers bonuses.
Somethings never change, time to put 100% emergency tax on all these bonuses
Bonuses are part of wages for many of those employees. Do you want a 100% tax on other sectors employees wages?
Are you defending bankers bonuses at a time of economic armageddon
If the banks can afford to pay their staff their bonuses then yes absolutely. I'd say the same for any other business in the country.
If they can't, then no.
If they cannot pay dividends saving 9.5 billion then the bankers bonuses should and must go
So shareholders take a higher priority than staff?
Nobody told me you'd converted to socialism, Phil!
LOL I'm not.
But people fail to understand how dividends work sometimes. If shareholders forego their dividends then they don't lose that money, the dividend stays within the business they own the shares to and is there to be used by their own business in the future if required - or can be paid out in the future as a dividend. The idea the shareholders are losing out is the most short-termist garbage imaginable.
Worth noting that if you'd eg bought Amazon stock a long time ago you wouldn't have been getting dividends from that but would have gained a lot of wealth.
If you fail to pay the staff their wages they've worked for that's a completely different matter. The staff won't get their wages made up in the future.
It is not staff we are talking about, it is the CEO's and others refusing to resile their bonuses that is just so wrong
From a theoretical perspective, why should they?
They have delivered the criteria set out by the remuneration committee and been paid accordingly, like any other employee. (This is completely independent of whether you think their remuneration is too high or too low).
Then an exogenous event like coronavirus knocks the the company sideways.
I can get the idea it is tin eared/bad PR, but why is it "so wrong"?
It is morally wrong and will add to growing resentment
Why is is morally wrong?
They are employees being paid what their contract allows.
Do you mean that it is morally wrong that they earn that much?
Its because in reality nobody has any established treatments known to help. It has been said numerous times even given top quality care, full ICU settings, ventilator, the works, and seeing very few recoveries among the old.
There was the Italian professor who said under his care, over a period of 2 weeks, he only had 1 person who showed any improvement. And yes many people in ICU die, but the comparison to his typical case load of other pneumonias and repository issues he would see a decent percentage show good improvement.
Dr Foxy has mentioned just how many people end up with hearts (and other vital organs) getting seriously damaged on top of the lungs.
The UK ICU figures do show worse outcomes compared to regular viral pneumonia.
Something like 80% of cases still under treatment though. It is a long haul.
@TOPPING in addition to my point about how we would react if every flu death had been reported as Coronavirus deaths are, what if every day this flu season had been reported as the massive reduction it was? I think it is possible we are getting all the bad news in big headlines whilst the good news went unreported and forgotten
Agree, but I think that's just a journalism 1.01 man bites dog thing.
Also, after lockdown, if a bunch of hotels at a tourist hotspot have failed... well, hey, the beaches there will still be just as good, the business case for starting new hotels in the same spot is just as good. If a business is fundamentally good, it should be reborn from the ashes- perhaps under a different name and with a different owner, but so what?
Can't say the same about the people who die.
This is the economic Darwinist argument and it recognises that many businesses fail even when times are good because they are poorly run or a competitor comes along doing it better and cheaper or a better widget is designed elsewhere.
As we've seen the supermarkets took on thousands of extra staff and were able to recruit from a pool of those laid off by other employers. Sunak seems anxious to preserve, conserve and protect but capitalism is and always been brutal and adversarial.
As we saw with manufacturing industry in the UK, nothing has a right to exist in perpetuity. We saw manufacturing wither and die and the response was to allow new businesses to emerge - it wasn't pretty, indeed it was painful but throughout history out of such disasters new opportunities have arisen.
Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands and Canada have all steered very far clear of both economic and social darwinism over the last forty years. All are better placed to withstand the crisis than the UK as a result.
Germany has the same top income tax rate as the UK, the UK has the most statist healthcare system of all of those countries and Canada has contributions based only unemployment benefit unlike the UK
Yes, but I was talking as much more broadly about its social and economic model as healthcare. Our model in Britain makes the country particularly frail and vulnerable in a crisis such as this, as it did in 2008.
Does it? The UK has a lower death rate per head than the Netherlands at the moment
Economic and social frailty are not the same as the first casualty figures, however.
We also ended up with one of the lowest unemployment rates in western Europe after the 2008 crash, our flexible labour market helped
These arguments have been rehearsed many times, but the growth rates and the type of the employment mentioned tell a different story, however. Britain's increased implementation of the ZHC model is now one of things making it more vulnerable to the economic after-effects of this crisis than other similar countries.
On banks, they have cancelled the dividends but are arguing over bankers bonuses.
Somethings never change, time to put 100% emergency tax on all these bonuses
Bonuses are part of wages for many of those employees. Do you want a 100% tax on other sectors employees wages?
Are you defending bankers bonuses at a time of economic armageddon
If the banks can afford to pay their staff their bonuses then yes absolutely. I'd say the same for any other business in the country.
If they can't, then no.
If they cannot pay dividends saving 9.5 billion then the bankers bonuses should and must go
So shareholders take a higher priority than staff?
Nobody told me you'd converted to socialism, Phil!
LOL I'm not.
But people fail to understand how dividends work sometimes. If shareholders forego their dividends then they don't lose that money, the dividend stays within the business they own the shares to and is there to be used by their own business in the future if required - or can be paid out in the future as a dividend. The idea the shareholders are losing out is the most short-termist garbage imaginable.
Worth noting that if you'd eg bought Amazon stock a long time ago you wouldn't have been getting dividends from that but would have gained a lot of wealth.
If you fail to pay the staff their wages they've worked for that's a completely different matter. The staff won't get their wages made up in the future.
It is not staff we are talking about, it is the CEO's and others refusing to resile their bonuses that is just so wrong
From a theoretical perspective, why should they?
They have delivered the criteria set out by the remuneration committee and been paid accordingly, like any other employee. (This is completely independent of whether you think their remuneration is too high or too low).
Then an exogenous event like coronavirus knocks the the company sideways.
I can get the idea it is tin eared/bad PR, but why is it "so wrong"?
It is morally wrong and will add to growing resentment
We should perhaps remember Fred the Shred. Legally his £700,000 a year pension was valid. Morally, it was a bit difficult to justify for a fifty year old whose egomania, stupidity and narcissism had caused a bank to lose £24 billion in one year.
Sure. But there is a vast difference between Fred Goodwin's crap management and a company struggling as a result of COVID-19
On banks, they have cancelled the dividends but are arguing over bankers bonuses.
Somethings never change, time to put 100% emergency tax on all these bonuses
Bonuses are part of wages for many of those employees. Do you want a 100% tax on other sectors employees wages?
Are you defending bankers bonuses at a time of economic armageddon
If the banks can afford to pay their staff their bonuses then yes absolutely. I'd say the same for any other business in the country.
If they can't, then no.
If they cannot pay dividends saving 9.5 billion then the bankers bonuses should and must go
So shareholders take a higher priority than staff?
Nobody told me you'd converted to socialism, Phil!
LOL I'm not.
But people fail to understand how dividends work sometimes. If shareholders forego their dividends then they don't lose that money, the dividend stays within the business they own the shares to and is there to be used by their own business in the future if required - or can be paid out in the future as a dividend. The idea the shareholders are losing out is the most short-termist garbage imaginable.
Worth noting that if you'd eg bought Amazon stock a long time ago you wouldn't have been getting dividends from that but would have gained a lot of wealth.
If you fail to pay the staff their wages they've worked for that's a completely different matter. The staff won't get their wages made up in the future.
It is not staff we are talking about, it is the CEO's and others refusing to resile their bonuses that is just so wrong
From a theoretical perspective, why should they?
They have delivered the criteria set out by the remuneration committee and been paid accordingly, like any other employee. (This is completely independent of whether you think their remuneration is too high or too low).
Then an exogenous event like coronavirus knocks the the company sideways.
I can get the idea it is tin eared/bad PR, but why is it "so wrong"?
Because it might represent a significant percentage of a given bank's costs - and that bank might be relying on government support fairly soon ? We haven't yet paid off the debts accumulated on behalf of the banks from a decade back.
Staff remuneration is a significant percentage of almost any businesses costs, doesn't mean they should be paid.
Unfortunately yesterdays excuse about reagent shortage has fallen apart already as the UK Chemical industry say they can supply but are still waiting for them to be ordered.
Similarly Labs with capacity are having to ring round the NHS to offer their services.
Its a fiasco that is costing lives
It is all so simple for the keyboard warriors BJO
It must be relatively simple after all almost Every other Govt seems to have managed it
At what point will a defend at all costs warrior like yourself admit Govt mistakes.
Well the Welsh government haven't managed it either. They promised 5000 a day by now and doing 800.
And the Spanish deployed a load of tests that were only 30% accurate in rush to expand capacity.
There is clearly an issue.
Well the Welsh Government are shit as well then.
There you are Big G Philip Thompson and all the cheerleaders its easy to criticise your own side when they get the most important thing wrong.
PT you are in detention as you failed to show your over 10,000 already workings (which your own Govt now admits it hasnt reached BTW)
If it is as simple as ordering the chemicals - why did the company that was contracting to do 5K tests a day for NHS Wales pull out, on the grounds they couldn't get the materials required?
Roche decided to prioritise the larger order (presumably so they can fill it), so withdrew from the smaller one. That's a question of practicality and customer satisfaction, not money.
The 4 governments got together and agreed to procure centrally.
Exactly what should happen.
Unlike (for example) in the US, where the Federal government is bidding against States...
Perhaps he subscribes to the CNN policy on stories - never "F^&k a story"
For those who don't know the story, CNN published, many years back a story claiming the US had used nerve gas in Vietnam. The story was, as presented, obvious garbage - their story literally proved itself false.
It turned out that had published bullshit from a known fake veteran, liar and scam artist.
In the aftermath, it turned out that the fact checkers at CNN had been pushed back with accusations that they were trying to "F&*k the story" by seeking to find out *too much information about whether it was true or not*.
Also, after lockdown, if a bunch of hotels at a tourist hotspot have failed... well, hey, the beaches there will still be just as good, the business case for starting new hotels in the same spot is just as good. If a business is fundamentally good, it should be reborn from the ashes- perhaps under a different name and with a different owner, but so what?
Can't say the same about the people who die.
This is the economic Darwinist argument and it recognises that many businesses fail even when times are good because they are poorly run or a competitor comes along doing it better and cheaper or a better widget is designed elsewhere.
As we've seen the supermarkets took on thousands of extra staff and were able to recruit from a pool of those laid off by other employers. Sunak seems anxious to preserve, conserve and protect but capitalism is and always been brutal and adversarial.
As we saw with manufacturing industry in the UK, nothing has a right to exist in perpetuity. We saw manufacturing wither and die and the response was to allow new businesses to emerge - it wasn't pretty, indeed it was painful but throughout history out of such disasters new opportunities have arisen.
Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands and Canada have all steered very far clear of both economic and social darwinism over the last forty years. All are better placed to withstand the crisis than the UK as a result.
Germany has the same top income tax rate as the UK, the UK has the most statist healthcare system of all of those countries and Canada has contributions based only unemployment benefit unlike the UK
Yes, but I was talking as much more broadly about its social and economic model as healthcare. Our model in Britain makes the country particularly frail and vulnerable in a crisis such as this, as it did in 2008.
Does it? The UK has a lower death rate per head than the Netherlands at the moment
Economic and social frailty are not the same as the first casualty figures, however.
We also ended up with one of the lowest unemployment rates in western Europe after the 2008 crash, our flexible labour market helped
These arguments have been rehearsed many times, but the growth rates and the type of the employment mentioned tell a different story, however. Britain's increased implementation of the ZHC model is now one of things making it more vulnerable to the economic after-effects of this crisis than comparable countries.
Not necessarily, the likes of Deliveroo, Occado, JustEat and Amazon are actually growing during this crisis and plenty of ZHC workers work for them
On banks, they have cancelled the dividends but are arguing over bankers bonuses.
Somethings never change, time to put 100% emergency tax on all these bonuses
Bonuses are part of wages for many of those employees. Do you want a 100% tax on other sectors employees wages?
Are you defending bankers bonuses at a time of economic armageddon
If the banks can afford to pay their staff their bonuses then yes absolutely. I'd say the same for any other business in the country.
If they can't, then no.
If they cannot pay dividends saving 9.5 billion then the bankers bonuses should and must go
So shareholders take a higher priority than staff?
Nobody told me you'd converted to socialism, Phil!
LOL I'm not.
But people fail to understand how dividends work sometimes. If shareholders forego their dividends then they don't lose that money, the dividend stays within the business they own the shares to and is there to be used by their own business in the future if required - or can be paid out in the future as a dividend. The idea the shareholders are losing out is the most short-termist garbage imaginable.
Worth noting that if you'd eg bought Amazon stock a long time ago you wouldn't have been getting dividends from that but would have gained a lot of wealth.
If you fail to pay the staff their wages they've worked for that's a completely different matter. The staff won't get their wages made up in the future.
It is not staff we are talking about, it is the CEO's and others refusing to resile their bonuses that is just so wrong
From a theoretical perspective, why should they?
They have delivered the criteria set out by the remuneration committee and been paid accordingly, like any other employee. (This is completely independent of whether you think their remuneration is too high or too low).
Then an exogenous event like coronavirus knocks the the company sideways.
I can get the idea it is tin eared/bad PR, but why is it "so wrong"?
Because it might represent a significant percentage of a given bank's costs - and that bank might be relying on government support fairly soon ? We haven't yet paid off the debts accumulated on behalf of the banks from a decade back.
There's certainly a valid business case why CEOs should be having a robust discussion with their boards about this. But that's very different from the morally wrong argument that I'm trying to understand.
Its because in reality nobody has any established treatments known to help. It has been said numerous times even given top quality care, full ICU settings, ventilator, the works, and seeing very few recoveries among the old.
There was the Italian professor who said under his care, over a period of 2 weeks, he only had 1 person who showed any improvement. And yes many people in ICU die, but the comparison to his typical case load of other pneumonias and repository issues he would see a decent percentage show good improvement.
Dr Foxy has mentioned just how many people end up with hearts (and other vital organs) getting seriously damaged on top of the lungs.
The UK ICU figures do show worse outcomes compared to regular viral pneumonia.
Something like 80% of cases still under treatment though. It is a long haul.
I saw somewhere, typical ICU is 3-4 days for critical care when you get somebody with really serious pneumonia. With CV, people often needing 14-21 days, IF they are going to make it.
Also, after lockdown, if a bunch of hotels at a tourist hotspot have failed... well, hey, the beaches there will still be just as good, the business case for starting new hotels in the same spot is just as good. If a business is fundamentally good, it should be reborn from the ashes- perhaps under a different name and with a different owner, but so what?
Can't say the same about the people who die.
This is the economic Darwinist argument and it recognises that many businesses fail even when times are good because they are poorly run or a competitor comes along doing it better and cheaper or a better widget is designed elsewhere.
As we've seen the supermarkets took on thousands of extra staff and were able to recruit from a pool of those laid off by other employers. Sunak seems anxious to preserve, conserve and protect but capitalism is and always been brutal and adversarial.
As we saw with manufacturing industry in the UK, nothing has a right to exist in perpetuity. We saw manufacturing wither and die and the response was to allow new businesses to emerge - it wasn't pretty, indeed it was painful but throughout history out of such disasters new opportunities have arisen.
Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands and Canada have all steered very far clear of both economic and social darwinism over the last forty years. All are better placed to withstand the crisis than the UK as a result.
Germany has the same top income tax rate as the UK, the UK has the most statist healthcare system of all of those countries and Canada has contributions based only unemployment benefit unlike the UK
Yes, but I was talking as much more broadly about its social and economic model as healthcare. Our model in Britain makes the country particularly frail and vulnerable in a crisis such as this, as it did in 2008.
Does it? The UK has a lower death rate per head than the Netherlands at the moment
Economic and social frailty are not the same as the first casualty figures, however.
We also ended up with one of the lowest unemployment rates in western Europe after the 2008 crash, our flexible labour market helped
These arguments have been rehearsed many times, but the growth rates and the type of the employment mentioned tell a different story, however. Britain's increased implementation of the ZHC model is now one of things making it more vulnerable to the economic after-effects of this crisis than comparable countries.
Not necessarily, the likes of Deliveroo, Occado, JustEat and Amazon are actually growing during this crisis and plenty of ZHC workers work for them
ZHC is widespead in many sectors, particularly the huge retail, entertainment and hospitality areas ; and the public health consequences of many of these workers in delivery continuing to need and have demand for work at the moment , may not be so preferable, ultimately.
Its because in reality nobody has any established treatments known to help. It has been said numerous times even given top quality care, full ICU settings, ventilator, the works, and seeing very few recoveries among the old.
There was the Italian professor who said under his care, over a period of 2 weeks, he only had 1 person who showed any improvement. And yes many people in ICU die, but the comparison to his typical case load of other pneumonias and repository issues he would see a decent percentage show good improvement.
Dr Foxy has mentioned just how many people end up with hearts (and other vital organs) getting seriously damaged on top of the lungs.
The UK ICU figures do show worse outcomes compared to regular viral pneumonia.
Something like 80% of cases still under treatment though. It is a long haul.
I saw somewhere, typical ICU is 3-4 days for critical care when you get somebody with really serious pneumonia. With CV, people often needing 14-21 days, IF they are going to make it.
Those sound right, as ballpark figures. This is not comparable to the flu, and that is where our government planning went wrong. The pandemic exercises were based on it being flu rather than Coronavirus.
From what I have seen, there was also a lot of scepticism about how much the peak could be flattened by public health measures. 20-30% was quoted. I think that was based on Flu too.
Unfortunately yesterdays excuse about reagent shortage has fallen apart already as the UK Chemical industry say they can supply but are still waiting for them to be ordered.
Similarly Labs with capacity are having to ring round the NHS to offer their services.
Its a fiasco that is costing lives
It is all so simple for the keyboard warriors BJO
It must be relatively simple after all almost Every other Govt seems to have managed it
At what point will a defend at all costs warrior like yourself admit Govt mistakes.
Well the Welsh government haven't managed it either. They promised 5000 a day by now and doing 800.
And the Spanish deployed a load of tests that were only 30% accurate in rush to expand capacity.
There is clearly an issue.
Well the Welsh Government are shit as well then.
There you are Big G Philip Thompson and all the cheerleaders its easy to criticise your own side when they get the most important thing wrong.
PT you are in detention as you failed to show your over 10,000 already workings (which your own Govt now admits it hasnt reached BTW)
If it is as simple as ordering the chemicals - why did the company that was contracting to do 5K tests a day for NHS Wales pull out, on the grounds they couldn't get the materials required?
Roche decided to prioritise the larger order (presumably so they can fill it), so withdrew from the smaller one. That's a question of practicality and customer satisfaction, not money.
The 4 governments got together and agreed to procure centrally.
Exactly what should happen.
Unlike (for example) in the US, where the Federal government is bidding against States...
Yes. That story was particularly idiotic.
I still remember when Thatcher destroyed the NHS (for the 3rd or 4th time, I think) by demanding central buying of drugs (at a discount for bulk) and insisting on generics being acceptable.
The main problem with an aspiration to a more pragmatic analysis of the situation is that those calling for it publicly are cnuts and/or zoomers, and generally considered to be so- Hannan, Young, Hitchens, Trump, Dom (allegedly) etc. I except the good author of the header from this naturally.
Unless this thing dies down really quickly, this isn't going to be good if it does go ahead....
Some two million people were expected to travel to Mecca and Medina this July and August for the Hajj, which all Muslims who are physically able must undertake once in a lifetime
@geoffw"This huge dispersion in death rates cannot be solely due to how cases and deaths are recorded. There must be something else explaining the 30-fold difference between Israel and Italy for example.
WORLD Cases Deaths Death rate Italy 106,128 12,443 11.72% Spain 95,923 8,464 8.82% Nethds 12,595 1,039 8.25% UK 25,150 1,808 7.19% France 52,128 3,523 6.76% Iran 44,606 2,898 6.50% Belgium 12,775 705 5.52% China 83,095 3,312 3.99% Sweden 4,028 146 3.62% Brazil 5,812 202 3.48% Switz 16,176 388 2.40% Portug 7,443 160 2.15% USA 188,588 4,043 2.14% SKorea 9,887 165 1.67% Turkey 13,531 214 1.58% Austria 9,920 128 1.29% Canada 8,504 96 1.13% Germany 72,680 797 1.10% Austral 4,862 20 0.41% Israel 5,591 21 0.38%
Three other factors have an effect: pressure on the health system, age profile of the population and stage in the pandemic spread.
The key requirement is to keep infected populations apart from the healthy remainder. Lockdown is a crude but effective way of doing it. Testing so you have a good handle on who's infected is a less damaging way to achieve the same end.
Indeed and a smart one too. He's worked hard on this during this pandemic and even if he donates every penny he earns from this he's done his profile wonders worldwide not just locally and he will earn a fortune after this is over from it.
My daughter is very keen on doing her PE each morning.
Indeed and a smart one too. He's worked hard on this during this pandemic and even if he donates every penny he earns from this he's done his profile wonders worldwide not just locally and he will earn a fortune after this is over from it.
My daughter is very keen on doing her PE each morning.
Good on him.
TBH, not sure he is short of a few quid already. Sure, he is getting amazing PR and not going to be shocked if he doesn't get opportunities on the back of it.
But reading his back story, he seems genuine bloke who slogged it out for a long time (as most PT do) making bugger all, but just kept at it. Had a few lucky breaks with people he met and spun it into something.
Also, after lockdown, if a bunch of hotels at a tourist hotspot have failed... well, hey, the beaches there will still be just as good, the business case for starting new hotels in the same spot is just as good. If a business is fundamentally good, it should be reborn from the ashes- perhaps under a different name and with a different owner, but so what?
Can't say the same about the people who die.
This is the economic Darwinist argument and it recognises that many businesses fail even when times are good because they are poorly run or a competitor comes along doing it better and cheaper or a better widget is designed elsewhere.
As we've seen the supermarkets took on thousands of extra staff and were able to recruit from a pool of those laid off by other employers. Sunak seems anxious to preserve, conserve and protect but capitalism is and always been brutal and adversarial.
As we saw with manufacturing industry in the UK, nothing has a right to exist in perpetuity. We saw manufacturing wither and die and the response was to allow new businesses to emerge - it wasn't pretty, indeed it was painful but throughout history out of such disasters new opportunities have arisen.
Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands and Canada have all steered very far clear of both economic and social darwinism over the last forty years. All are better placed to withstand the crisis than the UK as a result.
Germany has the same top income tax rate as the UK, the UK has the most statist healthcare system of all of those countries and Canada has contributions based only unemployment benefit unlike the UK
Yes, but I was talking as much more broadly about its social and economic model as healthcare. Our model in Britain makes the country particularly frail and vulnerable in a crisis such as this, as it did in 2008.
Does it? The UK has a lower death rate per head than the Netherlands at the moment
Economic and social frailty are not the same as the first casualty figures, however.
We also ended up with one of the lowest unemployment rates in western Europe after the 2008 crash, our flexible labour market helped
These arguments have been rehearsed many times, but the growth rates and the type of the employment mentioned tell a different story, however. Britain's increased implementation of the ZHC model is now one of things making it more vulnerable to the economic after-effects of this crisis than comparable countries.
Not necessarily, the likes of Deliveroo, Occado, JustEat and Amazon are actually growing during this crisis and plenty of ZHC workers work for them
ZHC is widespead in many sectors, particularly the huge retail, entertainment and hospitality areas ; and the public health consequences of many of these workers in delivery continuing to need and have demand for work at the moment , may not be so preferable, ultimately.
Still plenty of ZHC jobs around, mainly in deliveries and most of that work can be done alone and thus keep social distancing while still earning income independent of government, so good all round
Unless this thing dies down really quickly, this isn't going to be good if it does go ahead....
Some two million people were expected to travel to Mecca and Medina this July and August for the Hajj, which all Muslims who are physically able must undertake once in a lifetime
Unless this thing dies down really quickly, this isn't going to be good if it does go ahead....
Some two million people were expected to travel to Mecca and Medina this July and August for the Hajj, which all Muslims who are physically able must undertake once in a lifetime
Islam, like Judaism and most other religions has occasions when you can temporarily set aside the rules. One of these is to save lives.
On banks, they have cancelled the dividends but are arguing over bankers bonuses.
Somethings never change, time to put 100% emergency tax on all these bonuses
Bonuses are part of wages for many of those employees. Do you want a 100% tax on other sectors employees wages?
Are you defending bankers bonuses at a time of economic armageddon
If the banks can afford to pay their staff their bonuses then yes absolutely. I'd say the same for any other business in the country.
If they can't, then no.
If they cannot pay dividends saving 9.5 billion then the bankers bonuses should and must go
So shareholders take a higher priority than staff?
Nobody told me you'd converted to socialism, Phil!
LOL I'm not.
But people fail to understand how dividends work sometimes. If shareholders forego their dividends then they don't lose that money, the dividend stays within the business they own the shares to and is there to be used by their own business in the future if required - or can be paid out in the future as a dividend. The idea the shareholders are losing out is the most short-termist garbage imaginable.
Worth noting that if you'd eg bought Amazon stock a long time ago you wouldn't have been getting dividends from that but would have gained a lot of wealth.
If you fail to pay the staff their wages they've worked for that's a completely different matter. The staff won't get their wages made up in the future.
It is not staff we are talking about, it is the CEO's and others refusing to resile their bonuses that is just so wrong
From a theoretical perspective, why should they?
They have delivered the criteria set out by the remuneration committee and been paid accordingly, like any other employee. (This is completely independent of whether you think their remuneration is too high or too low).
Then an exogenous event like coronavirus knocks the the company sideways.
I can get the idea it is tin eared/bad PR, but why is it "so wrong"?
It is morally wrong and will add to growing resentment
Why is is morally wrong?
They are employees being paid what their contract allows.
Do you mean that it is morally wrong that they earn that much?
Morally is the wrong word imo. It is unfair though as the shareholders and government repeatedly get screwed at the expense of those who are supposed to work for the shareholders. The shareholders cant do anything as represented by the same cabal through pension funds. So it is up to the government to improve regulation and accountability.
Unless this thing dies down really quickly, this isn't going to be good if it does go ahead....
Some two million people were expected to travel to Mecca and Medina this July and August for the Hajj, which all Muslims who are physically able must undertake once in a lifetime
Islam, like Judaism and most other religions has occasions when you can temporarily set aside the rules. One of these is to save lives.
Will we get apologies from anyone who posted that ‘Gove lied’?
Come on, you know who you are...
The point is not so much that Gove lied. He's deflecting. So there's a shortage of chemicals? As there is, of lots of things. You deal with it. And if that really is the root cause of the lack of testing, which is far from certain, the government can apparently get what they need rather than offer up excuses.
What happened to Gove's explanation from the day before that the lack of testing is all the fault of Chinese lies?
The government would advised to keep Gove away from the press briefings. He's causing massive confusion, which is the last thing it needs right now.
Indeed and a smart one too. He's worked hard on this during this pandemic and even if he donates every penny he earns from this he's done his profile wonders worldwide not just locally and he will earn a fortune after this is over from it.
My daughter is very keen on doing her PE each morning.
Good on him.
Agreed. He's found a way to do the right thing and benefit himself down the line. Good on him and good for him.
On banks, they have cancelled the dividends but are arguing over bankers bonuses.
Somethings never change, time to put 100% emergency tax on all these bonuses
Bonuses are part of wages for many of those employees. Do you want a 100% tax on other sectors employees wages?
Are you defending bankers bonuses at a time of economic armageddon
If the banks can afford to pay their staff their bonuses then yes absolutely. I'd say the same for any other business in the country.
If they can't, then no.
If they cannot pay dividends saving 9.5 billion then the bankers bonuses should and must go
So shareholders take a higher priority than staff?
Nobody told me you'd converted to socialism, Phil!
LOL I'm not.
But people fail to understand how dividends work sometimes. If shareholders forego their dividends then they don't lose that money, the dividend stays within the business they own the shares to and is there to be used by their own business in the future if required - or can be paid out in the future as a dividend. The idea the shareholders are losing out is the most short-termist garbage imaginable.
Worth noting that if you'd eg bought Amazon stock a long time ago you wouldn't have been getting dividends from that but would have gained a lot of wealth.
If you fail to pay the staff their wages they've worked for that's a completely different matter. The staff won't get their wages made up in the future.
It is not staff we are talking about, it is the CEO's and others refusing to resile their bonuses that is just so wrong
From a theoretical perspective, why should they?
They have delivered the criteria set out by the remuneration committee and been paid accordingly, like any other employee. (This is completely independent of whether you think their remuneration is too high or too low).
Then an exogenous event like coronavirus knocks the the company sideways.
I can get the idea it is tin eared/bad PR, but why is it "so wrong"?
It is morally wrong and will add to growing resentment
Why is is morally wrong?
They are employees being paid what their contract allows.
Do you mean that it is morally wrong that they earn that much?
The issue is, as usual, with the use of the word "bonus".
People have a tendency to interpret this as everyday English, and assume that it effectively an ex-gratia payment just for doing their job, that the financial services industry allows itself to have somehow, and that ordinary people don't get.
In actual fact, financial services employees have expectations of a given level of total remuneration, and their base salary plus expected bonus is meant to target that (hopefully with some additional allowance for the extra risk/uncertainty that the employee is taking on).
The split between base and bonus/other benefits allows the employer to do three things: 1) smooth earnings by shifting expenses from bad years to good 2) more easily incentivise and reward high performers 3) pretend to the world that their remuneration policy is much less generous than it really is, by arbitrarily reducing the headline salary figures
The problem right now is that employers are making payments for a year that's already complete and in the books, but at a time when it's clear that the next year will be truly rotten. This somewhat makes a mockery of point 1), but is probably unavoidable if the benefits are contractual.
Dividends are a completely different kettle of fish, since it's clear that the shareholders have a much greater interest in ensuring the company stays solvent and much lower rights of expectations of a smooth and predictable income stream. They do, however, have a right to expect that management will balance the immediate needs to keep staff happy at a difficult time, with the long term financial health of the organisation.
This is being conflated with people suddenly (as they do periodically) noticing point 3), and deciding that banking in particular is a public service and needs to adhere to various indeterminable standards to be in line with public opinion. This should really be an entirely separate argument.
Will we get apologies from anyone who posted that ‘Gove lied’?
Come on, you know who you are...
The point is not so much that Gove lied. He's deflecting. So there's a shortage of chemicals? As there is, of lots of things. You deal with it. And if that really is the root cause of the lack of testing, which is far from certain, the government can apparently get what they need rather than offer up excuses.
What happened to Gove's explanation from the day before that the lack of testing is all the fault of Chinese lies?
The government would advised to keep Gove away from the press briefings. He's causing massive confusion, which is the last thing it needs right now.
The lack of testing was not blamed on the Chinese. I don't think it is Gove who is deflecting.
Peston didn't know that laboratory reagents aren't the raw chemicals. So he assumed that since the suppler of raw chemicals say there is no issue. So he missed the following
raw materials -> processing -> processing .... -> reagents
This is why such reporting needs to be given to people who are scientifically literate.
Question 1 - Specifically what is the shortage of - not just "reagent", but the specifics. Those long horrible names.... Question 2 - What is it made from? Who makes it? Question 3 - Who makes the components? Do they have components? Who makes those?
Phew, my remortgage has succesfully gone through. Probably wasn't a bad time to fix for five years to be fair. I know interest rates are as low as they've ever been but LTV %s are going to head north in the forseeable future I reckon. Plenty of people moving onto the SVR... Some banks requiring 40% equity, others 25% for new offers at the moment...
10 mins until the 2pm tweet from the DoH to let us know the figures are delayed.
They probably won't, but I hope people try to steer away from making forecasts of civilizational collapse/it'll all be over by Easter on the basis of a single day's data.
Also, after lockdown, if a bunch of hotels at a tourist hotspot have failed... well, hey, the beaches there will still be just as good, the business case for starting new hotels in the same spot is just as good. If a business is fundamentally good, it should be reborn from the ashes- perhaps under a different name and with a different owner, but so what?
Can't say the same about the people who die.
This is the economic Darwinist argument and it recognises that many businesses fail even when times are good because they are poorly run or a competitor comes along doing it better and cheaper or a better widget is designed elsewhere.
As we've seen the supermarkets took on thousands of extra staff and were able to recruit from a pool of those laid off by other employers. Sunak seems anxious to preserve, conserve and protect but capitalism is and always been brutal and adversarial.
As we saw with manufacturing industry in the UK, nothing has a right to exist in perpetuity. We saw manufacturing wither and die and the response was to allow new businesses to emerge - it wasn't pretty, indeed it was painful but throughout history out of such disasters new opportunities have arisen.
Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands and Canada have all steered very far clear of both economic and social darwinism over the last forty years. All are better placed to withstand the crisis than the UK as a result.
Germany has the same top income tax rate as the UK, the UK has the most statist healthcare system of all of those countries and Canada has contributions based only unemployment benefit unlike the UK
Yes, but I was talking as much more broadly about its social and economic model as healthcare. Our model in Britain makes the country particularly frail and vulnerable in a crisis such as this, as it did in 2008.
Does it? The UK has a lower death rate per head than the Netherlands at the moment
Economic and social frailty are not the same as the first casualty figures, however.
We also ended up with one of the lowest unemployment rates in western Europe after the 2008 crash, our flexible labour market helped
These arguments have been rehearsed many times, but the growth rates and the type of the employment mentioned tell a different story, however. Britain's increased implementation of the ZHC model is now one of things making it more vulnerable to the economic after-effects of this crisis than comparable countries.
Not necessarily, the likes of Deliveroo, Occado, JustEat and Amazon are actually growing during this crisis and plenty of ZHC workers work for them
ZHC is widespead in many sectors, particularly the huge retail, entertainment and hospitality areas ; and the public health consequences of many of these workers in delivery continuing to need and have demand for work at the moment , may not be so preferable, ultimately.
Still plenty of ZHC jobs around, mainly in deliveries and most of that work can be done alone and thus keep social distancing while still earning income independent of government, so good all round
My Italian isn't up to following all this (it's not up to much at all, tbf) but aren't the recent bars by definition incomplete since we probably don't have tests yet on all the people starting symptoms at that point. That might be the shaded region, but it's still a bit of a stretch to put the peak (1 single higher bar) three weeks ago. Onset of symptoms could be pretty much flat in the last two weeks (itself also good news, of course).
@geoffw"This huge dispersion in death rates cannot be solely due to how cases and deaths are recorded. There must be something else explaining the 30-fold difference between Israel and Italy for example.
WORLD Cases Deaths Death rate Italy 106,128 12,443 11.72% Spain 95,923 8,464 8.82% Nethds 12,595 1,039 8.25% UK 25,150 1,808 7.19% France 52,128 3,523 6.76% Iran 44,606 2,898 6.50% Belgium 12,775 705 5.52% China 83,095 3,312 3.99% Sweden 4,028 146 3.62% Brazil 5,812 202 3.48% Switz 16,176 388 2.40% Portug 7,443 160 2.15% USA 188,588 4,043 2.14% SKorea 9,887 165 1.67% Turkey 13,531 214 1.58% Austria 9,920 128 1.29% Canada 8,504 96 1.13% Germany 72,680 797 1.10% Austral 4,862 20 0.41% Israel 5,591 21 0.38%
Three other factors have an effect: pressure on the health system, age profile of the population and stage in the pandemic spread.
The key requirement is to keep infected populations apart from the healthy remainder. Lockdown is a crude but effective way of doing it. Testing so you have a good handle on who's infected is a less damaging way to achieve the same end.
That is certainly what Israel is attempting according to the clip from the Israeli minister the other day.
Phew, my remortgage has succesfully gone through. Probably wasn't a bad time to fix for five years to be fair. I know interest rates are as low as they've ever been but LTV %s are going to head north in the forseeable future I reckon. Plenty of people moving onto the SVR... Some banks requiring 40% equity, others 25% for new offers at the moment...
One of the things I’m most grateful for is the 3 years I have left to run on my fixed rate.
Will we get apologies from anyone who posted that ‘Gove lied’?
Come on, you know who you are...
The point is not so much that Gove lied. He's deflecting. So there's a shortage of chemicals? As there is, of lots of things. You deal with it. And if that really is the root cause of the lack of testing, which is far from certain, the government can apparently get what they need rather than offer up excuses.
What happened to Gove's explanation from the day before that the lack of testing is all the fault of Chinese lies?
The government would advised to keep Gove away from the press briefings. He's causing massive confusion, which is the last thing it needs right now.
The lack of testing was not blamed on the Chinese. I don't think it is Gove who is deflecting.
Peston didn't know that laboratory reagents aren't the raw chemicals. So he assumed that since the suppler of raw chemicals say there is no issue. So he missed the following
raw materials -> processing -> processing .... -> reagents
This is why such reporting needs to be given to people who are scientifically literate.
Question 1 - Specifically what is the shortage of - not just "reagent", but the specifics. Those long horrible names.... Question 2 - What is it made from? Who makes it? Question 3 - Who makes the components? Do they have components? Who makes those?
Get Gove off those press briefings is my sincere advice to the government. He's not doing your communication any good.
I feel torn - from the point of view of my children it would be good if this lockdown did not last for ever. From my own perspective, I am resigned to spending most of the next year largely isolated in order to reduce my personal risk.
In the end, I think we are going to have to have some sort of de facto division like that - between those who can go out, even with some limited restrictions, and those who really need to take extra care. At least until we get herd immunity and/or some sort of vaccine/cure.
On banks, they have cancelled the dividends but are arguing over bankers bonuses.
Somethings never change, time to put 100% emergency tax on all these bonuses
Bonuses are part of wages for many of those employees. Do you want a 100% tax on other sectors employees wages?
Are you defending bankers bonuses at a time of economic armageddon
If the banks can afford to pay their staff their bonuses then yes absolutely. I'd say the same for any other business in the country.
If they can't, then no.
If they cannot pay dividends saving 9.5 billion then the bankers bonuses should and must go
So shareholders take a higher priority than staff?
Nobody told me you'd converted to socialism, Phil!
LOL I'm not.
But people fail to understand how dividends work sometimes. If shareholders forego their dividends then they don't lose that money, the dividend stays within the business they own the shares to and is there to be used by their own business in the future if required - or can be paid out in the future as a dividend. The idea the shareholders are losing out is the most short-termist garbage imaginable.
Worth noting that if you'd eg bought Amazon stock a long time ago you wouldn't have been getting dividends from that but would have gained a lot of wealth.
If you fail to pay the staff their wages they've worked for that's a completely different matter. The staff won't get their wages made up in the future.
It is not staff we are talking about, it is the CEO's and others refusing to resile their bonuses that is just so wrong
From a theoretical perspective, why should they?
They have delivered the criteria set out by the remuneration committee and been paid accordingly, like any other employee. (This is completely independent of whether you think their remuneration is too high or too low).
Then an exogenous event like coronavirus knocks the the company sideways.
I can get the idea it is tin eared/bad PR, but why is it "so wrong"?
Because it might represent a significant percentage of a given bank's costs - and that bank might be relying on government support fairly soon ? We haven't yet paid off the debts accumulated on behalf of the banks from a decade back.
Staff remuneration is a significant percentage of almost any businesses costs, doesn't mean they should be paid.
We've received extra days of annual leave (University employer) which is effectively similar to a bonus* (same money for less work, rather than more money for same work). Supposedly to thank us for our efforts in moving to home working and to try and ensure we get some time off (at home, obviously) but I wonder if it's just reflecting the fact they're probably finding themselves sitting on a massive unexpected pile of cash. Income, very much unchanged (long term contracts, student fees, maybe even some extra research money coming in); heating, water, electricity, waste disposal costs greatly reduced due to closing most of campus.
*I really don't understand why they've done this, I'd rather it went in to a fund to support staff on precarious contracts (think the cleaners are outsourced, staff in some catering outlets may be zero hours) or students who are badly affected (postgrads losing lab time, those unable to continue trials and studies with healthcare workers or those involving fieldwork for example). We (academic staff) are generally very lucky already, we're not losing our jobs, w can work from home, we're not taking a pay cut.
These loans should be turned into grants and the banks bypassed completely.
It's just prudential banking to ask for guarantees for the 20% not covered by the government scheme, like offering your house as collateral. Isn't it? Banks aren't charities, you know. They have bonuses to think of too.
10 mins until the 2pm tweet from the DoH to let us know the figures are delayed.
They probably won't, but I hope people try to steer away from making forecasts of civilizational collapse/it'll all be over by Easter on the basis of a single day's data.
Could break the kneejerk barrier of 2k dead today.
Also, after lockdown, if a bunch of hotels at a tourist hotspot have failed... well, hey, the beaches there will still be just as good, the business case for starting new hotels in the same spot is just as good. If a business is fundamentally good, it should be reborn from the ashes- perhaps under a different name and with a different owner, but so what?
Can't say the same about the people who die.
This is the economic Darwinist argument and it recognises that many businesses fail even when times are good because they are poorly run or a competitor comes along doing it better and cheaper or a better widget is designed elsewhere.
As we've seen the supermarkets took on thousands of extra staff and were able to recruit from a pool of those laid off by other employers. Sunak seems anxious to preserve, conserve and protect but capitalism is and always been brutal and adversarial.
As we saw with manufacturing industry in the UK, nothing has a right to exist in perpetuity. We saw manufacturing wither and die and the response was to allow new businesses to emerge - it wasn't pretty, indeed it was painful but throughout history out of such disasters new opportunities have arisen.
Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands and Canada have all steered very far clear of both economic and social darwinism over the last forty years. All are better placed to withstand the crisis than the UK as a result.
Germany has the same top income tax rate as the UK, the UK has the most statist healthcare system of all of those countries and Canada has contributions based only unemployment benefit unlike the UK
Yes, but I was talking as much more broadly about its social and economic model as healthcare. Our model in Britain makes the country particularly frail and vulnerable in a crisis such as this, as it did in 2008.
Does it? The UK has a lower death rate per head than the Netherlands at the moment
Economic and social frailty are not the same as the first casualty figures, however.
We also ended up with one of the lowest unemployment rates in western Europe after the 2008 crash, our flexible labour market helped
These arguments have been rehearsed many times, but the growth rates and the type of the employment mentioned tell a different story, however. Britain's increased implementation of the ZHC model is now one of things making it more vulnerable to the economic after-effects of this crisis than comparable countries.
Not necessarily, the likes of Deliveroo, Occado, JustEat and Amazon are actually growing during this crisis and plenty of ZHC workers work for them
ZHC is widespead in many sectors, particularly the huge retail, entertainment and hospitality areas ; and the public health consequences of many of these workers in delivery continuing to need and have demand for work at the moment , may not be so preferable, ultimately.
Still plenty of ZHC jobs around, mainly in deliveries and most of that work can be done alone and thus keep social distancing while still earning income independent of government, so good all round
How long have you been on a ZHC?
A ZHC with paid work available is still better than permanent unemployment benefit
These loans should be turned into grants and the banks bypassed completely.
It's just prudential banking to ask for guarantees for the 20% not covered by the government scheme, like offering your house as collateral. Isn't it? Banks aren't charities, you know. They have bonuses to think of too.
Most banks are only asking for collateral if you are seeking over £250,000 - I had a read earlier this week to see if I could use it for additional working capital and it seems that I could.
These loans should be turned into grants and the banks bypassed completely.
It's just prudential banking to ask for guarantees for the 20% not covered by the government scheme, like offering your house as collateral. Isn't it? Banks aren't charities, you know. They have bonuses to think of too.
Most banks are only asking for collateral if you are seeking over £250,000 - I had a read earlier this week to see if I could use it for additional working capital and it seems that I could.
It is not all certain that Peston is screwing up. We have to drill down to find out and I can't be bothered doing that. However Gove definitely is screwing up the government's communication on CV and should be taken off that role.
As an aside in my work from time to time we get into situations where things have gone wrong and we're on the hook. I am happy to go to customers and say, this is the situation, this is what we are doing about it and this what you can now expect and when, we will keep you updated on progress. They may not be happy about the situation but above all they are relieved their issue is being dealt with.
Also, after lockdown, if a bunch of hotels at a tourist hotspot have failed... well, hey, the beaches there will still be just as good, the business case for starting new hotels in the same spot is just as good. If a business is fundamentally good, it should be reborn from the ashes- perhaps under a different name and with a different owner, but so what?
Can't say the same about the people who die.
This is the economic Darwinist argument and it recognises that many businesses fail even when times are good because they are poorly run or a competitor comes along doing it better and cheaper or a better widget is designed elsewhere.
As we've seen the supermarkets took on thousands of extra staff and were able to recruit from a pool of those laid off by other employers. Sunak seems anxious to preserve, conserve and protect but capitalism is and always been brutal and adversarial.
As we saw with manufacturing industry in the UK, nothing has a right to exist in perpetuity. We saw manufacturing wither and die and the response was to allow new businesses to emerge - it wasn't pretty, indeed it was painful but throughout history out of such disasters new opportunities have arisen.
Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands and Canada have all steered very far clear of both economic and social darwinism over the last forty years. All are better placed to withstand the crisis than the UK as a result.
Germany has the same top income tax rate as the UK, the UK has the most statist healthcare system of all of those countries and Canada has contributions based only unemployment benefit unlike the UK
Yes, but I was talking as much more broadly about its social and economic model as healthcare. Our model in Britain makes the country particularly frail and vulnerable in a crisis such as this, as it did in 2008.
Does it? The UK has a lower death rate per head than the Netherlands at the moment
Economic and social frailty are not the same as the first casualty figures, however.
We also ended up with one of the lowest unemployment rates in western Europe after the 2008 crash, our flexible labour market helped
These arguments have been rehearsed many times, but the growth rates and the type of the employment mentioned tell a different story, however. Britain's increased implementation of the ZHC model is now one of things making it more vulnerable to the economic after-effects of this crisis than comparable countries.
Not necessarily, the likes of Deliveroo, Occado, JustEat and Amazon are actually growing during this crisis and plenty of ZHC workers work for them
ZHC is widespead in many sectors, particularly the huge retail, entertainment and hospitality areas ; and the public health consequences of many of these workers in delivery continuing to need and have demand for work at the moment , may not be so preferable, ultimately.
Still plenty of ZHC jobs around, mainly in deliveries and most of that work can be done alone and thus keep social distancing while still earning income independent of government, so good all round
How long have you been on a ZHC?
A ZHC with paid work available is still better than permanent unemployment benefit
You just seem to know what it’s like to be on one.
It is not all certain that Peston is screwing up. We have to drill down to find out and u can't be bothered doing that. However Gove definitely is screwing up the government's communication on CV and should be taken off that role.
As an aside in my work from time to time we get into situations where things have gone wrong and we're on the hook. I am happy to go to customers and say, this is the situation, this is what we are doing about it and this what you can now expect and when, we will keep you updated on progress. They may not be happy about the situation but above all they are relieved their issue is being dealt with.
Gove said there was a shortage of reagents and swabs, which was limiting testing Peston went and found there was no shortage of chemical ingredients for reagents. Peston claimed that this meant there was no shortage of reagents.
10 mins until the 2pm tweet from the DoH to let us know the figures are delayed.
They probably won't, but I hope people try to steer away from making forecasts of civilizational collapse/it'll all be over by Easter on the basis of a single day's data.
Could break the kneejerk barrier of 2k dead today.
How many deaths until you take this seriously?
Weren't you talking about 17 per day a few weeks ago?
Also, after lockdown, if a bunch of hotels at a tourist hotspot have failed... well, hey, the beaches there will still be just as good, the business case for starting new hotels in the same spot is just as good. If a business is fundamentally good, it should be reborn from the ashes- perhaps under a different name and with a different owner, but so what?
Can't say the same about the people who die.
This is the economic Darwinist argument and it recognises that many businesses fail even when times are good because they are poorly run or a competitor comes along doing it better and cheaper or a better widget is designed elsewhere.
As we've seen the supermarkets took on thousands of extra staff and were able to recruit from a pool of those laid off by other employers. Sunak seems anxious to preserve, conserve and protect but capitalism is and always been brutal and adversarial.
As we saw with manufacturing industry in the UK, nothing has a right to exist in perpetuity. We saw manufacturing wither and die and the response was to allow new businesses to emerge - it wasn't pretty, indeed it was painful but throughout history out of such disasters new opportunities have arisen.
Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands and Canada have all steered very far clear of both economic and social darwinism over the last forty years. All are better placed to withstand the crisis than the UK as a result.
Germany has the same top income tax rate as the UK, the UK has the most statist healthcare system of all of those countries and Canada has contributions based only unemployment benefit unlike the UK
Yes, but I was talking as much more broadly about its social and economic model as healthcare. Our model in Britain makes the country particularly frail and vulnerable in a crisis such as this, as it did in 2008.
Does it? The UK has a lower death rate per head than the Netherlands at the moment
Economic and social frailty are not the same as the first casualty figures, however.
We also ended up with one of the lowest unemployment rates in western Europe after the 2008 crash, our flexible labour market helped
These arguments have been rehearsed many times, but the growth rates and the type of the employment mentioned tell a different story, however. Britain's increased implementation of the ZHC model is now one of things making it more vulnerable to the economic after-effects of this crisis than comparable countries.
Not necessarily, the likes of Deliveroo, Occado, JustEat and Amazon are actually growing during this crisis and plenty of ZHC workers work for them
ZHC is widespead in many sectors, particularly the huge retail, entertainment and hospitality areas ; and the public health consequences of many of these workers in delivery continuing to need and have demand for work at the moment , may not be so preferable, ultimately.
Still plenty of ZHC jobs around, mainly in deliveries and most of that work can be done alone and thus keep social distancing while still earning income independent of government, so good all round
How long have you been on a ZHC?
A ZHC with paid work available is still better than permanent unemployment benefit
You just seem to know what it’s like to be on one.
I have done basic jobs before like kitchen portering or delivering telephone directories, any form of paid work is better than no work
10 mins until the 2pm tweet from the DoH to let us know the figures are delayed.
They probably won't, but I hope people try to steer away from making forecasts of civilizational collapse/it'll all be over by Easter on the basis of a single day's data.
Could break the kneejerk barrier of 2k dead today.
How many deaths until you take this seriously?
Weren't you talking about 17 per day a few weeks ago?
It was a mistake to believe the Chinese accounts of fatalities.
Also, after lockdown, if a bunch of hotels at a tourist hotspot have failed... well, hey, the beaches there will still be just as good, the business case for starting new hotels in the same spot is just as good. If a business is fundamentally good, it should be reborn from the ashes- perhaps under a different name and with a different owner, but so what?
Can't say the same about the people who die.
This is the economic Darwinist argument and it recognises that many businesses fail even when times are good because they are poorly run or a competitor comes along doing it better and cheaper or a better widget is designed elsewhere.
As we've seen the supermarkets took on thousands of extra staff and were able to recruit from a pool of those laid off by other employers. Sunak seems anxious to preserve, conserve and protect but capitalism is and always been brutal and adversarial.
As we saw with manufacturing industry in the UK, nothing has a right to exist in perpetuity. We saw manufacturing wither and die and the response was to allow new businesses to emerge - it wasn't pretty, indeed it was painful but throughout history out of such disasters new opportunities have arisen.
Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands and Canada have all steered very far clear of both economic and social darwinism over the last forty years. All are better placed to withstand the crisis than the UK as a result.
Germany has the same top income tax rate as the UK, the UK has the most statist healthcare system of all of those countries and Canada has contributions based only unemployment benefit unlike the UK
Yes, but I was talking as much more broadly about its social and economic model as healthcare. Our model in Britain makes the country particularly frail and vulnerable in a crisis such as this, as it did in 2008.
Does it? The UK has a lower death rate per head than the Netherlands at the moment
Economic and social frailty are not the same as the first casualty figures, however.
We also ended up with one of the lowest unemployment rates in western Europe after the 2008 crash, our flexible labour market helped
These arguments have been rehearsed many times, but the growth rates and the type of the employment mentioned tell a different story, however. Britain's increased implementation of the ZHC model is now one of things making it more vulnerable to the economic after-effects of this crisis than comparable countries.
Not necessarily, the likes of Deliveroo, Occado, JustEat and Amazon are actually growing during this crisis and plenty of ZHC workers work for them
ZHC is widespead in many sectors, particularly the huge retail, entertainment and hospitality areas ; and the public health consequences of many of these workers in delivery continuing to need and have demand for work at the moment , may not be so preferable, ultimately.
Still plenty of ZHC jobs around, mainly in deliveries and most of that work can be done alone and thus keep social distancing while still earning income independent of government, so good all round
Testing for the virus is not the be-all some peoplr think it is. It's sueful for knowing which NHS staff need to be defintiely self-isolating. However, that is a snapshot only. Tomorrow they may come down with the disease so it needs to be continually repeated (even alloing for falsee negatives and postives..
If you could test everyonr in the country today, there's no way you could take much advantage from it. Tomorrow is another day and in that 24 hours, you couldn't possible chase up their comtacts.
My daughter says in Australia, they treat anyone with symptoms as potentially infected and treat them accordingly. The test then is for informnation.
The antibody test is far more useful, but even the media aren't quite stupid enough to blame someone for it's non-appearance, but they soon will.
Erk. It was expected it would rise further but what a figure to hear. So sad.
Yes - not happy news. But I'm afraid we will have a week to a fortnight of deaths between 500-1500 per day unfortunately. Even assuming new cases peak around the weekend / early next week there will be a lag phase in terms of fatalities.
10 mins until the 2pm tweet from the DoH to let us know the figures are delayed.
They probably won't, but I hope people try to steer away from making forecasts of civilizational collapse/it'll all be over by Easter on the basis of a single day's data.
Could break the kneejerk barrier of 2k dead today.
How many deaths until you take this seriously?
Weren't you talking about 17 per day a few weeks ago?
It was a mistake to believe the Chinese accounts of fatalities.
I see blame it on China is going to be the new catch all excuse.
Erk. It was expected it would rise further but what a figure to hear. So sad.
Yes - not happy news. But I'm afraid we will have a week to a fortnight of deaths between 500-1500 per day unfortunately. Even assuming new cases peak around the weekend / early next week there will be a lag phase in terms of fatalities.
If we hit 1500 per day presumably 20k will be too low overall?
Also, after lockdown, if a bunch of hotels at a tourist hotspot have failed... well, hey, the beaches there will still be just as good, the business case for starting new hotels in the same spot is just as good. If a business is fundamentally good, it should be reborn from the ashes- perhaps under a different name and with a different owner, but so what?
Can't say the same about the people who die.
This is the economic Darwinist argument and it recognises that many businesses fail even when times are good because they are poorly run or a competitor comes along doing it better and cheaper or a better widget is designed elsewhere.
As we've seen the supermarkets took on thousands of extra staff and were able to recruit from a pool of those laid off by other employers. Sunak seems anxious to preserve, conserve and protect but capitalism is and always been brutal and adversarial.
As we saw with manufacturing industry in the UK, nothing has a right to exist in perpetuity. We saw manufacturing wither and die and the response was to allow new businesses to emerge - it wasn't pretty, indeed it was painful but throughout history out of such disasters new opportunities have arisen.
Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands and Canada have all steered very far clear of both economic and social darwinism over the last forty years. All are better placed to withstand the crisis than the UK as a result.
Germany has the same top income tax rate as the UK, the UK has the most statist healthcare system of all of those countries and Canada has contributions based only unemployment benefit unlike the UK
Yes, but I was talking as much more broadly about its social and economic model as healthcare. Our model in Britain makes the country particularly frail and vulnerable in a crisis such as this, as it did in 2008.
Does it? The UK has a lower death rate per head than the Netherlands at the moment
Economic and social frailty are not the same as the first casualty figures, however.
We also ended up with one of the lowest unemployment rates in western Europe after the 2008 crash, our flexible labour market helped
These arguments have been rehearsed many times, but the growth rates and the type of the employment mentioned tell a different story, however. Britain's increased implementation of the ZHC model is now one of things making it more vulnerable to the economic after-effects of this crisis than comparable countries.
Not necessarily, the likes of Deliveroo, Occado, JustEat and Amazon are actually growing during this crisis and plenty of ZHC workers work for them
ZHC is widespead in many sectors, particularly the huge retail, entertainment and hospitality areas ; and the public health consequences of many of these workers in delivery continuing to need and have demand for work at the moment , may not be so preferable, ultimately.
Still plenty of ZHC jobs around, mainly in deliveries and most of that work can be done alone and thus keep social distancing while still earning income independent of government, so good all round
How long have you been on a ZHC?
A ZHC with paid work available is still better than permanent unemployment benefit
You just seem to know what it’s like to be on one.
I have done basic jobs before like kitchen portering or delivering telephone directories, any form of paid work is better than no work
It's going to be like this for a few weeks, I don't think the impact of the lockdown will be seen for another fortnight.
Agreed on deaths. In terms of new cases that should stabilise over the weekend / early next week. But number of fatalities will not decline until a week to 10 days after that unfortunately.
10 mins until the 2pm tweet from the DoH to let us know the figures are delayed.
They probably won't, but I hope people try to steer away from making forecasts of civilizational collapse/it'll all be over by Easter on the basis of a single day's data.
Could break the kneejerk barrier of 2k dead today.
How many deaths until you take this seriously?
Weren't you talking about 17 per day a few weeks ago?
It was a mistake to believe the Chinese accounts of fatalities.
I see blame it on China is going to be the new catch all excuse.
You blaming the Croatians ? How many wet markets do they have ?
Peston seems to treat "chemical companies" like people were treating "manufacturers" last week... "surely they are all basically the same"...
I.e. any "manufacturer" could surely turn their hand to making ventilators instead in an afternoon, and by the same token (so the spectacularly under-informed journalistic elite think) chemical companies can surely just make any chemical they feel like it at the drop of a hat.
Peston is, i'm sorry to say, very often simply wrong
Comments
have they quarantined those tested positive ?
What do they do with the test results ?
You take what you can and from wherever you can in these situations.
I don't necessarily agree that governments should do this but it is priced in to the bankers' salary (many of which, if you can remember, were hiked substantially when the first bankers' bonus regs came in).
What happens, for example, when 800K small businesses pop their clogs over the next couple of months ?
Perhaps he asked the Chemical Industry Association about the Chancellors plans for helping people, and contacts at the Treasury if they'd been asked to increase supply or laboratory reagents?
Three other factors have an effect: pressure on the health system, age profile of the population and stage in the pandemic spread.
There was the Italian professor who said under his care, over a period of 2 weeks, he only had 1 person who showed any improvement. And yes many people in ICU die, but the comparison to his typical case load of other pneumonias and repository issues he would see a decent percentage show good improvement.
Dr Foxy has mentioned just how many people end up with hearts (and other vital organs) getting seriously damaged on top of the lungs.
We haven't yet paid off the debts accumulated on behalf of the banks from a decade back.
Why not on reagent chemicals. I know nothing about this stuff, is it really complicated to make, given we do have a sizeable chemical industry?
I am increasingly becoming convinced that they placed a huge amount of faith in the anti-body tests being ready and there is a delay with those due to some sort of accuracy issue. The eggheads talked about these 2+ weeks ago in a way that made it clear they thought they would have them deployed in a short timeframe.
They are employees being paid what their contract allows.
Do you mean that it is morally wrong that they earn that much?
Something like 80% of cases still under treatment though. It is a long haul.
For those who don't know the story, CNN published, many years back a story claiming the US had used nerve gas in Vietnam. The story was, as presented, obvious garbage - their story literally proved itself false.
It turned out that had published bullshit from a known fake veteran, liar and scam artist.
In the aftermath, it turned out that the fact checkers at CNN had been pushed back with accusations that they were trying to "F&*k the story" by seeking to find out *too much information about whether it was true or not*.
From what I have seen, there was also a lot of scepticism about how much the peak could be flattened by public health measures. 20-30% was quoted. I think that was based on Flu too.
https://twitter.com/thebodycoach/status/1245292578788048897?s=20
Come on, you know who you are...
If someone else has said similar below apologies.
Some two million people were expected to travel to Mecca and Medina this July and August for the Hajj, which all Muslims who are physically able must undertake once in a lifetime
My daughter is very keen on doing her PE each morning.
Good on him.
But reading his back story, he seems genuine bloke who slogged it out for a long time (as most PT do) making bugger all, but just kept at it. Had a few lucky breaks with people he met and spun it into something.
What happened to Gove's explanation from the day before that the lack of testing is all the fault of Chinese lies?
The government would advised to keep Gove away from the press briefings. He's causing massive confusion, which is the last thing it needs right now.
People have a tendency to interpret this as everyday English, and assume that it effectively an ex-gratia payment just for doing their job, that the financial services industry allows itself to have somehow, and that ordinary people don't get.
In actual fact, financial services employees have expectations of a given level of total remuneration, and their base salary plus expected bonus is meant to target that (hopefully with some additional allowance for the extra risk/uncertainty that the employee is taking on).
The split between base and bonus/other benefits allows the employer to do three things:
1) smooth earnings by shifting expenses from bad years to good
2) more easily incentivise and reward high performers
3) pretend to the world that their remuneration policy is much less generous than it really is, by arbitrarily reducing the headline salary figures
The problem right now is that employers are making payments for a year that's already complete and in the books, but at a time when it's clear that the next year will be truly rotten. This somewhat makes a mockery of point 1), but is probably unavoidable if the benefits are contractual.
Dividends are a completely different kettle of fish, since it's clear that the shareholders have a much greater interest in ensuring the company stays solvent and much lower rights of expectations of a smooth and predictable income stream. They do, however, have a right to expect that management will balance the immediate needs to keep staff happy at a difficult time, with the long term financial health of the organisation.
This is being conflated with people suddenly (as they do periodically) noticing point 3), and deciding that banking in particular is a public service and needs to adhere to various indeterminable standards to be in line with public opinion. This should really be an entirely separate argument.
Peston didn't know that laboratory reagents aren't the raw chemicals. So he assumed that since the suppler of raw chemicals say there is no issue. So he missed the following
raw materials -> processing -> processing .... -> reagents
This is why such reporting needs to be given to people who are scientifically literate.
Question 1 - Specifically what is the shortage of - not just "reagent", but the specifics. Those long horrible names....
Question 2 - What is it made from? Who makes it?
Question 3 - Who makes the components? Do they have components? Who makes those?
I know interest rates are as low as they've ever been but LTV %s are going to head north in the forseeable future I reckon. Plenty of people moving onto the SVR...
Some banks requiring 40% equity, others 25% for new offers at the moment...
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/one-in-five-small-firms-may-close-as-banks-exploit-coronavirus-loans-76mc620ls
These loans should be turned into grants and the banks bypassed completely.
Mr. 43, Peston screwing up is a Peston problem.
I feel torn - from the point of view of my children it would be good if this lockdown did not last for ever. From my own perspective, I am resigned to spending most of the next year largely isolated in order to reduce my personal risk.
In the end, I think we are going to have to have some sort of de facto division like that - between those who can go out, even with some limited restrictions, and those who really need to take extra care. At least until we get herd immunity and/or some sort of vaccine/cure.
*I really don't understand why they've done this, I'd rather it went in to a fund to support staff on precarious contracts (think the cleaners are outsourced, staff in some catering outlets may be zero hours) or students who are badly affected (postgrads losing lab time, those unable to continue trials and studies with healthcare workers or those involving fieldwork for example). We (academic staff) are generally very lucky already, we're not losing our jobs, w can work from home, we're not taking a pay cut.
Banks aren't charities, you know. They have bonuses to think of too.
As an aside in my work from time to time we get into situations where things have gone wrong and we're on the hook. I am happy to go to customers and say, this is the situation, this is what we are doing about it and this what you can now expect and when, we will keep you updated on progress. They may not be happy about the situation but above all they are relieved their issue is being dealt with.
Peston went and found there was no shortage of chemical ingredients for reagents.
Peston claimed that this meant there was no shortage of reagents.
Weren't you talking about 17 per day a few weeks ago?
If you could test everyonr in the country today, there's no way you could take much advantage from it. Tomorrow is another day and in that 24 hours, you couldn't possible chase up their comtacts.
My daughter says in Australia, they treat anyone with symptoms as potentially infected and treat them accordingly. The test then is for informnation.
The antibody test is far more useful, but even the media aren't quite stupid enough to blame someone for it's non-appearance, but they soon will.
I.e. any "manufacturer" could surely turn their hand to making ventilators instead in an afternoon, and by the same token (so the spectacularly under-informed journalistic elite think) chemical companies can surely just make any chemical they feel like it at the drop of a hat.
Peston is, i'm sorry to say, very often simply wrong
It's. Not. That. Simple.