Apparently mid June is when they will have an idea if the Oxford vaccine looks like a goer.
There are about 4000 confirmed cases a day at the moment, so at least 5x that, 20,000 symptomatic cases a day. That is 67000000/20000 = 0.0003 cases per person per day. The Oxford trials will involve 3000 people getting the vaccine, so you expect 0.9 cases per day if the vaccine does not work. First you need to recruit and vaccinate everyone and allow time for the vaccine to work. Once this has been done it could take as little as a week or two to see whether the vaccine appears to be working or not.
Your "at least 5x" is a HUGE assumption. It might be right but who knows?
Say after a week out of 3000 vaccinated in the trial one person comes down with CV-19, what do you do then?
The Cheltenham Festival could have helped to "accelerate the spread" of coronavirus, a former government chief scientific adviser said.
Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, said it was "the best possible way to accelerate the spread of the virus".
I'm sure it did. I'm also sure that the Central Line was a better conductor. Then perhaps the Northern Line, then the District & Circle. Then Brighton and District U-21 league qualifier, then...then...oh and Cheltenham is certainly in the mix.
Interesting thread header from @Cyclefree once again - thank you. Lots I disagree with this time but that's fine.
Here's my solution (foc) to the national debt problem:
Total UK wealth was £14.6 trillion in 2018 accroding to the ONS. It probably rose in the two years since before falling by 10 - 20% in the past couple of months, so say it's circa £12.5tn now.
In March 2020, UK public sector net debt was £1,791.5 billion (or 79.1% of GDP). Let's say that rises to £2.5tn (110% of pre-corona GDP).
Put a charge of 20% on everyone's wealth and ask them to pay tax on that at whatever % the government is paying on its debt (c 2.6% I believe). Thus a wealth and asset tax of 2.6% of 20% = 0.52%.
Then charge of 20% on ALL transfers of wealth until the national debt is down to acceptable levels.
Sorted.
Otherwise known as stealing or state confiscation of assets. Once it starts, it will never stop. There will always be some 'emergency' we have to cough up for. It will always be a 'special situation'.
Will people invest in Britain after the government robbed them of their money to pay for their own massive policy mistakes?
its the government that has bankrupted Britain, in the name of a virus that has killed less than one thousand healthy people of all ages in England, as the NHS figures I read showed yesterday.
All civilised states look after the vulnerable when they can, but never, surely, by deliberately adopting a concerted program choking off the productive that solely pays for that care.
The balance between the essentially safe productive and the vulnerable unproductive in our society has been thrown massively out of kilter by a coward government that thinks only of tomorrow's headlines.
In the government's defence it wasn't initially known that this horrible disease was primarily a harvester of the vulnerable and sick aged of our society, but now it is.
Our policy should have changed.
I am not sure 'turn back time' is a useful solution tbh.
It may have escaped your notice but 'state confiscation of assets' as you call it started about the same time as the state appeared.
The Cheltenham Festival could have helped to "accelerate the spread" of coronavirus, a former government chief scientific adviser said.
Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, said it was "the best possible way to accelerate the spread of the virus".
I'm sure it did. I'm also sure that the Central Line was a better conductor. Then perhaps the Northern Line, then the District & Circle. Then Brighton and District U-21 league qualifier, then...then...oh and Cheltenham is certainly in the mix.
If Cheltenham had been such a super spreader then you would see hotspots in Ireland - have there been any ?
Apparently mid June is when they will have an idea if the Oxford vaccine looks like a goer.
There are about 4000 confirmed cases a day at the moment, so at least 5x that, 20,000 symptomatic cases a day. That is 67000000/20000 = 0.0003 cases per person per day. The Oxford trials will involve 3000 people getting the vaccine, so you expect 0.9 cases per day if the vaccine does not work. First you need to recruit and vaccinate everyone and allow time for the vaccine to work. Once this has been done it could take as little as a week or two to see whether the vaccine appears to be working or not.
Your "at least 5x" is a HUGE assumption. It might be right but who knows?
Say after a week out of 3000 vaccinated in the trial one person comes down with CV-19, what do you do then?
The Cheltenham Festival could have helped to "accelerate the spread" of coronavirus, a former government chief scientific adviser said.
Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, said it was "the best possible way to accelerate the spread of the virus".
Maybe, but I think the government makes clear that it has helped this time because it was unexpected, next time companies that rely on imports from China to operate will find that their losses won't be socialised and that supply chain risk is something that needs to be taken seriously.
The way to avoid supply chain risk between East Asia and the UK is to put the whole supply chain in East Asia and just send the UK the finished products.
The world collectively seems to be in lots of debt, but who is the debt owed to ? What would happen if it was just cancelled collectively by the EU, USA, Japan and ourselves ? Is China in debt ?
The whole sorry saga has made me reflect on the meaning of money anyway. Before anyone lampoons this I did at least study economics at A level.
What's it all about? The bits of paper or bank statements reflect what, exactly? Manufactured goods? Services? One person picks fruit in a field and indirectly someone pushing paper clips around a desk pays her, who in turn is paid by someone else placing some sort of value on the paper clip work they do. That person is paid by other people including investors in paper clips etc. etc.
It's all meaningless really.
It really isn't. It's a belief system. So long as people think their money will be worth something substantial tomorrow, then things are broadly okay. If that stops, then it really is Armageddon.
Money: A trusted, transferable measure of value owed.
One thing is clear. The world before, and the arguments and the sacred cows before, and the old way of thinking doesn't matter anymore.
This should be Day Zero. Whatevers needed to protect lives, and make a new economy and society for people to operate in at a decent level.
For me this is day 45 in the cage. I've even laminated a wipe board which is on the wall behind me for Zoom calls where I will keep track of the days. That way when my colleagues call me from the wheel in their hamster cage via their view screen to connect to my hamster cage and me on my wheel, they can see how many times we've done this already.
I do agree though. We talk in historical terms about ages. Last century there was a post war age of largely growing standards which ended in around 1980 when we entered the age of free markets. I'd argue that 2020 is the start of a new age.
The world will be more isolationist, more hostile, less open. We'll travel less and go online more. The quicker people get their heads around that - and look for opportunities in the changes - the better.
What were the structural changes after Spanish flu? I mean there had just been a war so that would have changed things plus we had Versailles so perhaps (in)directly the next war also but aside from all that, did the world's trajectory significantly change?
We were nowhere near as globalised as we are now, though. If the virus results in just one good thing it will bring a reduction in globalisation and reduce our reliance on imports. If that results in some price inflation then I think it's a price worth paying.
Re-open the mines!!
I mean I hear you but that would be a huge reversal of decades of beneficial trading relationships and increased global wealth.
I don't think even Covid-19 can reverse the laws of comparative advantage.
Maybe, but I think the government makes clear that it has helped this time because it was unexpected, next time companies that rely on imports from China to operate will find that their losses won't be socialised and that supply chain risk is something that needs to be taken seriously.
Looking at the import stats, it seems that Hatton Garden will suffer, followed by the Apple Store in Regent Street, and then Stratstone eg. the consumer. I don't see a ready substitution for those items.
Regarding fruit picking, the devil as always in in the detail. The narrative from wankers is simple - THEY TOOK OUR JOBS! All we need to do is shut the borders, send the foreigners home and BOSH we rule the waves again.
So lets look at the detail. As Gallowgate and others have pointed out these are farms in the middle of nowhere. The work is seasonal - a few months at most. The work is back-breaking and needs to be done from early in the morning. The work doesn't pay a lot because the fruit isn't worth a lot. In the good old days people were ok going off to live and work on a farm for a few months apparently, but surprisingly enough people won't put up with that any more.
As for "pay more" - how? There is a global market, so if our strawberries cost twice as much as an import guess what we will be eating? Ultimately this is consumer led - unless people are happy to pay twice the price the pay and conditions are as they are. "Pay more" in reality would simply end this kind of agriculture in the UK - unless we slam shut the border and stop importing fresh produce.
This is the problem with Brexiteer bullshit. "They took our jobs" "they work for less" etc etc etc. Fine, you do the job then. "No, I'm not doing that". Which is why we started to import labour in the first place.
A prediction. We will continue to import large amounts of labour to do all the jobs that Brexiteers are unwilling to do. The government will pay lip service to migration but allow it because it needs it. Whats more it will disguise this - as it will disguise our "uncoupled but still buffered up" approach to EU standards and tariffs - by lies and bluster. Just tell people that we have done it and will you remoaners shut up. Doesn't matter that we have done "it" - most people have moved on from whatever "it" was to the totemic "I want it stop saying I can't have it".
As with the Boris deal where we surrendered to the EU, just proclaim triumph and lie about it. The media will back it up. Get the Daily Mail to start talking about migrants as doing the jobs that we don't want to keep us richer on their back-breaking labour. It'll work.
So the thread seems to focus on tax rises, from inheritance tax, to higher corporation and inheritance tax to even forcing the poorest to pay income tax again.
As Margaret Thatcher said 'No, No, No' we have a Tory government not a Labour government and I doubt even Starmer would go as far as the tax bombshells Cyclefree is floating here. Especially when we need to grow the economy once lockdown ends not hammer it with tax rises
We will need to grow the economy and I take your point on tax squashing demand. However, the government - indeed all governments - are going to spend £fucktons. The UK is fiscally sovereign - we can print money which is a distinct advantage to France and Germany. So we either find people to sell our debt to - and there will be a lot of competition - or we print cash.
Either way your No No No will very likely become Yes Yes Yes. The point where cash is needed to keep poor people from starving, you will I assume be saying no no no...
We may borrow more yes or print more money, we are not going to hammer the economy with tax rises however especially as it will reduce growth and hence the tax revenues the government needs
Just so that we're clear - you are content for the national debt to rise to whatever level it needs to rise to? That you aren't going to start bleating about debt the way your lot did in 2008 and start demanding that cash isn't deployed to people who desperately need it because the debt levels are too high?
Sorry old love, I don't believe for a minute that you give a toss about anyone who isn't you and yours. Happily for your party your ilk are largely in the margins and some vaguely humans have been put in charge.
As I have said Boris is a Berlusconi or George W Bush style populist conservative, not a pro austerity Osbornite, he believes in tax cuts and spending and growth. The debt will take care of itself as the economy grows
Boris is not a Berlusconi or even a Bush.
That is your Trump like persona painting a picture in your imagination and your views will go the way of Corbynistas in labour, as this crisis plays out
Thankfully we have a liberal Conservative as PM as all the best Tories are like Cameron and Thatcher. We don't have some perverse IDS tribute act of his imagination.
HYUFD has spent too much time with IDS and others who fortunately do not speak for a Boris led conservative party
The Cheltenham Festival could have helped to "accelerate the spread" of coronavirus, a former government chief scientific adviser said.
Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, said it was "the best possible way to accelerate the spread of the virus".
I'm sure it did. I'm also sure that the Central Line was a better conductor. Then perhaps the Northern Line, then the District & Circle. Then Brighton and District U-21 league qualifier, then...then...oh and Cheltenham is certainly in the mix.
If Cheltenham had been such a super spreader then you would see hotspots in Ireland - have there been any ?
The problem is that it was large and totemic to a certain extent and is much easier to focus on than the 2m/day tube travellers right up until..well until the lockdown and a bit beyond.
It's like the drunk looking under a lampost for the wallet he dropped a hundred yards away because it is easier to see there. And when governments do this, bad policy results.
Looking at the import stats, it seems that Hatton Garden will suffer, followed by the Apple Store in Regent Street, and then Stratstone eg. the consumer. I don't see a ready substitution for those items.
Indeed. Its genuinely an example of his disdain for the (lack of) intelligence of his supporters when Farage posts anti-China tirades on his Chinese iPhone. We can't boycott China without boycotting consumer electronics. Or we could if we reopen a 2020 version of Timex to make chips to put into a 2020 version of the Sinclair Spectrum...
So the thread seems to focus on tax rises, from inheritance tax, to higher corporation and inheritance tax to even forcing the poorest to pay income tax again.
As Margaret Thatcher said 'No, No, No' we have a Tory government not a Labour government and I doubt even Starmer would go as far as the tax bombshells Cyclefree is floating here. Especially when we need to grow the economy once lockdown ends not hammer it with tax rises
We will need to grow the economy and I take your point on tax squashing demand. However, the government - indeed all governments - are going to spend £fucktons. The UK is fiscally sovereign - we can print money which is a distinct advantage to France and Germany. So we either find people to sell our debt to - and there will be a lot of competition - or we print cash.
Either way your No No No will very likely become Yes Yes Yes. The point where cash is needed to keep poor people from starving, you will I assume be saying no no no...
We may borrow more yes or print more money, we are not going to hammer the economy with tax rises however especially as it will reduce growth and hence the tax revenues the government needs
Just so that we're clear - you are content for the national debt to rise to whatever level it needs to rise to? That you aren't going to start bleating about debt the way your lot did in 2008 and start demanding that cash isn't deployed to people who desperately need it because the debt levels are too high?
Sorry old love, I don't believe for a minute that you give a toss about anyone who isn't you and yours. Happily for your party your ilk are largely in the margins and some vaguely humans have been put in charge.
As I have said Boris is a Berlusconi or George W Bush style populist conservative, not a pro austerity Osbornite, he believes in tax cuts and spending and growth. The debt will take care of itself as the economy grows
Boris is not a Berlusconi or even a Bush.
That is your Trump like persona painting a picture in your imagination and your views will go the way of Corbynistas in labour, as this crisis plays out
Thankfully we have a liberal Conservative as PM as all the best Tories are like Cameron and Thatcher. We don't have some perverse IDS tribute act of his imagination.
HYUFD has spent too much time with IDS and others who fortunately do not speak for a Boris led conservative party
He is a dinosaur
So I take it as you are opposed to tax cuts and more spending you back tax rises and deep spending cuts then in your modern, progressive guise?
Good morning all. No dancing round the maypole this MayDay unless we can keep 2m apart.
On topic; do public schools get Gift Aid, as other, perhaps more legitimate, charities do?
Not really on topic. Raise tax on independent schools by all means. But be aware that any significant move will shut a significant number of them down, so is highly unlikely to be a net gain for the exchequer over the next five years at least.
Truth is that so many 'soak the rich' taxes can have negative effects or unintended consequences. They make good headlines for the righteous but often raise very little revenue whne balanced against the losses.
"Soaking the rich" is obviously not the whole solution but for far too long the super rich have always been able to avoid contributing to society by moving their money elsewhere. If they are threatened with higher taxes they threaten to leave the country. That is simply not going to be acceptable in the current situation. The problem with many of the rich is not that just want to avoid being "soaked" they want to avoid paying at all.
The world collectively seems to be in lots of debt, but who is the debt owed to ? What would happen if it was just cancelled collectively by the EU, USA, Japan and ourselves ? Is China in debt ?
China owns a staggering amount of US debt
Yes. I dont think that they will be buying much this year, but what effect does a Chinese bond strike have? Currently China owns USD 3.2 trillion in overseas debt, including USD 1.1 trillion of US debt, but that makes up only 5% of the US national debt, most of which is owned by Americans directly or indirectly.
If China stopped buying US debt that would not be an implication free policy. It might, for example put upward pressure on their currency.
The US domestic bond market is on fire. Yesterday Boeing was able to raise a massive USD25bn in bond sales and April 2020 will be a an all time record month for sales of investment grade corporate debt
Admittedly the yields are in all cases above treasuries, in some cases well above, but the liquidity is enormous.
Sure - to step away from the increasing divergence between the political EU project. We were non-Schengen, non-Euro, not interested in the army etc. Stepping to the edge under our own steam rather than being flung out seemed sensible. We are a Trading Nation and a member of a massive trade area. The idea that we would leave the EEA as well was for the birds - even the likes of Farage were saying so. I was a fool, but I wasn't voting for DEY TERK ER JERBS mentality as proffered by HYUFD.
The Cheltenham Festival could have helped to "accelerate the spread" of coronavirus, a former government chief scientific adviser said.
Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, said it was "the best possible way to accelerate the spread of the virus".
I'm sure it did. I'm also sure that the Central Line was a better conductor. Then perhaps the Northern Line, then the District & Circle. Then Brighton and District U-21 league qualifier, then...then...oh and Cheltenham is certainly in the mix.
I have little doubt the tubes were big conductors and Cheltenham maybe as well as the football
As for "pay more" - how? There is a global market, so if our strawberries cost twice as much as an import guess what we will be eating? Ultimately this is consumer led - unless people are happy to pay twice the price the pay and conditions are as they are. "Pay more" in reality would simply end this kind of agriculture in the UK - unless we slam shut the border and stop importing fresh produce.
If I can play devils advocate to your rant about lazy Brexiteers - is growing strawberries a good use of our agricultural land ?
Or is it just a way to give cheap empty calories which take the taste away from the cheap fizzy wine to remainer tossers quaff during their awful metropolitan vegan dinner parties where they moan about proles ?
Perhaps more turnips would better feed the underclass of the nation as we toil in the mills ?
The world collectively seems to be in lots of debt, but who is the debt owed to ? What would happen if it was just cancelled collectively by the EU, USA, Japan and ourselves ? Is China in debt ?
China owns a staggering amount of US debt
Yes. I dont think that they will be buying much this year, but what effect does a Chinese bond strike have? Currently China owns USD 3.2 trillion in overseas debt, including USD 1.1 trillion of US debt, but that makes up only 5% of the US national debt, most of which is owned by Americans directly or indirectly.
If China stopped buying US debt that would not be an implication free policy. It might, for example put upward pressure on their currency.
The US domestic bond market is on fire. Yesterday Boeing was able to raise a massive USD25bn in bond sales and April 2020 will be a an all time record month for sales of investment grade corporate debt
Admittedly the yields are in all cases above treasuries, in some cases well above, but the liquidity is enormous.
President Donald Trump is exploring blocking a government retirement fund from investing in Chinese equities considered a national security risk, a person familiar with the internal deliberations said.
The Thrift Savings Plan -- the federal government’s retirement savings fund -- is scheduled to transfer roughly $50 billion of its international fund to mirror an MSCI All Country World Index, which captures emerging markets, including China.
The Cheltenham Festival could have helped to "accelerate the spread" of coronavirus, a former government chief scientific adviser said.
Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, said it was "the best possible way to accelerate the spread of the virus".
I'm sure it did. I'm also sure that the Central Line was a better conductor. Then perhaps the Northern Line, then the District & Circle. Then Brighton and District U-21 league qualifier, then...then...oh and Cheltenham is certainly in the mix.
I have little doubt the tubes were big conductors and Cheltenham maybe as well as the football
If I can play devils advocate to your rant about lazy Brexiteers - is growing strawberries a good use of our agricultural land ?
Or is it just a way to give cheap empty calories which take the taste away from the cheap fizzy wine remainer tossers quaff during their awful metropolitan vegan dinner parties where they moan about proles ?
Perhaps more turnips would better feed the underclass of the nation as we toil in the mills ?
HEY!!!!
How dare you. We remainer tossers try to drink *expensive* fizzy wine at our awful metropolitan vegan dinner parties.
The Cheltenham Festival could have helped to "accelerate the spread" of coronavirus, a former government chief scientific adviser said.
Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, said it was "the best possible way to accelerate the spread of the virus".
I'm sure it did. I'm also sure that the Central Line was a better conductor. Then perhaps the Northern Line, then the District & Circle. Then Brighton and District U-21 league qualifier, then...then...oh and Cheltenham is certainly in the mix.
If Cheltenham had been such a super spreader then you would see hotspots in Ireland - have there been any ?
Also people would have transport and accommodation booked and would have travelled anyway, would have just gone on the piss. Which is probably what most of them do anyway.
If I can play devils advocate to your rant about lazy Brexiteers - is growing strawberries a good use of our agricultural land ?
Or is it just a way to give cheap empty calories which take the taste away from the cheap fizzy wine remainer tossers quaff during their awful metropolitan vegan dinner parties where they moan about proles ?
Perhaps more turnips would better feed the underclass of the nation as we toil in the mills ?
HEY!!!!
How dare you. We remainer tossers try to drink *expensive* fizzy wine at our awful metropolitan vegan dinner parties.
I note you did not try and defend strawberry production - perhaps the vast scientific resources of the Uk could be guided towards genetically modifying avocados such they can be grown in Norfolk.
Strawberries will have to be on hold until robot pickers are available.
Residents in deprived areas have experienced double the death rates of those in affluent areas, new figures from the Office for National Statistics reveal.
File under no shit Sherlock. All those people squished into tower blocks in poor London boroughs and unlikely to have jobs that allow WFH.
So I take it as you are opposed to tax cuts and more spending you back tax rises and deep spending cuts then in your modern, progressive guise?
I think that his modern progressive guise is that he Cares about Other People. whereas you do not.
Oh yes, I don't care about people.
As apparently this morning backing tax rises and slashing spending and supporting uncontrolled immigration is the only way you care about people according to some on here!
If I can play devils advocate to your rant about lazy Brexiteers - is growing strawberries a good use of our agricultural land ?
Or is it just a way to give cheap empty calories which take the taste away from the cheap fizzy wine remainer tossers quaff during their awful metropolitan vegan dinner parties where they moan about proles ?
Perhaps more turnips would better feed the underclass of the nation as we toil in the mills ?
HEY!!!!
How dare you. We remainer tossers try to drink *expensive* fizzy wine at our awful metropolitan vegan dinner parties.
I note you did not try and defend strawberry production - perhaps the vast scientific resources of the Uk could be guided towards genetically modifying avocados such they can be grown in Norfolk.
Strawberries will have to be on hold until robot pickers are available.
True. We could even try to replicate some of the problems associated with avocado production.
Plus I apologise because I do not remember "Vote Leave so we will no longer have strawberries to eat" on the side of that bus.
Anything else we should forego, while we're on the subject?
London had the highest mortality rate with 85.7 deaths per 100,000 people. The highest age-standardised mortality rate was in Newham, with 144.3 deaths per 100,000 population, followed by Brent with 141.5 deaths per 100,000 population and Hackney 127.4 deaths per 100,000 population.
The world collectively seems to be in lots of debt, but who is the debt owed to ? What would happen if it was just cancelled collectively by the EU, USA, Japan and ourselves ? Is China in debt ?
China owns a staggering amount of US debt
Yes. I dont think that they will be buying much this year, but what effect does a Chinese bond strike have? Currently China owns USD 3.2 trillion in overseas debt, including USD 1.1 trillion of US debt, but that makes up only 5% of the US national debt, most of which is owned by Americans directly or indirectly.
If China stopped buying US debt that would not be an implication free policy. It might, for example put upward pressure on their currency.
The US domestic bond market is on fire. Yesterday Boeing was able to raise a massive USD25bn in bond sales and April 2020 will be a an all time record month for sales of investment grade corporate debt
Admittedly the yields are in all cases above treasuries, in some cases well above, but the liquidity is enormous.
President Donald Trump is exploring blocking a government retirement fund from investing in Chinese equities considered a national security risk, a person familiar with the internal deliberations said.
The Thrift Savings Plan -- the federal government’s retirement savings fund -- is scheduled to transfer roughly $50 billion of its international fund to mirror an MSCI All Country World Index, which captures emerging markets, including China.
Residents in deprived areas have experienced double the death rates of those in affluent areas, new figures from the Office for National Statistics reveal.
File under no shit Sherlock. All those people squished into tower blocks in poor London boroughs and unlikely to have jobs that allow WFH.
Sure, not surprising - but what factors are driving it?
So the thread seems to focus on tax rises, from inheritance tax, to higher corporation and inheritance tax to even forcing the poorest to pay income tax again.
As Margaret Thatcher said 'No, No, No' we have a Tory government not a Labour government and I doubt even Starmer would go as far as the tax bombshells Cyclefree is floating here. Especially when we need to grow the economy once lockdown ends not hammer it with tax rises
We will need to grow the economy and I take your point on tax squashing demand. However, the government - indeed all governments - are going to spend £fucktons. The UK is fiscally sovereign - we can print money which is a distinct advantage to France and Germany. So we either find people to sell our debt to - and there will be a lot of competition - or we print cash.
Either way your No No No will very likely become Yes Yes Yes. The point where cash is needed to keep poor people from starving, you will I assume be saying no no no...
So we print cash.
An awful suggestion normally especially when facing inflation. But we are facing a pandemic not seen for a century and deflation. So really right now printing money is the worst solution we can think of except all others.
You and I know that. I await HYUFD coming on to defend Keith Josephism because printing money makes Tory hedge fund donors poorer which is absolutely what all these new Tory voters in places like Stockton-on-Tees are concerned about.
I think this will quickly turn into rampant cakeism from HYUFDist loons. 'Yes you peons voted Tory and we thank you for that. We're going to enact policies which will sadly make some of you poor and hungry to make the fat and wealthy fatter and wealthier. They matter to us, you do not. Don't worry though - to pacify you we're going to say every day how we are controlling immigration by leaving the border wide open and how we're Getting Brexit Done. Whats that? You're having to eat grass? But you said that you would be *happy* to eat grass if thats what it took.'
By next year the transition period will end and we will slam the door firmly shut on free movement from the EU to the UK, so Brexit voters will get what they want with Priti Patel 's points system replacing an open door to immigration from Eastern Europe
And how will we be doing that. This government is flying people in from eastern Europe to pick fruit. Why? Because British people won't pick fruit. You'd think that Brexiteers would have been chomping at the bit to do it now that foreigners have stopped taking their jobs.
And yet 50,000 applications. Just 6,000 worth / wanting an interview. Just 1,000 job offers. Just 100 jobs accepted. 100. Even flying in eastern Europeans with Brexit chanters issuing death threats against these companies they refuse to work for, we're going to have fruit rotting in the fields and yet more imported. Bravo. Just think how much better off we'll be if Priti does what you say.
She won't. She can't. Even if she wanted to.
Have you not seen the specific details on the fruit picking vacancies? They promised £15 per hour but its actually more like minimum wage. The nearest farm is 100m away and you have to work 6 days a week, and live in a caravan, the cost of which is deducted from your meagre wages.
The fruit picking industry is a disgrace. How can they expect British people to do the work if they treat their workers like little more than slaves?
They deployed the classic sales tactic of not making their offer until people had actually applied and invested time.
Hence why big business and vested interests are so keen on freedom of movement - its the freedom to drive down wages.
And prices. Still, I don’t think we need worry too much about big wage rises any time soon - with or without immigration. Prices will go up though, though.
Residents in deprived areas have experienced double the death rates of those in affluent areas, new figures from the Office for National Statistics reveal.
File under no shit Sherlock. All those people squished into tower blocks in poor London boroughs and unlikely to have jobs that allow WFH.
Sure, not surprising - but what factors are driving it?
So the thread seems to focus on tax rises, from inheritance tax, to higher corporation and inheritance tax to even forcing the poorest to pay income tax again.
As Margaret Thatcher said 'No, No, No' we have a Tory government not a Labour government and I doubt even Starmer would go as far as the tax bombshells Cyclefree is floating here. Especially when we need to grow the economy once lockdown ends not hammer it with tax rises
We will need to grow the economy and I take your point on tax squashing demand. However, the government - indeed all governments - are going to spend £fucktons. The UK is fiscally sovereign - we can print money which is a distinct advantage to France and Germany. So we either find people to sell our debt to - and there will be a lot of competition - or we print cash.
Either way your No No No will very likely become Yes Yes Yes. The point where cash is needed to keep poor people from starving, you will I assume be saying no no no...
We may borrow more yes or print more money, we are not going to hammer the economy with tax rises however especially as it will reduce growth and hence the tax revenues the government needs
Just so that we're clear - you are content for the national debt to rise to whatever level it needs to rise to? That you aren't going to start bleating about debt the way your lot did in 2008 and start demanding that cash isn't deployed to people who desperately need it because the debt levels are too high?
Sorry old love, I don't believe for a minute that you give a toss about anyone who isn't you and yours. Happily for your party your ilk are largely in the margins and some vaguely humans have been put in charge.
As I have said Boris is a Berlusconi or George W Bush style populist conservative, not a pro austerity Osbornite, he believes in tax cuts and spending and growth. The debt will take care of itself as the economy grows
Boris is not a Berlusconi or even a Bush.
That is your Trump like persona painting a picture in your imagination and your views will go the way of Corbynistas in labour, as this crisis plays out
Thankfully we have a liberal Conservative as PM as all the best Tories are like Cameron and Thatcher. We don't have some perverse IDS tribute act of his imagination.
HYUFD has spent too much time with IDS and others who fortunately do not speak for a Boris led conservative party
He is a dinosaur
So I take it as you are opposed to tax cuts and more spending you back tax rises and deep spending cuts then in your modern, progressive guise?
I support fair taxes and in order to be true to 'we are all in this together' and for all those we clap each thursday, they should see a lift in their wages paid for by an increase to a living wage plus various tax and benefit adjustments including the end of the triple lock, end of working over 60's exemption from NI, and the end of higher rate pension tax relief.
Furthermore, several new bands need to be added to council tax
I would not increase vat as that hits the low paid
And of course tax on Amazon and digital companies plus use of tax havens
London had the highest mortality rate with 85.7 deaths per 100,000 people. The highest age-standardised mortality rate was in Newham, with 144.3 deaths per 100,000 population, followed by Brent with 141.5 deaths per 100,000 population and Hackney 127.4 deaths per 100,000 population.
London is the main factor in the 'poor' stats of the UK. Although legit questions can be asked of the government, the characteristics of London I would say maybe outweigh what mistakes might have been made. (ie its size, demographics, the nature of it as a major transport hub)
Good morning all. No dancing round the maypole this MayDay unless we can keep 2m apart.
On topic; do public schools get Gift Aid, as other, perhaps more legitimate, charities do?
Not really on topic. Raise tax on independent schools by all means. But be aware that any significant move will shut a significant number of them down, so is highly unlikely to be a net gain for the exchequer over the next five years at least.
Truth is that so many 'soak the rich' taxes can have negative effects or unintended consequences. They make good headlines for the righteous but often raise very little revenue whne balanced against the losses.
"Soaking the rich" is obviously not the whole solution but for far too long the super rich have always been able to avoid contributing to society by moving their money elsewhere. If they are threatened with higher taxes they threaten to leave the country. That is simply not going to be acceptable in the current situation. The problem with many of the rich is not that just want to avoid being "soaked" they want to avoid paying at all.
Acceptable or not, it's still going to happen. The key is to have an international approach to this. Wait, you're saying that our EU allies the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Ireland blocked it? Oh right.
Residents in deprived areas have experienced double the death rates of those in affluent areas, new figures from the Office for National Statistics reveal.
File under no shit Sherlock. All those people squished into tower blocks in poor London boroughs and unlikely to have jobs that allow WFH.
Sure, not surprising - but what factors are driving it?
The Cheltenham Festival could have helped to "accelerate the spread" of coronavirus, a former government chief scientific adviser said.
Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, said it was "the best possible way to accelerate the spread of the virus".
I'm sure it did. I'm also sure that the Central Line was a better conductor. Then perhaps the Northern Line, then the District & Circle. Then Brighton and District U-21 league qualifier, then...then...oh and Cheltenham is certainly in the mix.
I have little doubt the tubes were big conductors and Cheltenham maybe as well as the football
It is absurd to conflate the two though. There is a distinction in that one was essential to people to travelling to work, whereas large scale mass gatherings were not essential to peoples' daily lives. That is why events such as Cheltenham stand out as totemic evidence of unnecessary delay. Prior to 20th March the Government had left it to those organising such events to decide whether or not to cancel them, and too many organisers decided that they could not afford to cancel.
From eyeballing the Swedish data I've become less optimistic about their future trend. Whilst new intensive care cases are down from a peak they now look (as much as you can tell with the lagged data) plateaued rather than consistently falling as they are in the UK and other countries.
So the thread seems to focus on tax rises, from inheritance tax, to higher corporation and inheritance tax to even forcing the poorest to pay income tax again.
As Margaret Thatcher said 'No, No, No' we have a Tory government not a Labour government and I doubt even Starmer would go as far as the tax bombshells Cyclefree is floating here. Especially when we need to grow the economy once lockdown ends not hammer it with tax rises
We will need to grow the economy and I take your point on tax squashing demand. However, the government - indeed all governments - are going to spend £fucktons. The UK is fiscally sovereign - we can print money which is a distinct advantage to France and Germany. So we either find people to sell our debt to - and there will be a lot of competition - or we print cash.
Either way your No No No will very likely become Yes Yes Yes. The point where cash is needed to keep poor people from starving, you will I assume be saying no no no...
We may borrow more yes or print more money, we are not going to hammer the economy with tax rises however especially as it will reduce growth and hence the tax revenues the government needs
Just so that we're clear - you are content for the national debt to rise to whatever level it needs to rise to? That you aren't going to start bleating about debt the way your lot did in 2008 and start demanding that cash isn't deployed to people who desperately need it because the debt levels are too high?
Sorry old love, I don't believe for a minute that you give a toss about anyone who isn't you and yours. Happily for your party your ilk are largely in the margins and some vaguely humans have been put in charge.
As I have said Boris is a Berlusconi or George W Bush style populist conservative, not a pro austerity Osbornite, he believes in tax cuts and spending and growth. The debt will take care of itself as the economy grows
Boris is not a Berlusconi or even a Bush.
That is your Trump like persona painting a picture in your imagination and your views will go the way of Corbynistas in labour, as this crisis plays out
Thankfully we have a liberal Conservative as PM as all the best Tories are like Cameron and Thatcher. We don't have some perverse IDS tribute act of his imagination.
HYUFD has spent too much time with IDS and others who fortunately do not speak for a Boris led conservative party
He is a dinosaur
So I take it as you are opposed to tax cuts and more spending you back tax rises and deep spending cuts then in your modern, progressive guise?
I support fair taxes and in order to be true to 'we are all in this together' and for all those we clap each thursday, they should see a lift in their wages paid for by an increase to a living wage plus various tax and benefit adjustments including the end of the triple lock, end of working over 60's exemption from NI, and the end of higher rate pension tax relief.
Furthermore, several new bands need to be added to council tax
I would not increase vat as that hits the low paid
And of course tax on Amazon and digital companies plus use of tax havens
So you support higher taxes and the end of the triple lock and pension tax relief, thanks for confirming
I don't think the case has ever been better for a one-off wealth tax.
In ordinary times, no-one would believe it to be a one-off and would adjust their behaviour accordingly. But now? We truly live in remarkable times.
I don't think it is politically possible, because for almost everyone 'wealth' is by definition something others wealthier than you have. Secondly it isn't going to be acceptable if somehow it doesn't apply equally to people regarded as Brits - Jagger, Hamilton, Branson - but who live multinational lives of amazing wealth held somewhere else. Isn't avoidance going to be the central question? Thirdly it doesn't apply to all the people who have squandered all their assets and expect to live off everyone else anyway.
London had the highest mortality rate with 85.7 deaths per 100,000 people. The highest age-standardised mortality rate was in Newham, with 144.3 deaths per 100,000 population, followed by Brent with 141.5 deaths per 100,000 population and Hackney 127.4 deaths per 100,000 population.
Areas with death rates over 0.1% of their entire population (ie over 100 per 100,000) make any projections of overall IFR for those infected of 0.1% or lower look rather unlikely. (Not only would everyone need to have caught it, death rates for that area would have to be unusually high. Which isn't impossible - demographics, environmental conditions, and just plain random variation permit it - but does make it look more and more unlikely.)
Apparently mid June is when they will have an idea if the Oxford vaccine looks like a goer.
There are about 4000 confirmed cases a day at the moment, so at least 5x that, 20,000 symptomatic cases a day. That is 67000000/20000 = 0.0003 cases per person per day. The Oxford trials will involve 3000 people getting the vaccine, so you expect 0.9 cases per day if the vaccine does not work. First you need to recruit and vaccinate everyone and allow time for the vaccine to work. Once this has been done it could take as little as a week or two to see whether the vaccine appears to be working or not.
Your "at least 5x" is a HUGE assumption. It might be right but who knows?
Say after a week out of 3000 vaccinated in the trial one person comes down with CV-19, what do you do then?
I think it is generally accepted that there are many more cases of COVID-19 than have been confirmed by lab testing. It is known that there are many mild and asymptomatic cases, so there could be 10x as many cases as confirmed cases. In a vaccine trial only symptomatic cases are relevant as people who have been vaccinated will be told to report any symptoms even if they are mild. This is why I have used a multiplier of 5X instead of 10x, to estimate the number of people in the trial who would be expected to show symptoms of the virus but not to count those who would be infected but who would have only minimal or no symptoms.
There is a second control group of 3000 people who have received a different vaccine that does not protect against COVID-19. The researchers are looking to see if there are fewer cases of the virus in the vaccine group than in the control group. If there are 1-2 cases in the vaccine group and lots of cases in the control group the vaccine could still be regarded as a success.
The Cheltenham Festival could have helped to "accelerate the spread" of coronavirus, a former government chief scientific adviser said.
Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, said it was "the best possible way to accelerate the spread of the virus".
I'm sure it did. I'm also sure that the Central Line was a better conductor. Then perhaps the Northern Line, then the District & Circle. Then Brighton and District U-21 league qualifier, then...then...oh and Cheltenham is certainly in the mix.
I have little doubt the tubes were big conductors and Cheltenham maybe as well as the football
It is absurd to conflate the two though. There is a distinction in that one was essential to people to travelling to work, whereas large scale mass gatherings were not essential to peoples' daily lives. That is why events such as Cheltenham stand out as totemic evidence of unnecessary delay. Prior to 20th March the Government had left it to those organising such events to decide whether or not to cancel them, and too many organisers decided that they could not afford to cancel.
As far as I understand it is only Cheltenham and Liverpools match that is controversial and we have yet to see conclusive evidence they were. It is probable but at present not proven. Let us wait for the evidence.
London had the highest mortality rate with 85.7 deaths per 100,000 people. The highest age-standardised mortality rate was in Newham, with 144.3 deaths per 100,000 population, followed by Brent with 141.5 deaths per 100,000 population and Hackney 127.4 deaths per 100,000 population.
Areas with death rates over 0.1% of their entire population (ie over 100 per 100,000) make any projections of overall IFR for those infected of 0.1% or lower look rather unlikely. (Not only would everyone need to have caught it, death rates for that area would have to be unusually high. Which isn't impossible - demographics, environmental conditions, and just plain random variation permit it - but does make it look more and more unlikely.)
Other than the one swedish guy, has anybody seriously argued it is 0.1? Most have always said ~1%, hoping that is a bit lower than that.
London had the highest mortality rate with 85.7 deaths per 100,000 people. The highest age-standardised mortality rate was in Newham, with 144.3 deaths per 100,000 population, followed by Brent with 141.5 deaths per 100,000 population and Hackney 127.4 deaths per 100,000 population.
London is the main factor in the 'poor' stats of the UK. Although legit questions can be asked of the government, the characteristics of London I would say maybe outweigh what mistakes might have been made. (ie its size, demographics, the nature of it as a major transport hub)
Be in no mistake. When in the next few days the UK achieves the dubious distinction of having the second highest number of deaths in the world, despite being far removed from the vanguard of the initial outbreak, that fact will be hammered home relentlessly. The UK's record to date is not "poor", it's abysmal. The only saving grace is that finally, some two months late, the penny seems to have dropped and it is possible that they will now get the key decisions right moving forward.
The figures for total cases for local authority areas. Anyone know if they the numbers for people who were tested positive in that local area, or the numbers for the addresses of the people who were tested positive?
i.e. if there is a major testing centre in your authority are the numbers going to be high?
As for "pay more" - how? There is a global market, so if our strawberries cost twice as much as an import guess what we will be eating? Ultimately this is consumer led - unless people are happy to pay twice the price the pay and conditions are as they are. "Pay more" in reality would simply end this kind of agriculture in the UK - unless we slam shut the border and stop importing fresh produce.
If I can play devils advocate to your rant about lazy Brexiteers - is growing strawberries a good use of our agricultural land ?
Or is it just a way to give cheap empty calories which take the taste away from the cheap fizzy wine to remainer tossers quaff during their awful metropolitan vegan dinner parties where they moan about proles ?
Perhaps more turnips would better feed the underclass of the nation as we toil in the mills ?
Not calling them lazy, just hypocritical. I get why people don't want to take jobs which are long, monotonous, hard. In parts of the country where real unemployment tends to be low. Its them then blaming the migrants who do the jobs they choose not to do which is the problem.
We don't want foreigners working in care homes. But we don't want our parents living with us. We don't want to pay to train enough doctors and nurses. But we don't want foreigners doing the jobs either (unless they are the ones saving the PM, we like those ones). We don't want to toil in the fields. But we want cheap produce preferably BRITISH but we don't want to bring people in to pick it for us.
Its isn't the fault of foreigners that areas like the north east have been left behind, its the fault of people like HYUFD.
So the thread seems to focus on tax rises, from inheritance tax, to higher corporation and inheritance tax to even forcing the poorest to pay income tax again.
As Margaret Thatcher said 'No, No, No' we have a Tory government not a Labour government and I doubt even Starmer would go as far as the tax bombshells Cyclefree is floating here. Especially when we need to grow the economy once lockdown ends not hammer it with tax rises
We will need to grow the economy and I take your point on tax squashing demand. However, the government - indeed all governments - are going to spend £fucktons. The UK is fiscally sovereign - we can print money which is a distinct advantage to France and Germany. So we either find people to sell our debt to - and there will be a lot of competition - or we print cash.
Either way your No No No will very likely become Yes Yes Yes. The point where cash is needed to keep poor people from starving, you will I assume be saying no no no...
We may borrow more yes or print more money, we are not going to hammer the economy with tax rises however especially as it will reduce growth and hence the tax revenues the government needs
Just so that we're clear - you are content for the national debt to rise to whatever level it needs to rise to? That you aren't going to start bleating about debt the way your lot did in 2008 and start demanding that cash isn't deployed to people who desperately need it because the debt levels are too high?
Sorry old love, I don't believe for a minute that you give a toss about anyone who isn't you and yours. Happily for your party your ilk are largely in the margins and some vaguely humans have been put in charge.
As I have said Boris is a Berlusconi or George W Bush style populist conservative, not a pro austerity Osbornite, he believes in tax cuts and spending and growth. The debt will take care of itself as the economy grows
Boris is not a Berlusconi or even a Bush.
That is your Trump like persona painting a picture in your imagination and your views will go the way of Corbynistas in labour, as this crisis plays out
Thankfully we have a liberal Conservative as PM as all the best Tories are like Cameron and Thatcher. We don't have some perverse IDS tribute act of his imagination.
HYUFD has spent too much time with IDS and others who fortunately do not speak for a Boris led conservative party
He is a dinosaur
So I take it as you are opposed to tax cuts and more spending you back tax rises and deep spending cuts then in your modern, progressive guise?
I support fair taxes and in order to be true to 'we are all in this together' and for all those we clap each thursday, they should see a lift in their wages paid for by an increase to a living wage plus various tax and benefit adjustments including the end of the triple lock, end of working over 60's exemption from NI, and the end of higher rate pension tax relief.
Furthermore, several new bands need to be added to council tax
I would not increase vat as that hits the low paid
And of course tax on Amazon and digital companies plus use of tax havens
So you support higher taxes and the end of the triple lock and pension tax relief, thanks for confirming
I would expect that these tax changes would have large majority support due to their fairness
The Cheltenham Festival could have helped to "accelerate the spread" of coronavirus, a former government chief scientific adviser said.
Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, said it was "the best possible way to accelerate the spread of the virus".
I'm sure it did. I'm also sure that the Central Line was a better conductor. Then perhaps the Northern Line, then the District & Circle. Then Brighton and District U-21 league qualifier, then...then...oh and Cheltenham is certainly in the mix.
I have little doubt the tubes were big conductors and Cheltenham maybe as well as the football
ie normal life.
Only "normal" for those pillocks who insisted on living it, when it was clearly a massive risk to wider society...
As for "pay more" - how? There is a global market, so if our strawberries cost twice as much as an import guess what we will be eating? Ultimately this is consumer led - unless people are happy to pay twice the price the pay and conditions are as they are. "Pay more" in reality would simply end this kind of agriculture in the UK - unless we slam shut the border and stop importing fresh produce.
If I can play devils advocate to your rant about lazy Brexiteers - is growing strawberries a good use of our agricultural land ?
Or is it just a way to give cheap empty calories which take the taste away from the cheap fizzy wine to remainer tossers quaff during their awful metropolitan vegan dinner parties where they moan about proles ?
Perhaps more turnips would better feed the underclass of the nation as we toil in the mills ?
Not calling them lazy, just hypocritical. I get why people don't want to take jobs which are long, monotonous, hard. In parts of the country where real unemployment tends to be low. Its them then blaming the migrants who do the jobs they choose not to do which is the problem.
We don't want foreigners working in care homes. But we don't want our parents living with us. We don't want to pay to train enough doctors and nurses. But we don't want foreigners doing the jobs either (unless they are the ones saving the PM, we like those ones). We don't want to toil in the fields. But we want cheap produce preferably BRITISH but we don't want to bring people in to pick it for us.
Its isn't the fault of foreigners that areas like the north east have been left behind, its the fault of people like HYUFD.
No it is the fault of New Labour which let uncontrolled immigration in from Eastern Europe from 2004 on without transition controls putting downward pressure on local wages and pressure on housing and local services.
You may not care about that, Brexit and Boris voters in the North did
So all the mutterings by ministers this morning sounds like they have made the 100k give or take. So instantly the criticism switched to wrong people being tested.
As for "pay more" - how? There is a global market, so if our strawberries cost twice as much as an import guess what we will be eating? Ultimately this is consumer led - unless people are happy to pay twice the price the pay and conditions are as they are. "Pay more" in reality would simply end this kind of agriculture in the UK - unless we slam shut the border and stop importing fresh produce.
If I can play devils advocate to your rant about lazy Brexiteers - is growing strawberries a good use of our agricultural land ?
Or is it just a way to give cheap empty calories which take the taste away from the cheap fizzy wine to remainer tossers quaff during their awful metropolitan vegan dinner parties where they moan about proles ?
Perhaps more turnips would better feed the underclass of the nation as we toil in the mills ?
Not calling them lazy, just hypocritical. I get why people don't want to take jobs which are long, monotonous, hard. In parts of the country where real unemployment tends to be low. Its them then blaming the migrants who do the jobs they choose not to do which is the problem.
We don't want foreigners working in care homes. But we don't want our parents living with us. We don't want to pay to train enough doctors and nurses. But we don't want foreigners doing the jobs either (unless they are the ones saving the PM, we like those ones). We don't want to toil in the fields. But we want cheap produce preferably BRITISH but we don't want to bring people in to pick it for us.
Its isn't the fault of foreigners that areas like the north east have been left behind, its the fault of people like HYUFD.
All true.
Except for the last bit. HYUFD voted Remain. He was happy that EU fruit pickers and other workers had free movement and were able to come to the UK.
He speaks on behalf of northern or midlands leavers because he has spoken to each and every one of them.
Also, his concern falls into the category (as it does with 99% of leavers on PB who don't like immigration) of:
So the thread seems to focus on tax rises, from inheritance tax, to higher corporation and inheritance tax to even forcing the poorest to pay income tax again.
As Margaret Thatcher said 'No, No, No' we have a Tory government not a Labour government and I doubt even Starmer would go as far as the tax bombshells Cyclefree is floating here. Especially when we need to grow the economy once lockdown ends not hammer it with tax rises
We will need to grow the economy and I take your point on tax squashing demand. However, the government - indeed all governments - are going to spend £fucktons. The UK is fiscally sovereign - we can print money which is a distinct advantage to France and Germany. So we either find people to sell our debt to - and there will be a lot of competition - or we print cash.
Either way your No No No will very likely become Yes Yes Yes. The point where cash is needed to keep poor people from starving, you will I assume be saying no no no...
We may borrow more yes or print more money, we are not going to hammer the economy with tax rises however especially as it will reduce growth and hence the tax revenues the government needs
Just so that we're clear - you are content for the national debt to rise to whatever level it needs to rise to? That you aren't going to start bleating about debt the way your lot did in 2008 and start demanding that cash isn't deployed to people who desperately need it because the debt levels are too high?
Sorry old love, I don't believe for a minute that you give a toss about anyone who isn't you and yours. Happily for your party your ilk are largely in the margins and some vaguely humans have been put in charge.
As I have said Boris is a Berlusconi or George W Bush style populist conservative, not a pro austerity Osbornite, he believes in tax cuts and spending and growth. The debt will take care of itself as the economy grows
Boris is not a Berlusconi or even a Bush.
That is your Trump like persona painting a picture in your imagination and your views will go the way of Corbynistas in labour, as this crisis plays out
Thankfully we have a liberal Conservative as PM as all the best Tories are like Cameron and Thatcher. We don't have some perverse IDS tribute act of his imagination.
HYUFD has spent too much time with IDS and others who fortunately do not speak for a Boris led conservative party He is a dinosaur
So I take it as you are opposed to tax cuts and more spending you back tax rises and deep spending cuts then in your modern, progressive guise?
Is it not time for the Conservative Party to make up its collective mind about what it really stands for? At present, it just seems an unholy mess.
Germany's federal government and states on Thursday postponed a decision on fully reopening schools and kindergartens and resuming Bundesliga soccer matches, Focus Online news magazine reported, citing sources involved in the discussions.
Switching the tv on this morning and watching Sky's report from Sao Paulo is distressing and horrific and for once I congratulate Sky for bringing this news story to us.
The authorities are using diggers to create thousands upon thousands of open graves for their covid victims and if any of us want reminding of what happens when the virus overwhelmes a health systems and goes out of control, this is it
Words are hard to find to see the pain and misery of the grieving and to weep with them.
What has humanity done to allow a virus like this to ravage the world.
It is the animals revenge and we all need to turn our minds to respecting and valuing the worlds creatures and their environment and realising that there is far more to life than ' turning a dollar'
I whole heartedly agree with your last sentence. Ebola, HIV Aids, SARS all arose from our abuse of animals, eating bush-meat, wild animals and so on.
The warnings were there, we ignored them. Sadly we will ignore them again once the immediate danger has passed. China might outlaw live wild animals markets but it will simply go underground. IIRC bush-meat is regularly intercepted en route to the UK. How much gets through undetected?
Humans show little respect for other species and are steadily trashing the planet we inhabit - even if 90% are mindful of the problem there will always be the greedy, the selfish and the corrupt to destroy it for everyone else.
So the thread seems to focus on tax rises, from inheritance tax, to higher corporation and inheritance tax to even forcing the poorest to pay income tax again.
As Margaret Thatcher said 'No, No, No' we have a Tory government not a Labour government and I doubt even Starmer would go as far as the tax bombshells Cyclefree is floating here. Especially when we need to grow the economy once lockdown ends not hammer it with tax rises
We will need to grow the economy and I take your point on tax squashing demand. However, the government - indeed all governments - are going to spend £fucktons. The UK is fiscally sovereign - we can print money which is a distinct advantage to France and Germany. So we either find people to sell our debt to - and there will be a lot of competition - or we print cash.
Either way your No No No will very likely become Yes Yes Yes. The point where cash is needed to keep poor people from starving, you will I assume be saying no no no...
We may borrow more yes or print more money, we are not going to hammer the economy with tax rises however especially as it will reduce growth and hence the tax revenues the government needs
Just so that we're clear - you are content for the national debt to rise to whatever level it needs to rise to? That you aren't going to start bleating about debt the way your lot did in 2008 and start demanding that cash isn't deployed to people who desperately need it because the debt levels are too high?
Sorry old love, I don't believe for a minute that you give a toss about anyone who isn't you and yours. Happily for your party your ilk are largely in the margins and some vaguely humans have been put in charge.
As I have said Boris is a Berlusconi or George W Bush style populist conservative, not a pro austerity Osbornite, he believes in tax cuts and spending and growth. The debt will take care of itself as the economy grows
Boris is not a Berlusconi or even a Bush.
That is your Trump like persona painting a picture in your imagination and your views will go the way of Corbynistas in labour, as this crisis plays out
Thankfully we have a liberal Conservative as PM as all the best Tories are like Cameron and Thatcher. We don't have some perverse IDS tribute act of his imagination.
HYUFD has spent too much time with IDS and others who fortunately do not speak for a Boris led conservative party He is a dinosaur
So I take it as you are opposed to tax cuts and more spending you back tax rises and deep spending cuts then in your modern, progressive guise?
Is it not time for the Conservative Party to make up its collective mind about what it really stands for? At present, it just seems an unholy mess.
The Conservative Party stands for winning elections, for being in office. What it does when it gets there is a minor consideration. Thatcher was opposed to Heath; Cameron opposed to Thatcher; Boris opposed to Cameron. It's winning that counts.
Germany's federal government and states on Thursday postponed a decision on fully reopening schools and kindergartens and resuming Bundesliga soccer matches, Focus Online news magazine reported, citing sources involved in the discussions.
So the thread seems to focus on tax rises, from inheritance tax, to higher corporation and inheritance tax to even forcing the poorest to pay income tax again.
As Margaret Thatcher said 'No, No, No' we have a Tory government not a Labour government and I doubt even Starmer would go as far as the tax bombshells Cyclefree is floating here. Especially when we need to grow the economy once lockdown ends not hammer it with tax rises
We will need to grow the economy and I take your point on tax squashing demand. However, the government - indeed all governments - are going to spend £fucktons. The UK is fiscally sovereign - we can print money which is a distinct advantage to France and Germany. So we either find people to sell our debt to - and there will be a lot of competition - or we print cash.
Either way your No No No will very likely become Yes Yes Yes. The point where cash is needed to keep poor people from starving, you will I assume be saying no no no...
We may borrow more yes or print more money, we are not going to hammer the economy with tax rises however especially as it will reduce growth and hence the tax revenues the government needs
Just so that we're clear - you are content for the national debt to rise to whatever level it needs to rise to? That you aren't going to start bleating about debt the way your lot did in 2008 and start demanding that cash isn't deployed to people who desperately need it because the debt levels are too high?
Sorry old love, I don't believe for a minute that you give a toss about anyone who isn't you and yours. Happily for your party your ilk are largely in the margins and some vaguely humans have been put in charge.
As I have said Boris is a Berlusconi or George W Bush style populist conservative, not a pro austerity Osbornite, he believes in tax cuts and spending and growth. The debt will take care of itself as the economy grows
Boris is not a Berlusconi or even a Bush.
That is your Trump like persona painting a picture in your imagination and your views will go the way of Corbynistas in labour, as this crisis plays out
Thankfully we have a liberal Conservative as PM as all the best Tories are like Cameron and Thatcher. We don't have some perverse IDS tribute act of his imagination.
HYUFD has spent too much time with IDS and others who fortunately do not speak for a Boris led conservative party He is a dinosaur
So I take it as you are opposed to tax cuts and more spending you back tax rises and deep spending cuts then in your modern, progressive guise?
Is it not time for the Conservative Party to make up its collective mind about what it really stands for? At present, it just seems an unholy mess.
Aren't all political parties? Labours in a mess, the Lib dems are in the mess.
They are all ill-equipped to deal with the way the world is. 20th century parties in the 21st century.
London had the highest mortality rate with 85.7 deaths per 100,000 people. The highest age-standardised mortality rate was in Newham, with 144.3 deaths per 100,000 population, followed by Brent with 141.5 deaths per 100,000 population and Hackney 127.4 deaths per 100,000 population.
London is the main factor in the 'poor' stats of the UK. Although legit questions can be asked of the government, the characteristics of London I would say maybe outweigh what mistakes might have been made. (ie its size, demographics, the nature of it as a major transport hub)
Be in no mistake. When in the next few days the UK achieves the dubious distinction of having the second highest number of deaths in the world, despite being far removed from the vanguard of the initial outbreak, that fact will be hammered home relentlessly. The UK's record to date is not "poor", it's abysmal. The only saving grace is that finally, some two months late, the penny seems to have dropped and it is possible that they will now get the key decisions right moving forward.
To which my reply would be how many other countries have accurately reported their figures.
Just about the only figure that could be sanely used is excess deaths compared to the average and those figures take a long time to appear from most countries.
As with everything to do with this virus people want instant answers that just don't exist and treat all data no matter how inaccurate and incomplete as 100% accurate and fact.
So the thread seems to focus on tax rises, from inheritance tax, to higher corporation and inheritance tax to even forcing the poorest to pay income tax again.
As Margaret Thatcher said 'No, No, No' we have a Tory government not a Labour government and I doubt even Starmer would go as far as the tax bombshells Cyclefree is floating here. Especially when we need to grow the economy once lockdown ends not hammer it with tax rises
We will need to grow the economy and I take your point on tax squashing demand. However, the government - indeed all governments - are going to spend £fucktons. The UK is fiscally sovereign - we can print money which is a distinct advantage to France and Germany. So we either find people to sell our debt to - and there will be a lot of competition - or we print cash.
Either way your No No No will very likely become Yes Yes Yes. The point where cash is needed to keep poor people from starving, you will I assume be saying no no no...
We may borrow more yes or print more money, we are not going to hammer the economy with tax rises however especially as it will reduce growth and hence the tax revenues the government needs
Just so that we're clear - you are content for the national debt to rise to whatever level it needs to rise to? That you aren't going to start bleating about debt the way your lot did in 2008 and start demanding that cash isn't deployed to people who desperately need it because the debt levels are too high?
Sorry old love, I don't believe for a minute that you give a toss about anyone who isn't you and yours. Happily for your party your ilk are largely in the margins and some vaguely humans have been put in charge.
As I have said Boris is a Berlusconi or George W Bush style populist conservative, not a pro austerity Osbornite, he believes in tax cuts and spending and growth. The debt will take care of itself as the economy grows
Boris is not a Berlusconi or even a Bush.
That is your Trump like persona painting a picture in your imagination and your views will go the way of Corbynistas in labour, as this crisis plays out
Thankfully we have a liberal Conservative as PM as all the best Tories are like Cameron and Thatcher. We don't have some perverse IDS tribute act of his imagination.
HYUFD has spent too much time with IDS and others who fortunately do not speak for a Boris led conservative party He is a dinosaur
So I take it as you are opposed to tax cuts and more spending you back tax rises and deep spending cuts then in your modern, progressive guise?
Is it not time for the Conservative Party to make up its collective mind about what it really stands for? At present, it just seems an unholy mess.
It is more united today than for years.
Just because HYUFD and I do not agree the key is that Boris and Rishi are very much the new post Theresa May party and are much more socially aware and will act accordingly
The Cheltenham Festival could have helped to "accelerate the spread" of coronavirus, a former government chief scientific adviser said.
Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, said it was "the best possible way to accelerate the spread of the virus".
I'm sure it did. I'm also sure that the Central Line was a better conductor. Then perhaps the Northern Line, then the District & Circle. Then Brighton and District U-21 league qualifier, then...then...oh and Cheltenham is certainly in the mix.
I have little doubt the tubes were big conductors and Cheltenham maybe as well as the football
ie normal life.
Only "normal" for those pillocks who insisted on living it, when it was clearly a massive risk to wider society...
So all the mutterings by ministers this morning sounds like they have made the 100k give or take. So instantly the criticism switched to wrong people being tested.
I'm sort of hoping nationally we fall short and it highlights the ongoing disaster that is the testing situation in Scotland. I'm not making a political point here, they need to get it fixed because 1500 tests per day isn't going to cut it to move to the next stage of this crisis. Even if it means PHE stepping in and providing extra testing capacity we should actually force the situation and ensure that Scotland can do 10k tests per day as they need to be able to.
For all the criticism the government has taken in the last 6 weeks over testing, they have by some method managed to increase capacity to run 100k tests per day in England. Where is that same criticism for the Scottish government who are still stuck doing less than 2k tests per day. Translated to England the Scottish testing rate would be 13-17k, how mental would the likes of Piers Morgan be going right now if we were still only doing that many tests in England? Why is no one picking this up? We need for all four nations to move forwards together on this.
As for "pay more" - how? There is a global market, so if our strawberries cost twice as much as an import guess what we will be eating? Ultimately this is consumer led - unless people are happy to pay twice the price the pay and conditions are as they are. "Pay more" in reality would simply end this kind of agriculture in the UK - unless we slam shut the border and stop importing fresh produce.
If I can play devils advocate to your rant about lazy Brexiteers - is growing strawberries a good use of our agricultural land ?
Or is it just a way to give cheap empty calories which take the taste away from the cheap fizzy wine to remainer tossers quaff during their awful metropolitan vegan dinner parties where they moan about proles ?
Perhaps more turnips would better feed the underclass of the nation as we toil in the mills ?
Not calling them lazy, just hypocritical. I get why people don't want to take jobs which are long, monotonous, hard. In parts of the country where real unemployment tends to be low. Its them then blaming the migrants who do the jobs they choose not to do which is the problem.
We don't want foreigners working in care homes. But we don't want our parents living with us. We don't want to pay to train enough doctors and nurses. But we don't want foreigners doing the jobs either (unless they are the ones saving the PM, we like those ones). We don't want to toil in the fields. But we want cheap produce preferably BRITISH but we don't want to bring people in to pick it for us.
Its isn't the fault of foreigners that areas like the north east have been left behind, its the fault of people like HYUFD.
No it is the fault of New Labour which let uncontrolled immigration in from Eastern Europe from 2004 on without transition controls putting downward pressure on local wages and pressure on housing and local services.
You may not care about that, Brexit and Boris voters in the North did
The Cheltenham Festival could have helped to "accelerate the spread" of coronavirus, a former government chief scientific adviser said.
Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, said it was "the best possible way to accelerate the spread of the virus".
I'm sure it did. I'm also sure that the Central Line was a better conductor. Then perhaps the Northern Line, then the District & Circle. Then Brighton and District U-21 league qualifier, then...then...oh and Cheltenham is certainly in the mix.
I have little doubt the tubes were big conductors and Cheltenham maybe as well as the football
It is absurd to conflate the two though. There is a distinction in that one was essential to people to travelling to work, whereas large scale mass gatherings were not essential to peoples' daily lives. That is why events such as Cheltenham stand out as totemic evidence of unnecessary delay. Prior to 20th March the Government had left it to those organising such events to decide whether or not to cancel them, and too many organisers decided that they could not afford to cancel.
As far as I understand it is only Cheltenham and Liverpools match that is controversial and we have yet to see conclusive evidence they were. It is probable but at present not proven. Let us wait for the evidence.
I do have an open mind on this one
I don't think you need a rigorous scientific proof in order to draw conclusions on this one. There were 10 days between the start of Cheltenham on 10th March and when the Government finally banned such mass gatherings, yet from the start of March PHE had already acknowledged publically that the spread of the virus throughout the UK was highly likely. Germany acted far earlier, introducing their ban on such events on 10th March which strengthened earlier advice to cancel.
The Cheltenham Festival could have helped to "accelerate the spread" of coronavirus, a former government chief scientific adviser said.
Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, said it was "the best possible way to accelerate the spread of the virus".
I'm sure it did. I'm also sure that the Central Line was a better conductor. Then perhaps the Northern Line, then the District & Circle. Then Brighton and District U-21 league qualifier, then...then...oh and Cheltenham is certainly in the mix.
I have little doubt the tubes were big conductors and Cheltenham maybe as well as the football
ie normal life.
Only "normal" for those pillocks who insisted on living it, when it was clearly a massive risk to wider society...
Cheltenham is a red herring stirred up by CCHQ to deflect attention from Boris at Twickers three days earlier.
So the thread seems to focus on tax rises, from inheritance tax, to higher corporation and inheritance tax to even forcing the poorest to pay income tax again.
As Margaret Thatcher said 'No, No, No' we have a Tory government not a Labour government and I doubt even Starmer would go as far as the tax bombshells Cyclefree is floating here. Especially when we need to grow the economy once lockdown ends not hammer it with tax rises
We will need to grow the economy and I take your point on tax squashing demand. However, the government - indeed all governments - are going to spend £fucktons. The UK is fiscally sovereign - we can print money which is a distinct advantage to France and Germany. So we either find people to sell our debt to - and there will be a lot of competition - or we print cash.
Either way your No No No will very likely become Yes Yes Yes. The point where cash is needed to keep poor people from starving, you will I assume be saying no no no...
We may borrow more yes or print more money, we are not going to hammer the economy with tax rises however especially as it will reduce growth and hence the tax revenues the government needs
Just so that we're clear - you are content for the national debt to rise to whatever level it needs to rise to? That you aren't going to start bleating about debt the way your lot did in 2008 and start demanding that cash isn't deployed to people who desperately need it because the debt levels are too high?
Sorry old love, I don't believe for a minute that you give a toss about anyone who isn't you and yours. Happily for your party your ilk are largely in the margins and some vaguely humans have been put in charge.
As I have said Boris is a Berlusconi or George W Bush style populist conservative, not a pro austerity Osbornite, he believes in tax cuts and spending and growth. The debt will take care of itself as the economy grows
Boris is not a Berlusconi or even a Bush.
That is your Trump like persona painting a picture in your imagination and your views will go the way of Corbynistas in labour, as this crisis plays out
Thankfully we have a liberal Conservative as PM as all the best Tories are like Cameron and Thatcher. We don't have some perverse IDS tribute act of his imagination.
HYUFD has spent too much time with IDS and others who fortunately do not speak for a Boris led conservative party He is a dinosaur
So I take it as you are opposed to tax cuts and more spending you back tax rises and deep spending cuts then in your modern, progressive guise?
Is it not time for the Conservative Party to make up its collective mind about what it really stands for? At present, it just seems an unholy mess.
The Conservative Party stands for winning elections, for being in office. What it does when it gets there is a minor consideration. Thatcher was opposed to Heath; Cameron opposed to Thatcher; Boris opposed to Cameron. It's winning that counts.
Apart from Europe Cameron and Boris are both very, very similar. As they are to Thatcher (in reality) too, Cameron was against the Myth of Thatcher - as spread by the hard left and hard right equally.
May was opposed to Cameron and Boris was opposed to May. I support the Thatcher/Cameron/Johnson style of Conservatives.
Germany's federal government and states on Thursday postponed a decision on fully reopening schools and kindergartens and resuming Bundesliga soccer matches, Focus Online news magazine reported, citing sources involved in the discussions.
Clearly worried about the R-figure.
Absolutely and why they switched back to stay at home unless you have to go out the other day.
If this had been the UK government, Piers Morgan would currently be screaming about incomponence indecisive U-turns....
The reality is I think we will see some stop start everywhere.
Apparently mid June is when they will have an idea if the Oxford vaccine looks like a goer.
There are about 4000 confirmed cases a day at the moment, so at least 5x that, 20,000 symptomatic cases a day. That is 67000000/20000 = 0.0003 cases per person per day. The Oxford trials will involve 3000 people getting the vaccine, so you expect 0.9 cases per day if the vaccine does not work. First you need to recruit and vaccinate everyone and allow time for the vaccine to work. Once this has been done it could take as little as a week or two to see whether the vaccine appears to be working or not.
Your "at least 5x" is a HUGE assumption. It might be right but who knows?
Say after a week out of 3000 vaccinated in the trial one person comes down with CV-19, what do you do then?
It's not a 'huge' assumption. From the various papers on population testing, it's a fairly conservative assumption (though of course there is a large range of possible numbers until we've done a lot more testing), being half way between nil, and the 10x a lot of epidemiologists are assuming.
"As little as a week or two' to get some idea if the vaccine is working by looking at infection numbers does seem very unlikely, though. Particularly if infection rates are held down post lockdown. What they will have a very good idea of, and very quickly, is the range of antibody response (and any common side effects) across a large number of people. The IgA numbers will be particularly interesting.
The other thing which will take much longer to figure out is the duration of any antibody response.
Vaccines aren't (and don't need to be) 100% effective (as someone else pointed out).
So all the mutterings by ministers this morning sounds like they have made the 100k give or take. So instantly the criticism switched to wrong people being tested.
I'm sort of hoping nationally we fall short and it highlights the ongoing disaster that is the testing situation in Scotland. I'm not making a political point here, they need to get it fixed because 1500 tests per day isn't going to cut it to move to the next stage of this crisis. Even if it means PHE stepping in and providing extra testing capacity we should actually force the situation and ensure that Scotland can do 10k tests per day as they need to be able to.
For all the criticism the government has taken in the last 6 weeks over testing, they have by some method managed to increase capacity to run 100k tests per day in England. Where is that same criticism for the Scottish government who are still stuck doing less than 2k tests per day. Translated to England the Scottish testing rate would be 13-17k, how mental would the likes of Piers Morgan be going right now if we were still only doing that many tests in England? Why is no one picking this up? We need for all four nations to move forwards together on this.
Wales is doing really badly on testing. They dropped their ambition of 5k tests a day. We can't have that south wales conurbation with bugger all testing going on.
Germany's federal government and states on Thursday postponed a decision on fully reopening schools and kindergartens and resuming Bundesliga soccer matches, Focus Online news magazine reported, citing sources involved in the discussions.
Clearly worried about the R-figure.
Absolutely and why they switched back to stay at home unless you have to go out the other day.
If this had been the UK government, Piers Morgan would currently be screaming about incomponence indecisive U-turns....
The reality is I think we will see some stop start everywhere.
Problem is I can't see how they're going to get away from it. We saw how it was growing before. Any relaxation is going to get it going again to a lesser or greater degree.
The Cheltenham Festival could have helped to "accelerate the spread" of coronavirus, a former government chief scientific adviser said.
Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, said it was "the best possible way to accelerate the spread of the virus".
I'm sure it did. I'm also sure that the Central Line was a better conductor. Then perhaps the Northern Line, then the District & Circle. Then Brighton and District U-21 league qualifier, then...then...oh and Cheltenham is certainly in the mix.
I have little doubt the tubes were big conductors and Cheltenham maybe as well as the football
It is absurd to conflate the two though. There is a distinction in that one was essential to people to travelling to work, whereas large scale mass gatherings were not essential to peoples' daily lives. That is why events such as Cheltenham stand out as totemic evidence of unnecessary delay. Prior to 20th March the Government had left it to those organising such events to decide whether or not to cancel them, and too many organisers decided that they could not afford to cancel.
So all the mutterings by ministers this morning sounds like they have made the 100k give or take. So instantly the criticism switched to wrong people being tested.
I'm sort of hoping nationally we fall short and it highlights the ongoing disaster that is the testing situation in Scotland. I'm not making a political point here, they need to get it fixed because 1500 tests per day isn't going to cut it to move to the next stage of this crisis. Even if it means PHE stepping in and providing extra testing capacity we should actually force the situation and ensure that Scotland can do 10k tests per day as they need to be able to.
For all the criticism the government has taken in the last 6 weeks over testing, they have by some method managed to increase capacity to run 100k tests per day in England. Where is that same criticism for the Scottish government who are still stuck doing less than 2k tests per day. Translated to England the Scottish testing rate would be 13-17k, how mental would the likes of Piers Morgan be going right now if we were still only doing that many tests in England? Why is no one picking this up? We need for all four nations to move forwards together on this.
Wales is doing really badly on testing. They dropped their ambition of 5k tests a day. We can't have that south wales conurbation with bugger all testing going on.
5k for Wales.100k for UK. Wales a little under 5% of the total population...
Germany's federal government and states on Thursday postponed a decision on fully reopening schools and kindergartens and resuming Bundesliga soccer matches, Focus Online news magazine reported, citing sources involved in the discussions.
Clearly worried about the R-figure.
Absolutely and why they switched back to stay at home unless you have to go out the other day.
If this had been the UK government, Piers Morgan would currently be screaming about incomponence indecisive U-turns....
The reality is I think we will see some stop start everywhere.
Problem is I can't see how they're going to get away from it. We saw how it was growing before. Any relaxation is going to get it going again to a lesser or greater degree.
Yes that is true. At some point people are simply not going to accept being locked down and/or the government is going to have to say you are not locked down. At which point we all hold our breaths (literally) and see what the virus does.
Whatever the new normal is it will have to be invoked before too long.
As for "pay more" - how? There is a global market, so if our strawberries cost twice as much as an import guess what we will be eating? Ultimately this is consumer led - unless people are happy to pay twice the price the pay and conditions are as they are. "Pay more" in reality would simply end this kind of agriculture in the UK - unless we slam shut the border and stop importing fresh produce.
If I can play devils advocate to your rant about lazy Brexiteers - is growing strawberries a good use of our agricultural land ?
Or is it just a way to give cheap empty calories which take the taste away from the cheap fizzy wine to remainer tossers quaff during their awful metropolitan vegan dinner parties where they moan about proles ?
Perhaps more turnips would better feed the underclass of the nation as we toil in the mills ?
Not calling them lazy, just hypocritical. I get why people don't want to take jobs which are long, monotonous, hard. In parts of the country where real unemployment tends to be low. Its them then blaming the migrants who do the jobs they choose not to do which is the problem.
We don't want foreigners working in care homes. But we don't want our parents living with us. We don't want to pay to train enough doctors and nurses. But we don't want foreigners doing the jobs either (unless they are the ones saving the PM, we like those ones). We don't want to toil in the fields. But we want cheap produce preferably BRITISH but we don't want to bring people in to pick it for us.
Its isn't the fault of foreigners that areas like the north east have been left behind, its the fault of people like HYUFD.
No it is the fault of New Labour which let uncontrolled immigration in from Eastern Europe from 2004 on without transition controls putting downward pressure on local wages and pressure on housing and local services.
You may not care about that, Brexit and Boris voters in the North did
But you didn't.
I would have used the transition controls Germany used to control immigration from Eastern Europe for 7 years until 2011 but Blair refused to, having taken that decision in retrospect Blair created the conditions for the 2016 Leave win
The Cheltenham Festival could have helped to "accelerate the spread" of coronavirus, a former government chief scientific adviser said.
Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, said it was "the best possible way to accelerate the spread of the virus".
I'm sure it did. I'm also sure that the Central Line was a better conductor. Then perhaps the Northern Line, then the District & Circle. Then Brighton and District U-21 league qualifier, then...then...oh and Cheltenham is certainly in the mix.
I have little doubt the tubes were big conductors and Cheltenham maybe as well as the football
It is absurd to conflate the two though. There is a distinction in that one was essential to people to travelling to work, whereas large scale mass gatherings were not essential to peoples' daily lives. That is why events such as Cheltenham stand out as totemic evidence of unnecessary delay. Prior to 20th March the Government had left it to those organising such events to decide whether or not to cancel them, and too many organisers decided that they could not afford to cancel.
As far as I understand it is only Cheltenham and Liverpools match that is controversial and we have yet to see conclusive evidence they were. It is probable but at present not proven. Let us wait for the evidence.
I do have an open mind on this one
I don't think you need a rigorous scientific proof in order to draw conclusions on this one. There were 10 days between the start of Cheltenham on 10th March and when the Government finally banned such mass gatherings, yet from the start of March PHE had already acknowledged publically that the spread of the virus throughout the UK was highly likely. Germany acted far earlier, introducing their ban on such events on 10th March which strengthened earlier advice to cancel.
To be honest you may be right but the news coming out of Germany this morning is not good. I prefer to keep an open mind and see how this plays out over the months and even years ahead. Mistakes have been made but of course it is easy, with hindsight, to say x,y,z should have been done when you know an outcome
The argument is that Gift Aid directs Government expenditure in the direction of the charities that receive the money.
And as I don't like the charities getting the money it's wrong and that expenditure should be on things I do like.
@algakirk@eek Thanks for the explanations, I don't understand why people just stick up links to fee sites assuming people will have access. Sadly a lot of these charities are scams for hoorays to pay themselves huge salaries and ponce about, and it is the small decent ones that will suffer.
No, this is just slapstick. There are certainly "small decent" ones out there, but a good few are just vehicles for self-aggrandising twerps with bees in their bonnets. You need scale to achieve anything, and the larger charities have pretty rigorous governance arrangements. We've more than enough donkey sanctuaries.
London had the highest mortality rate with 85.7 deaths per 100,000 people. The highest age-standardised mortality rate was in Newham, with 144.3 deaths per 100,000 population, followed by Brent with 141.5 deaths per 100,000 population and Hackney 127.4 deaths per 100,000 population.
London is the main factor in the 'poor' stats of the UK. Although legit questions can be asked of the government, the characteristics of London I would say maybe outweigh what mistakes might have been made. (ie its size, demographics, the nature of it as a major transport hub)
Be in no mistake. When in the next few days the UK achieves the dubious distinction of having the second highest number of deaths in the world, despite being far removed from the vanguard of the initial outbreak, that fact will be hammered home relentlessly. The UK's record to date is not "poor", it's abysmal. The only saving grace is that finally, some two months late, the penny seems to have dropped and it is possible that they will now get the key decisions right moving forward.
To which my reply would be how many other countries have accurately reported their figures.
Just about the only figure that could be sanely used is excess deaths compared to the average and those figures take a long time to appear from most countries.
As with everything to do with this virus people want instant answers that just don't exist and treat all data no matter how inaccurate and incomplete as 100% accurate and fact.
That's the Government's excuse too as a means of dodging the question when confronted with international comparisons. I'm surprised you buy it.
Their problem is that we are a country which counts only deaths confirmed by testing after having until very recently conducted far fewer tests in the community than other countries. So it's reasonable to expect that complete statistics will paint the UK in an even worse comparative light than do the current damning figures.
As for "pay more" - how? There is a global market, so if our strawberries cost twice as much as an import guess what we will be eating? Ultimately this is consumer led - unless people are happy to pay twice the price the pay and conditions are as they are. "Pay more" in reality would simply end this kind of agriculture in the UK - unless we slam shut the border and stop importing fresh produce.
If I can play devils advocate to your rant about lazy Brexiteers - is growing strawberries a good use of our agricultural land ?
Or is it just a way to give cheap empty calories which take the taste away from the cheap fizzy wine to remainer tossers quaff during their awful metropolitan vegan dinner parties where they moan about proles ?
Perhaps more turnips would better feed the underclass of the nation as we toil in the mills ?
Not calling them lazy, just hypocritical. I get why people don't want to take jobs which are long, monotonous, hard. In parts of the country where real unemployment tends to be low. Its them then blaming the migrants who do the jobs they choose not to do which is the problem.
We don't want foreigners working in care homes. But we don't want our parents living with us. We don't want to pay to train enough doctors and nurses. But we don't want foreigners doing the jobs either (unless they are the ones saving the PM, we like those ones). We don't want to toil in the fields. But we want cheap produce preferably BRITISH but we don't want to bring people in to pick it for us.
Its isn't the fault of foreigners that areas like the north east have been left behind, its the fault of people like HYUFD.
It's not that people don't like foreigners, it's that people don't like infinite low skilled immigration to drive down the pay for the lowest earners.
If the conditions of a job are so appalling that locals actively looking for work don't want to do it then it shouldn't exist.
Getting people from abroad to live 8 to a room in grotty caravans on sites, working long back breaking shifts with minimal health and safety and no job security should be illegal in my opinion.
All encouraged by a party that calls itself "Labour". What happened to them trying to improve conditions for the working classes?
Not only are they content to reduce the pay of low skilled workers to practically nothing, ruining any chance of a decent life for them, they then call them ignorant racists into the bargain. They are then shocked these horrible people don't want to vote for them anymore.
No it is the fault of New Labour which let uncontrolled immigration in from Eastern Europe from 2004 on without transition controls putting downward pressure on local wages and pressure on housing and local services.
You may not care about that, Brexit and Boris voters in the North did
You clearly speak as someone with no comprehension of the north. The decline started in the 1980s love, not 20 years later. Migrants didn't flock into areas already ravaged by deindustrialisation and generational unemployment nor did people on their arse in a shuttered town say "thank God the migrants are here! Now we have someone to blame for the mess they find here".
Migration has become totemic. A slogan thrown about regardless of sanity or reality. Of people who have taken jobs they don't want. Of wages suppressed by apparent unlimited labour despite as recruiters will tell you a real world shortage of labour especially in the food industry. As others have pointed out I voted leave and you voted remain. You are very literally talking out of your backside on this one in your usual desperate way to support whatever populist nonsense your party is spouting.
As always though it is entertaining. "Kill the first born male child in every household" pledges Priti? Here comes HYUFD to tell us why not only is is right but that its justified.
So the thread seems to focus on tax rises, from inheritance tax, to higher corporation and inheritance tax to even forcing the poorest to pay income tax again.
As Margaret Thatcher said 'No, No, No' we have a Tory government not a Labour government and I doubt even Starmer would go as far as the tax bombshells Cyclefree is floating here. Especially when we need to grow the economy once lockdown ends not hammer it with tax rises
We will need to grow the economy and I take your point on tax squashing demand. However, the government - indeed all governments - are going to spend £fucktons. The UK is fiscally sovereign - we can print money which is a distinct advantage to France and Germany. So we either find people to sell our debt to - and there will be a lot of competition - or we print cash.
Either way your No No No will very likely become Yes Yes Yes. The point where cash is needed to keep poor people from starving, you will I assume be saying no no no...
We may borrow more yes or print more money, we are not going to hammer the economy with tax rises however especially as it will reduce growth and hence the tax revenues the government needs
Just so that we're clear - you are content for the national debt to rise to whatever level it needs to rise to? That you aren't going to start bleating about debt the way your lot did in 2008 and start demanding that cash isn't deployed to people who desperately need it because the debt levels are too high?
Sorry old love, I don't believe for a minute that you give a toss about anyone who isn't you and yours. Happily for your party your ilk are largely in the margins and some vaguely humans have been put in charge.
As I have said Boris is a Berlusconi or George W Bush style populist conservative, not a pro austerity Osbornite, he believes in tax cuts and spending and growth. The debt will take care of itself as the economy grows
Boris is not a Berlusconi or even a Bush.
That is your Trump like persona painting a picture in your imagination and your views will go the way of Corbynistas in labour, as this crisis plays out
Thankfully we have a liberal Conservative as PM as all the best Tories are like Cameron and Thatcher. We don't have some perverse IDS tribute act of his imagination.
HYUFD has spent too much time with IDS and others who fortunately do not speak for a Boris led conservative party He is a dinosaur
So I take it as you are opposed to tax cuts and more spending you back tax rises and deep spending cuts then in your modern, progressive guise?
Is it not time for the Conservative Party to make up its collective mind about what it really stands for? At present, it just seems an unholy mess.
The Conservative Party stands for winning elections, for being in office. What it does when it gets there is a minor consideration. Thatcher was opposed to Heath; Cameron opposed to Thatcher; Boris opposed to Cameron. It's winning that counts.
Apart from Europe Cameron and Boris are both very, very similar. As they are to Thatcher (in reality) too, Cameron was against the Myth of Thatcher - as spread by the hard left and hard right equally.
May was opposed to Cameron and Boris was opposed to May. I support the Thatcher/Cameron/Johnson style of Conservatives.
Germany's federal government and states on Thursday postponed a decision on fully reopening schools and kindergartens and resuming Bundesliga soccer matches, Focus Online news magazine reported, citing sources involved in the discussions.
Clearly worried about the R-figure.
Absolutely and why they switched back to stay at home unless you have to go out the other day.
If this had been the UK government, Piers Morgan would currently be screaming about incomponence indecisive U-turns....
The reality is I think we will see some stop start everywhere.
Problem is I can't see how they're going to get away from it. We saw how it was growing before. Any relaxation is going to get it going again to a lesser or greater degree.
That's where (or ought to be where) testing, track&trace, and isolation/quarantine comes in. S Korea made it work with no more than 20k tests a day. We (supposedly) now have five times that.
We also now have empty Nightingale hospitals, hotels etc. which gives the capacity to isolate.
If we had a halfway decent system to use that testing capacity it ought to be entirely possible.
As for "pay more" - how? There is a global market, so if our strawberries cost twice as much as an import guess what we will be eating? Ultimately this is consumer led - unless people are happy to pay twice the price the pay and conditions are as they are. "Pay more" in reality would simply end this kind of agriculture in the UK - unless we slam shut the border and stop importing fresh produce.
If I can play devils advocate to your rant about lazy Brexiteers - is growing strawberries a good use of our agricultural land ?
Or is it just a way to give cheap empty calories which take the taste away from the cheap fizzy wine to remainer tossers quaff during their awful metropolitan vegan dinner parties where they moan about proles ?
Perhaps more turnips would better feed the underclass of the nation as we toil in the mills ?
Not calling them lazy, just hypocritical. I get why people don't want to take jobs which are long, monotonous, hard. In parts of the country where real unemployment tends to be low. Its them then blaming the migrants who do the jobs they choose not to do which is the problem.
We don't want foreigners working in care homes. But we don't want our parents living with us. We don't want to pay to train enough doctors and nurses. But we don't want foreigners doing the jobs either (unless they are the ones saving the PM, we like those ones). We don't want to toil in the fields. But we want cheap produce preferably BRITISH but we don't want to bring people in to pick it for us.
Its isn't the fault of foreigners that areas like the north east have been left behind, its the fault of people like HYUFD.
No it is the fault of New Labour which let uncontrolled immigration in from Eastern Europe from 2004 on without transition controls putting downward pressure on local wages and pressure on housing and local services.
You may not care about that, Brexit and Boris voters in the North did
But you didn't.
I would have used the transition controls Germany used to control immigration from Eastern Europe for 7 years until 2011 but Blair refused to, having taken that decision in retrospect Blair created the conditions for the 2016 Leave win
Yeah I would have backed the winner of the Grand National last year if I'd known the winner beforehand.
The fact is Blair did his thing or rather didn't with the transition controls, we got a shedload of immigrants and you were just fine with that. And well done you.
I'm sure the Leave voting denizens of the midlands and the North are delighted to have found a champion in you for their views. But you, my old china, are an immigration-loving Remainer. And should be proudly so.
So all the mutterings by ministers this morning sounds like they have made the 100k give or take. So instantly the criticism switched to wrong people being tested.
I'm sort of hoping nationally we fall short and it highlights the ongoing disaster that is the testing situation in Scotland. I'm not making a political point here, they need to get it fixed because 1500 tests per day isn't going to cut it to move to the next stage of this crisis. Even if it means PHE stepping in and providing extra testing capacity we should actually force the situation and ensure that Scotland can do 10k tests per day as they need to be able to.
For all the criticism the government has taken in the last 6 weeks over testing, they have by some method managed to increase capacity to run 100k tests per day in England. Where is that same criticism for the Scottish government who are still stuck doing less than 2k tests per day. Translated to England the Scottish testing rate would be 13-17k, how mental would the likes of Piers Morgan be going right now if we were still only doing that many tests in England? Why is no one picking this up? We need for all four nations to move forwards together on this.
Wales is doing really badly on testing. They dropped their ambition of 5k tests a day. We can't have that south wales conurbation with bugger all testing going on.
5k for Wales.100k for UK. Wales a little under 5% of the total population...
I think it breaks down to 84k in England, 9k in Scotland, 4k in Wales and 3k in NI. Only England is currently meeting their proportion 100k target and none are neat the 200k per day capacity needed to do a SK style test, track, trace, isolate strategy that is needed to break the back of this crisis.
London had the highest mortality rate with 85.7 deaths per 100,000 people. The highest age-standardised mortality rate was in Newham, with 144.3 deaths per 100,000 population, followed by Brent with 141.5 deaths per 100,000 population and Hackney 127.4 deaths per 100,000 population.
London is the main factor in the 'poor' stats of the UK. Although legit questions can be asked of the government, the characteristics of London I would say maybe outweigh what mistakes might have been made. (ie its size, demographics, the nature of it as a major transport hub)
Be in no mistake. When in the next few days the UK achieves the dubious distinction of having the second highest number of deaths in the world, despite being far removed from the vanguard of the initial outbreak, that fact will be hammered home relentlessly. The UK's record to date is not "poor", it's abysmal. The only saving grace is that finally, some two months late, the penny seems to have dropped and it is possible that they will now get the key decisions right moving forward.
To which my reply would be how many other countries have accurately reported their figures.
Just about the only figure that could be sanely used is excess deaths compared to the average and those figures take a long time to appear from most countries.
As with everything to do with this virus people want instant answers that just don't exist and treat all data no matter how inaccurate and incomplete as 100% accurate and fact.
That's the Government's excuse too as a means of dodging the question when confronted with international comparisons. I'm surprised you buy it.
Their problem is that we are a country which counts only deaths confirmed by testing after having until very recently conducted far fewer tests in the community than other countries. So it's reasonable to expect that complete statistics will paint the UK in an even worse comparative light than do the current damning figures.
I don't buy the figures of anywhere - and the only figure that is of actual use (excess deaths) won't be around for a long time.
Equally I'm not going to judge any country as this thing is changing all the time. Remember when Japan was successfully tracking everyone well that's fallen apart and it's structural weaknesses in emergency admissions to hospital has been laid bare amongst other issues.
The only time when we will be able to work out what the best plan was is going to be in 2-5 years time when a vaccine exists and we can look back to see what happened where and what worked and what didn't. Until then it's just a matter of each country doing it's best under the circumstances they have and the options they can enforce.
The Cheltenham Festival could have helped to "accelerate the spread" of coronavirus, a former government chief scientific adviser said.
Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, said it was "the best possible way to accelerate the spread of the virus".
I'm sure it did. I'm also sure that the Central Line was a better conductor. Then perhaps the Northern Line, then the District & Circle. Then Brighton and District U-21 league qualifier, then...then...oh and Cheltenham is certainly in the mix.
I have little doubt the tubes were big conductors and Cheltenham maybe as well as the football
ie normal life.
Only "normal" for those pillocks who insisted on living it, when it was clearly a massive risk to wider society...
So when would you have shut down the tube?
That's a difficult question, of course. But the signal sent by closing Cheltenham would surely have kept some people at home ?
On that topic, both the Mayor and government seem to have failed to realise that keeping a full service as possible running, while driving numbers of passengers down, might have helped considerably.
So all the mutterings by ministers this morning sounds like they have made the 100k give or take. So instantly the criticism switched to wrong people being tested.
I'm sort of hoping nationally we fall short and it highlights the ongoing disaster that is the testing situation in Scotland. I'm not making a political point here, they need to get it fixed because 1500 tests per day isn't going to cut it to move to the next stage of this crisis. Even if it means PHE stepping in and providing extra testing capacity we should actually force the situation and ensure that Scotland can do 10k tests per day as they need to be able to.
For all the criticism the government has taken in the last 6 weeks over testing, they have by some method managed to increase capacity to run 100k tests per day in England. Where is that same criticism for the Scottish government who are still stuck doing less than 2k tests per day. Translated to England the Scottish testing rate would be 13-17k, how mental would the likes of Piers Morgan be going right now if we were still only doing that many tests in England? Why is no one picking this up? We need for all four nations to move forwards together on this.
Wales is doing really badly on testing. They dropped their ambition of 5k tests a day. We can't have that south wales conurbation with bugger all testing going on.
5k for Wales.100k for UK. Wales a little under 5% of the total population...
Devolution is having a bad crisis, at the very least in Wales. The extra layer of govt has been nothing but a hinderance.
Pursuing the same contracts as England to get bumped down, testing seems worse (why abandon that 5k target if going well?), reporting of deaths so late in N Wales there’s an investigation, and the Health Minister getting shall we say “exasperated “ by one of his colleagues ( she’s my A.M. and I’m not surprised he’s got exasperated truth be told!).
The nightingale hospital at the Principality Stadium, in fairness, looked like a good job well done.
That apart, it’s been amateur hour and completely unnecessary.
The Cheltenham Festival could have helped to "accelerate the spread" of coronavirus, a former government chief scientific adviser said.
Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, said it was "the best possible way to accelerate the spread of the virus".
I'm sure it did. I'm also sure that the Central Line was a better conductor. Then perhaps the Northern Line, then the District & Circle. Then Brighton and District U-21 league qualifier, then...then...oh and Cheltenham is certainly in the mix.
I have little doubt the tubes were big conductors and Cheltenham maybe as well as the football
It is absurd to conflate the two though. There is a distinction in that one was essential to people to travelling to work, whereas large scale mass gatherings were not essential to peoples' daily lives. That is why events such as Cheltenham stand out as totemic evidence of unnecessary delay. Prior to 20th March the Government had left it to those organising such events to decide whether or not to cancel them, and too many organisers decided that they could not afford to cancel.
As far as I understand it is only Cheltenham and Liverpools match that is controversial and we have yet to see conclusive evidence they were. It is probable but at present not proven. Let us wait for the evidence.
I do have an open mind on this one
I don't think you need a rigorous scientific proof in order to draw conclusions on this one. There were 10 days between the start of Cheltenham on 10th March and when the Government finally banned such mass gatherings, yet from the start of March PHE had already acknowledged publically that the spread of the virus throughout the UK was highly likely. Germany acted far earlier, introducing their ban on such events on 10th March which strengthened earlier advice to cancel.
To be honest you may be right but the news coming out of Germany this morning is not good. I prefer to keep an open mind and see how this plays out over the months and even years ahead. Mistakes have been made but of course it is easy, with hindsight, to say x,y,z should have been done when you know an outcome
You're rewriting history - hindsight has nothing to do with it. It was blindingly obvious even at the time that the lockdown was too late and lax. That was why so many people were desperate for the government to take action and why people began to take action themselves when the government failed to act. When you're dealing with potential exponential growth, rapid action at the start makes a critical difference.
There is a basic principle here: when you don't understand what's happening, do whatever you can to reduce the chances of the worst outcome. It almost beggars belief that the government dithered for so long.
So all the mutterings by ministers this morning sounds like they have made the 100k give or take. So instantly the criticism switched to wrong people being tested.
I'm sort of hoping nationally we fall short and it highlights the ongoing disaster that is the testing situation in Scotland. I'm not making a political point here, they need to get it fixed because 1500 tests per day isn't going to cut it to move to the next stage of this crisis. Even if it means PHE stepping in and providing extra testing capacity we should actually force the situation and ensure that Scotland can do 10k tests per day as they need to be able to.
For all the criticism the government has taken in the last 6 weeks over testing, they have by some method managed to increase capacity to run 100k tests per day in England. Where is that same criticism for the Scottish government who are still stuck doing less than 2k tests per day. Translated to England the Scottish testing rate would be 13-17k, how mental would the likes of Piers Morgan be going right now if we were still only doing that many tests in England? Why is no one picking this up? We need for all four nations to move forwards together on this.
Wales is doing really badly on testing. They dropped their ambition of 5k tests a day. We can't have that south wales conurbation with bugger all testing going on.
5k for Wales.100k for UK. Wales a little under 5% of the total population...
Devolution is having a bad crisis, at the very least in Wales. The extra layer of govt has been nothing but a hinderance.
Pursuing the same contracts as England to get bumped down, testing seems worse (why abandon that 5k target if going well?), reporting of deaths so late in N Wales there’s an investigation, and the Health Minister getting shall we say “exasperated “ by one of his colleagues ( she’s my A.M. and I’m not surprised he’s got exasperated truth be told!).
The nightingale hospital at the Principality Stadium, in fairness, looked like a good job well done.
That apart, it’s been amateur hour and completely unnecessary.
That part was done by the military logistics team which isn't a devolved matter in Wales. Central government has handled it aiui. Not in Scotland though where they have direct control, not sure how well it's going.
Comments
Say after a week out of 3000 vaccinated in the trial one person comes down with CV-19, what do you do then?
It may have escaped your notice but 'state confiscation of assets' as you call it started about the same time as the state appeared.
You're welcome!
So lets look at the detail. As Gallowgate and others have pointed out these are farms in the middle of nowhere. The work is seasonal - a few months at most. The work is back-breaking and needs to be done from early in the morning. The work doesn't pay a lot because the fruit isn't worth a lot. In the good old days people were ok going off to live and work on a farm for a few months apparently, but surprisingly enough people won't put up with that any more.
As for "pay more" - how? There is a global market, so if our strawberries cost twice as much as an import guess what we will be eating? Ultimately this is consumer led - unless people are happy to pay twice the price the pay and conditions are as they are. "Pay more" in reality would simply end this kind of agriculture in the UK - unless we slam shut the border and stop importing fresh produce.
This is the problem with Brexiteer bullshit. "They took our jobs" "they work for less" etc etc etc. Fine, you do the job then. "No, I'm not doing that". Which is why we started to import labour in the first place.
A prediction. We will continue to import large amounts of labour to do all the jobs that Brexiteers are unwilling to do. The government will pay lip service to migration but allow it because it needs it. Whats more it will disguise this - as it will disguise our "uncoupled but still buffered up" approach to EU standards and tariffs - by lies and bluster. Just tell people that we have done it and will you remoaners shut up. Doesn't matter that we have done "it" - most people have moved on from whatever "it" was to the totemic "I want it stop saying I can't have it".
As with the Boris deal where we surrendered to the EU, just proclaim triumph and lie about it. The media will back it up. Get the Daily Mail to start talking about migrants as doing the jobs that we don't want to keep us richer on their back-breaking labour. It'll work.
He is a dinosaur
It's like the drunk looking under a lampost for the wallet he dropped a hundred yards away because it is easier to see there. And when governments do this, bad policy results.
The US domestic bond market is on fire. Yesterday Boeing was able to raise a massive USD25bn in bond sales and April 2020 will be a an all time record month for sales of investment grade corporate debt
Admittedly the yields are in all cases above treasuries, in some cases well above, but the liquidity is enormous.
Or is it just a way to give cheap empty calories which take the taste away from the cheap fizzy wine to remainer tossers quaff during their awful metropolitan vegan dinner parties where they moan about proles ?
Perhaps more turnips would better feed the underclass of the nation as we toil in the mills ?
President Donald Trump is exploring blocking a government retirement fund from investing in Chinese equities considered a national security risk, a person familiar with the internal deliberations said.
The Thrift Savings Plan -- the federal government’s retirement savings fund -- is scheduled to transfer roughly $50 billion of its international fund to mirror an MSCI All Country World Index, which captures emerging markets, including China.
How dare you. We remainer tossers try to drink *expensive* fizzy wine at our awful metropolitan vegan dinner parties.
Strawberries will have to be on hold until robot pickers are available.
Residents in deprived areas have experienced double the death rates of those in affluent areas, new figures from the Office for National Statistics reveal.
File under no shit Sherlock. All those people squished into tower blocks in poor London boroughs and unlikely to have jobs that allow WFH.
As apparently this morning backing tax rises and slashing spending and supporting uncontrolled immigration is the only way you care about people according to some on here!
Plus I apologise because I do not remember "Vote Leave so we will no longer have strawberries to eat" on the side of that bus.
Anything else we should forego, while we're on the subject?
In ordinary times, no-one would believe it to be a one-off and would adjust their behaviour accordingly. But now? We truly live in remarkable times.
https://twitter.com/IpsosMORI/status/1256146465199730689?s=20
Worse health? More crowded? Less WFH?
Furthermore, several new bands need to be added to council tax
I would not increase vat as that hits the low paid
And of course tax on Amazon and digital companies plus use of tax havens
https://twitter.com/AmbassadeChine/status/1255873178632687622?s=20
I've got Jay. Can't get the other one.
There is a second control group of 3000 people who have received a different vaccine that does not protect against COVID-19. The researchers are looking to see if there are fewer cases of the virus in the vaccine group than in the control group. If there are 1-2 cases in the vaccine group and lots of cases in the control group the vaccine could still be regarded as a success.
I do have an open mind on this one
i.e. if there is a major testing centre in your authority are the numbers going to be high?
We don't want foreigners working in care homes. But we don't want our parents living with us. We don't want to pay to train enough doctors and nurses. But we don't want foreigners doing the jobs either (unless they are the ones saving the PM, we like those ones). We don't want to toil in the fields. But we want cheap produce preferably BRITISH but we don't want to bring people in to pick it for us.
Its isn't the fault of foreigners that areas like the north east have been left behind, its the fault of people like HYUFD.
You may not care about that, Brexit and Boris voters in the North did
Except for the last bit. HYUFD voted Remain. He was happy that EU fruit pickers and other workers had free movement and were able to come to the UK.
He speaks on behalf of northern or midlands leavers because he has spoken to each and every one of them.
Also, his concern falls into the category (as it does with 99% of leavers on PB who don't like immigration) of:
https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/man-claims-hius-life-being-ruined-by-immigration-but-cant-explain-how-20170227122932
The warnings were there, we ignored them. Sadly we will ignore them again once the immediate danger has passed. China might outlaw live wild animals markets but it will simply go underground. IIRC bush-meat is regularly intercepted en route to the UK. How much gets through undetected?
Humans show little respect for other species and are steadily trashing the planet we inhabit - even if 90% are mindful of the problem there will always be the greedy, the selfish and the corrupt to destroy it for everyone else.
They are all ill-equipped to deal with the way the world is. 20th century parties in the 21st century.
Just about the only figure that could be sanely used is excess deaths compared to the average and those figures take a long time to appear from most countries.
As with everything to do with this virus people want instant answers that just don't exist and treat all data no matter how inaccurate and incomplete as 100% accurate and fact.
Just because HYUFD and I do not agree the key is that Boris and Rishi are very much the new post Theresa May party and are much more socially aware and will act accordingly
And labour are far from being out of the woods
For all the criticism the government has taken in the last 6 weeks over testing, they have by some method managed to increase capacity to run 100k tests per day in England. Where is that same criticism for the Scottish government who are still stuck doing less than 2k tests per day. Translated to England the Scottish testing rate would be 13-17k, how mental would the likes of Piers Morgan be going right now if we were still only doing that many tests in England? Why is no one picking this up? We need for all four nations to move forwards together on this.
May was opposed to Cameron and Boris was opposed to May. I support the Thatcher/Cameron/Johnson style of Conservatives.
If this had been the UK government, Piers Morgan would currently be screaming about incomponence indecisive U-turns....
The reality is I think we will see some stop start everywhere.
"As little as a week or two' to get some idea if the vaccine is working by looking at infection numbers does seem very unlikely, though. Particularly if infection rates are held down post lockdown.
What they will have a very good idea of, and very quickly, is the range of antibody response (and any common side effects) across a large number of people. The IgA numbers will be particularly interesting.
The other thing which will take much longer to figure out is the duration of any antibody response.
Vaccines aren't (and don't need to be) 100% effective (as someone else pointed out).
Whatever the new normal is it will have to be invoked before too long.
Their problem is that we are a country which counts only deaths confirmed by testing after having until very recently conducted far fewer tests in the community than other countries. So it's reasonable to expect that complete statistics will paint the UK in an even worse comparative light than do the current damning figures.
If the conditions of a job are so appalling that locals actively looking for work don't want to do it then it shouldn't exist.
Getting people from abroad to live 8 to a room in grotty caravans on sites, working long back breaking shifts with minimal health and safety and no job security should be illegal in my opinion.
All encouraged by a party that calls itself "Labour". What happened to them trying to improve conditions for the working classes?
Not only are they content to reduce the pay of low skilled workers to practically nothing, ruining any chance of a decent life for them, they then call them ignorant racists into the bargain. They are then shocked these horrible people don't want to vote for them anymore.
Migration has become totemic. A slogan thrown about regardless of sanity or reality. Of people who have taken jobs they don't want. Of wages suppressed by apparent unlimited labour despite as recruiters will tell you a real world shortage of labour especially in the food industry. As others have pointed out I voted leave and you voted remain. You are very literally talking out of your backside on this one in your usual desperate way to support whatever populist nonsense your party is spouting.
As always though it is entertaining. "Kill the first born male child in every household" pledges Priti? Here comes HYUFD to tell us why not only is is right but that its justified.
We also now have empty Nightingale hospitals, hotels etc. which gives the capacity to isolate.
If we had a halfway decent system to use that testing capacity it ought to be entirely possible.
The fact is Blair did his thing or rather didn't with the transition controls, we got a shedload of immigrants and you were just fine with that. And well done you.
I'm sure the Leave voting denizens of the midlands and the North are delighted to have found a champion in you for their views. But you, my old china, are an immigration-loving Remainer. And should be proudly so.
Equally I'm not going to judge any country as this thing is changing all the time. Remember when Japan was successfully tracking everyone well that's fallen apart and it's structural weaknesses in emergency admissions to hospital has been laid bare amongst other issues.
The only time when we will be able to work out what the best plan was is going to be in 2-5 years time when a vaccine exists and we can look back to see what happened where and what worked and what didn't. Until then it's just a matter of each country doing it's best under the circumstances they have and the options they can enforce.
But the signal sent by closing Cheltenham would surely have kept some people at home ?
On that topic, both the Mayor and government seem to have failed to realise that keeping a full service as possible running, while driving numbers of passengers down, might have helped considerably.
Pursuing the same contracts as England to get bumped down, testing seems worse (why abandon that 5k target if going well?), reporting of deaths so late in N Wales there’s an investigation, and the Health Minister getting shall we say “exasperated “ by one of his colleagues ( she’s my A.M. and I’m not surprised he’s got exasperated truth be told!).
The nightingale hospital at the Principality Stadium, in fairness, looked like a good job well done.
That apart, it’s been amateur hour and completely unnecessary.
There is a basic principle here: when you don't understand what's happening, do whatever you can to reduce the chances of the worst outcome. It almost beggars belief that the government dithered for so long.