All this talk of bravery and cowardice is unhelpful, but then I discovered that the Archers is off the air for three weeks. 😱
Probably for the best. The entire absence of the virus from Ambridge is getting weird, there's bucolic fantasy and then there's bollocks from another planet.
I've never listened to the show so can't comment too much on it but how common is the virus in farming villages?
There is no social distancing though! I'm struggling to think how they could make the programme if nobody actually ever met anyone else. Wouldn't be riveting (I know 99% wouldn't think it less so anyway).
You’d still have the domestic abuse / break-up / lesbian affair / racial attack story lines that the BBC believes are commonplace in farming communities
A cursory look through the media gives the explanation for the figures above.
Almost nothing on the enormous economic damage we are doing to our country, and the extremely hard times we face ahead.
I suspect many Britons think lock down is almost a consequence free policy. When they choose to go back to work, their job and their living standards will be waiting there for them.
The enormous propaganda effort to emphasise the threat of this virus, backed by the media, has also vastly exaggerated the danger of this disease to healthy people. I suspect your average Briton's image of it is a gross distortion of the truth. It is a disease that, cruelly, overwhelmingly kills aged people who are sick and frail.
What evidence do you have that containing the virus with a weeks-long lockdown is doing more economic damage than letting it run rampant?
Once again the 1920 pandemic wiped over 20% off our GDP on nominal figures and meant we didn't reach the same GDP on nominal figures for two decades until WWII started.
I think we will do better economically this time than we did this time a century ago. What say you?
Look at the anecdotes on here already starting to filter through. The school friend who may be in severe financial trouble. The schools that are allegedly shutting never to re open.
People think lockdown is a consequence free policy. The government pays them to take a three month holiday then we pick up where we left off, just like that.
Slowly the reality will kick in. That many businesses will not be coming back and there will be no jobs to come back to. That it will not be 80% of your nice fat salary to sit at home, it will be eighty quid a week on universal credit with unemployment running at at least 10% and quite possibly a great deal more.
The death that is not being mentioned nearly enough is the death of economic activity. Even if we did pick up in June or July where we left off - which will not be happening due to social distancing - the damage is already done. And it is growing by the day.
I agree with you that some of this damage was inevitable. However, the furlough scheme has given people a false sense of security and may end up causing more damage by making it possible, even inevitable, that the lockdown will be needlessly prolonged as long as it remains popular.
At the moment people are being insulated from the economic consequences. For how long do you think that is sustainable?
Many wealthy (almost by definition ) older people willing to support lockdown and frown on those that don't but don't really want to share any (even minor) financial consequences - just listen to the moaning of 60 plus people who have booked a week in Tuscany this summer and cannot get their few hundred quid deposit back . Generally people want all the good things and none of the bad consequences. The older you get the consequences are limited to lost minor deposits on holidays (and they will demand them back!) but for the young they are losing their education, freedom and opportunity.
I understand your frustration and fear for the future but would caution that the vast majority of pensioners are far from wealthy and the lost holidays are not only deposits, but full price payments, and include many millions of families and younger people
The idea those of us in 12 weeks lockdown, unable to be with our family and hug our grandchildren, are laid back about the lockdown is far from true. My wife and I hope the lockdown will be eased gradually and responsibly and indeed we accept being in lockdown, as others are freed to start the process of regaining some normality in their lives
It is a great importance we do not set up a them against us, i.e. the old v the young as that creates division just at the time we need to be kinder to each other and show compassion to everyone who is suffering, including obviously yourself
We do feel your pain
I doubt there are millions of lost holiday payments. Most bookings are protected multiple times over, by legal rights in the event of cancellation, by their credit card companies, by travel insurance, and by ABTA/ATOL.
We are soon to be in the main holiday season when millions travel abroad on holiday and will now be near or will have paid the full price of their holiday
Sadly the EU of all organisations is about to remove the protections you refer to in an outrageous move to remove the right to a refund within 14 days of cancellation of holiday. The EU valuing and safeguarding big business at the expense of all just ordinary families wanting their summer holiday is just wrong
You may not have read my explanation to Stodge on the battle I have had with BA to get my air fare refunded when they cancelled our flights to Vancouver in May. Many companies in the travel industry will not survive due to their inability to fund the refunds and lost holiday payments will just disappear
The loss and/or delay over travel refunds this summer will be one of the biggest scandals aided and abetted by the EU
Delay is inevitable, given the cash flow crisis travel companies now have. Look at the cruise industry - hundreds of thousands of people being made to wait two months or more for their refunds, mostly Americans and Brits. Nothing to do with the EU.
However, given the multiple protections I highlighted downthread, it is very unlikely that much of the losses will end up with the holidaymakers.
Actually they will be victims in all of this
Firstly, insurers are refusing to pay out as they maintain it is not an insurable amount
Secondly, airlines, travel companies and others are offering travel vouchers just at the time they are facing bankruptcy and rendering the vouchers worthless
Third, you cannot easily dismiss the appalling behaviour of the EU as they remove the right to a 14 day refund in an act of highway robbery against families and holidaymakers across the EU and in so doing removes the rights of UK consumers to obtain a 14 daybrefund on cancellation of their cruise
I would just say that it would be refreshing if those who support the EU actually condemned them rather than made excuses. It is not excusable
Your first comment doesn't make any sense - an insurance company should be paying out to the point of bankruptcy unless they have legal get out clauses.
Yes I know they are trying it on (as they all do) but I suspect the ombudsman will be giving those arguments very short shrift.
Being a Name (on Lloyds) is a bit of a downer.
Lloyds Names take on low probability high exposure risk. Someone who becomes a Name without being able to stay solvent when something goes wrong is a fool.
As I said before, there are hardly any individual Names left - most of the capital has been corporate-based for decades - but this isn't really true anyway. Most of the time, being a Name is an investment that should deliver a return most years, and positive in the long run, but with pretty volatile experience along the way. There is also the potential for some very large losses, but generally it should look like an investment in early stage companies.
The big difference was the unlimited personal liability, which meant that, technically, "being able to stay solvent when something goes wrong" wasn't actually possible. Fortunately, this is now mostly a relic of a bygone age since Equitas.
Thanks for the clarification. I seem to remember in the 90s (was it theyear of the Nick Leeson crime?) there were quite a lot of famous people were complaining that they had to pay huge debts to LLoyds.
If corporate companies go bust because of LLoyds debts then I have even less sympathy. I realise that the exposure is unlimited, but so do the Names. Again I have no sympathy with people who take on an unlimited risk and then complain when they have to pay out.
All this talk of bravery and cowardice is unhelpful, but then I discovered that the Archers is off the air for three weeks. 😱
Probably for the best. The entire absence of the virus from Ambridge is getting weird, there's bucolic fantasy and then there's bollocks from another planet.
Why is it going off the air? Seems a prime candidate for carrying on - as indeed farms must carry on. A good way to explore the lockdown dramatically. An odd decision by the BBC.
Think the plan is to take 3 weeks off while they rewrite the long-term story plan and sort out the logistics of recording from home and making it sound good.
Makes me wonder what they spent the last 6 weeks doing.
All this talk of bravery and cowardice is unhelpful, but then I discovered that the Archers is off the air for three weeks. 😱
Probably for the best. The entire absence of the virus from Ambridge is getting weird, there's bucolic fantasy and then there's bollocks from another planet.
Why is it going off the air? Seems a prime candidate for carrying on - as indeed farms must carry on. A good way to explore the lockdown dramatically. An odd decision by the BBC.
Entirely to do with. The shows.sre 'recorded 9 weeks in advance. Hence no outbreak in Ambridge thus far. The scripts obviously come earlier. So it has had to be red written entirely. Many of the cast are ancient. The actress for Peggy is 103! Actors need to be trained in WFH tech. This has taken longer than expected.
So 3 week break, then back in lockdown. With mostly monologues, phone calls and 2 handers.
Does anyone know how to contact HMRC to report a company abusing the furlough by asking employees to answer emails and speak to clients.
Depends on the context, if its just answering an email to say "Im on furlough please contact x or it will be dealt with when Im back" that seems within the spirit of the furlough scheme, but if its ongoing significant work then this seems to be the place to go:
The context is "client wants these answers, please answer them". Just to be open, it's not my company or me that's been asked. It's a friend who is worried about losing their job if they refuse.
All this talk of bravery and cowardice is unhelpful, but then I discovered that the Archers is off the air for three weeks. 😱
Probably for the best. The entire absence of the virus from Ambridge is getting weird, there's bucolic fantasy and then there's bollocks from another planet.
Why is it going off the air? Seems a prime candidate for carrying on - as indeed farms must carry on. A good way to explore the lockdown dramatically. An odd decision by the BBC.
As eristdoof explains upthread, logistical problems with getting actors together probably the main reason.
The death that is not being mentioned nearly enough is the death of economic activity. Even if we did pick up in June or July where we left off - which will not be happening due to social distancing - the damage is already done. And it is growing by the day.
The death of the economy is being mentioned ALL the time.
A cursory look through the media gives the explanation for the figures above.
Almost nothing on the enormous economic damage we are doing to our country, and the extremely hard times we face ahead.
I suspect many Britons think lock down is almost a consequence free policy. When they choose to go back to work, their job and their living standards will be waiting there for them.
The enormous propaganda effort to emphasise the threat of this virus, backed by the media, has also vastly exaggerated the danger of this disease to healthy people. I suspect your average Briton's image of it is a gross distortion of the truth. It is a disease that, cruelly, overwhelmingly kills aged people who are sick and frail.
What evidence do you have that containing the virus with a weeks-long lockdown is doing more economic damage than letting it run rampant?
Once again the 1920 pandemic wiped over 20% off our GDP on nominal figures and meant we didn't reach the same GDP on nominal figures for two decades until WWII started.
I think we will do better economically this time than we did this time a century ago. What say you?
Look I accept we were always going to take a big hit. There was no way we couldn't. Even I would have forgiven the government a month lock down to help the NHS co-ordinate its response.
Its the length and nature of the lockdown that I think will in time be shwn to be a grievous mistake. But you're right of course, that's just my view. We may recover quickly. Only time will tell.
You both make good points.
I was listening to a podcast the other day (one of many) (thank goodness for podcasts). The left-leaning presenters seemed fine with lockdown and pontificated over it`s ending maybe in autumn or maybe next year. One presenter was looking forward to her first coffee in her favourite coffee shop. The naviety! They seem to think that the government can cover wages indefinitely for one. And for another it doesn`t seem to have occurred to them that the coffee shop will likely be bankrupt by then.
All this talk of bravery and cowardice is unhelpful, but then I discovered that the Archers is off the air for three weeks. 😱
Probably for the best. The entire absence of the virus from Ambridge is getting weird, there's bucolic fantasy and then there's bollocks from another planet.
Why is it going off the air? Seems a prime candidate for carrying on - as indeed farms must carry on. A good way to explore the lockdown dramatically. An odd decision by the BBC.
The programmes are recorded, roughly 6 to 8 weeks in advance. That means the recordings have hit the start of the lockdown, and WFH with Zoom can work for interviews but not for a drama programme.
This also explains why there was nothing about the Corona Virus on the archers. The scripts are written even further in advance. The writers of all soap operas stay away from rapidly changing news stories.
Thanks for that - I suspected as much with the time-lag. I am not sure it's impossible to record a drama separately though - it is only sound and there must be a lot they can do.
I believe they record inserts to cover important events, but that's fine if it's a few people saying "it's sad about the Queen dying, I wonder what Charles III will be like" and a bit more difficult when it's as pervasive as a pandemic
All this talk of bravery and cowardice is unhelpful, but then I discovered that the Archers is off the air for three weeks. 😱
Probably for the best. The entire absence of the virus from Ambridge is getting weird, there's bucolic fantasy and then there's bollocks from another planet.
I've never listened to the show so can't comment too much on it but how common is the virus in farming villages?
There is no social distancing though! I'm struggling to think how they could make the programme if nobody actually ever met anyone else. Wouldn't be riveting (I know 99% wouldn't think it less so anyway).
You’d still have the domestic abuse / break-up / lesbian affair / racial attack story lines that the BBC believes are commonplace in farming communities
Modern slavery now as well. May be a bit more 'realistic' in a rural setting.
I wonder if we'll have one of the characters quoted as coming on here for a discussion!
All this talk of bravery and cowardice is unhelpful, but then I discovered that the Archers is off the air for three weeks. 😱
Probably for the best. The entire absence of the virus from Ambridge is getting weird, there's bucolic fantasy and then there's bollocks from another planet.
Why is it going off the air? Seems a prime candidate for carrying on - as indeed farms must carry on. A good way to explore the lockdown dramatically. An odd decision by the BBC.
Isn't the Archers used as a vehicle for government propaganda? Perhaps this is the BBC getting back at the Johnson regime for dissing them by not offering up cabinet members for interviews with routine humiliation at the hands of Nick Robinson et al?
If that's satirising a certain view of the BBC, good work!
OT update. Am now - finally - "enjoying" Apple TV via a Firefox browser on my work laptop. Hasn't stopped playing. Yet...
Seriously Apple users, why would you tie yourselves to *this*? Can only use their overpriced tat. Devices built where you have to buy an overpriced adaptor to keep using all your peripherals. Where they keep changing the connector so you have to buy them again. Where the battery is built to fail and if it doesn't the software turns the device into a snail so you WILL buy again. Buy again. Again. Again.
If China turns into an international pariah, how will Apple get around it? I know that a company as Short of Cash as they are won't be able to make their devices outside of semi-slave labour factories in China, might be a problem...
I mean Apple TV+ has always been primarily for those in the Apple ecosystem. I watch it on an Apple TV or my iPad and it works great.
I don’t think Apple are bothered if those who watch it in Firefox on an old Toshiba laptop can no longer do so.
PB has a long tradition of non-Apple users wasting thousands of pixels boring on about their weird Apple obsession.
All this talk of bravery and cowardice is unhelpful, but then I discovered that the Archers is off the air for three weeks. 😱
Probably for the best. The entire absence of the virus from Ambridge is getting weird, there's bucolic fantasy and then there's bollocks from another planet.
Why is it going off the air? Seems a prime candidate for carrying on - as indeed farms must carry on. A good way to explore the lockdown dramatically. An odd decision by the BBC.
The programmes are recorded, roughly 6 to 8 weeks in advance. That means the recordings have hit the start of the lockdown, and WFH with Zoom can work for interviews but not for a drama programme.
This also explains why there was nothing about the Corona Virus on the archers. The scripts are written even further in advance. The writers of all soap operas stay away from rapidly changing news stories.
Thanks for that - I suspected as much with the time-lag. I am not sure it's impossible to record a drama separately though - it is only sound and there must be a lot they can do.
Yeah, I'm sure it is possible to record the lines separately. The big challenge is to make it sound as if all the actors are in the same place and not in different bedrooms. It's more of a call on what quality is considered acceptable for a flagship R4 programme.
Many wealthy (almost by definition ) older people willing to support lockdown and frown on those that don't but don't really want to share any (even minor) financial consequences - just listen to the moaning of 60 plus people who have booked a week in Tuscany this summer and cannot get their few hundred quid deposit back . Generally people want all the good things and none of the bad consequences. The older you get the consequences are limited to lost minor deposits on holidays (and they will demand them back!) but for the young they are losing their education, freedom and opportunity.
I understand your frustration and fear for the future but would caution that the vast majority of pensioners are far from wealthy and the lost holidays are not only deposits, but full price payments, and include many millions of families and younger people
The idea those of us in 12 weeks lockdown, unable to be with our family and hug our grandchildren, are laid back about the lockdown is far from true. My wife and I hope the lockdown will be eased gradually and responsibly and indeed we accept being in lockdown, as others are freed to start the process of regaining some normality in their lives
It is a great importance we do not set up a them against us, i.e. the old v the young as that creates division just at the time we need to be kinder to each other and show compassion to everyone who is suffering, including obviously yourself
We do feel your pain
I doubt there are millions of lost holiday payments. Most bookings are protected multiple times over, by legal rights in the event of cancellation, by their credit card companies, by travel insurance, and by ABTA/ATOL.
We are soon to be in the main holiday season when millions travel abroad on holiday and will now be near or will have paid the full price of their holiday
Sadly the EU of all organisations is about to remove the protections you refer to in an outrageous move to remove the right to a refund within 14 days of cancellation of holiday. The EU valuing and safeguarding big business at the expense of all just ordinary families wanting their summer holiday is just wrong
You may not have read my explanation to Stodge on the battle I have had with BA to get my air fare refunded when they cancelled our flights to Vancouver in May. Many companies in the travel industry will not survive due to their inability to fund the refunds and lost holiday payments will just disappear
The loss and/or delay over travel refunds this summer will be one of the biggest scandals aided and abetted by the EU
Delay is inevitable, given the cash flow crisis travel companies now have. Look at the cruise industry - hundreds of thousands of people being made to wait two months or more for their refunds, mostly Americans and Brits. Nothing to do with the EU.
However, given the multiple protections I highlighted downthread, it is very unlikely that much of the losses will end up with the holidaymakers.
Actually they will be victims in all of this
Firstly, insurers are refusing to pay out as they maintain it is not an insurable event
Secondly, airlines, travel companies and others are offering travel vouchers just at the time they are facing bankruptcy and rendering the vouchers worthless against their legal duty to refund
Third, you cannot easily dismiss the appalling behaviour of the EU as they remove the right to a 14 day refund in an act of highway robbery against families and holidaymakers across the EU and in so doing also removes the rights of UK consumers to obtain a 14 day refund on cancellation of their cruise
I would just say that it would be refreshing if those who support the EU actually condemned them rather than made excuses. It is not excusable
Mr G are you sure you are right on this; looks to me, from a quick scan of the EU regs that while there have been changes, they increase consumer protection. In any event it would be amazing if the EU reduced consumer protection; goes against the grain of everything else they have done.
There is a cohort of EU countries led by Germany wanting the 14 day refund rule abolished to protect their airlines and travel industry. I understand the EU do intend confirming it and I would say to anyone at risk over their refund to get it now and also alert their credit card company
There is a very real danger the EU are about to put millions of their citizens in financial difficulty over their holiday plans
How can they be put into "financial difficulty"? Even in the worst case (which won't happen) they only lose money they would have spent (edit/indeed, had already spent) on a holiday anyway; a holiday they now aren't taking.
They would not have risked their money if it was not protected in the event of cancellation
Have you been taking lessons from HY on dodging unwelcome questions?
Not at all. Do you think I would book a £6,000 holiday without the protection safeguards in the travel industry.
Would anyone book an expensive holiday without them
I successfully protect myself from risk by buying cheap flights and booking hotels on a free-cancellation basis. I spent about £100 extra on my Cyprus holiday as a result of Covid and Ryanair owe me £58 for a flight next weekend. I hadn't actually spent any money on my Russian holiday I was planning, and the only hotel bookings are on free cancellation. I'm not sure anything would induce me to shell out six grand in advance, even if I could afford it. People have to take some responsibility for risk. Booking.com refunded me for my Dutch hotel, and Premier Inn for the one over Manchester Marathon weekend, but I had paid for both on a non-refundable basis and I would have accepted not getting the money back.
To be honest that is the way I book holidays normally and Premier Inn at terminal 4 refunded my accommodation, even though I booked it on a non refundable basis on this occasion
The Holiday Inn in Vancouver also waived their charges after I told them my insurer had declined cancellation cover
My arguments this morning are not about me, not least because I have only lost about £300 in total on the cost of the visit to my son and daughter in law in Vancouver but a much wider issue of the fight so many are facing to get their holiday costs refunded
I have recently been having treatment by our practice nurse who is currently struggling to get back nearly 4,000 for a cancelled holiday.
It is not financial hardship and I have already apologised if any thought I was arguing this over my own self interest.
That is far from the truth, it is the many like my nurse I am concerned about
Many wealthy (almost by definition ) older people willing to support lockdown and frown on those that don't but don't really want to share any (even minor) financial consequences - just listen to the moaning of 60 plus people who have booked a week in Tuscany this summer and cannot get their few hundred quid deposit back . Generally people want all the good things and none of the bad consequences. The older you get the consequences are limited to lost minor deposits on holidays (and they will demand them back!) but for the young they are losing their education, freedom and opportunity.
I understand your frustration and fear for the future but would caution that the vast majority of pensioners are far from wealthy and the lost holidays are not only deposits, but full price payments, and include many millions of families and younger people
The idea those of us in 12 weeks lockdown, unable to be with our family and hug our grandchildren, are laid back about the lockdown is far from true. My wife and I hope the lockdown will be eased gradually and responsibly and indeed we accept being in lockdown, as others are freed to start the process of regaining some normality in their lives
It is a great importance we do not set up a them against us, i.e. the old v the young as that creates division just at the time we need to be kinder to each other and show compassion to everyone who is suffering, including obviously yourself
We do feel your pain
I doubt there are millions of lost holiday payments. Most bookings are protected multiple times over, by legal rights in the event of cancellation, by their credit card companies, by travel insurance, and by ABTA/ATOL.
We are soon to be in the main holiday season when millions travel abroad on holiday and will now be near or will have paid the full price of their holiday
Sadly the EU of all organisations is about to remove the protections you refer to in an outrageous move to remove the right to a refund within 14 days of cancellation of holiday. The EU valuing and safeguarding big business at the expense of all just ordinary families wanting their summer holiday is just wrong
You may not have read my explanation to Stodge on the battle I have had with BA to get my air fare refunded when they cancelled our flights to Vancouver in May. Many companies in the travel industry will not survive due to their inability to fund the refunds and lost holiday payments will just disappear
The loss and/or delay over travel refunds this summer will be one of the biggest scandals aided and abetted by the EU
Delay is inevitable, given the cash flow crisis travel companies now have. Look at the cruise industry - hundreds of thousands of people being made to wait two months or more for their refunds, mostly Americans and Brits. Nothing to do with the EU.
However, given the multiple protections I highlighted downthread, it is very unlikely that much of the losses will end up with the holidaymakers.
Actually they will be victims in all of this
Firstly, insurers are refusing to pay out as they maintain it is not an insurable amount
Secondly, airlines, travel companies and others are offering travel vouchers just at the time they are facing bankruptcy and rendering the vouchers worthless
Third, you cannot easily dismiss the appalling behaviour of the EU as they remove the right to a 14 day refund in an act of highway robbery against families and holidaymakers across the EU and in so doing removes the rights of UK consumers to obtain a 14 daybrefund on cancellation of their cruise
I would just say that it would be refreshing if those who support the EU actually condemned them rather than made excuses. It is not excusable
Your first comment doesn't make any sense - an insurance company should be paying out to the point of bankruptcy unless they have legal get out clauses.
Yes I know they are trying it on (as they all do) but I suspect the ombudsman will be giving those arguments very short shrift.
Being a Name (on Lloyds) is a bit of a downer.
Lloyds Names take on low probability high exposure risk. Someone who becomes a Name without being able to stay solvent when something goes wrong is a fool.
As I said before, there are hardly any individual Names left - most of the capital has been corporate-based for decades - but this isn't really true anyway. Most of the time, being a Name is an investment that should deliver a return most years, and positive in the long run, but with pretty volatile experience along the way. There is also the potential for some very large losses, but generally it should look like an investment in early stage companies.
The big difference was the unlimited personal liability, which meant that, technically, "being able to stay solvent when something goes wrong" wasn't actually possible. Fortunately, this is now mostly a relic of a bygone age since Equitas.
Thanks for the clarification. I seem to remember in the 90s (was it theyear of the Nick Leeson crime?) there were quite a lot of famous people were complaining that they had to pay huge debts to LLoyds.
If corporate companies go bust because of LLoyds debts then I have even less sympathy. I realise that the exposure is unlimited, but so do the Names. Again I have no sympathy with people who take on an unlimited risk and then complain when they have to pay out.
Corporate exposure isn't unlimited, as far as I know. Although the market is very strong on maintaining its reputation, so it's pretty much understood that the surviving Syndicates will cover the (valid) claims if one of them goes out of business. I don't think this has been tested in a while, but overall it's very well capitalised, and the additional protections in place (Funds at Lloyd's and the New Central Fund) make it pretty unlikely that this would be a factor, even this year.
The 90s losses were before my time, but primarily related to the emergence of asbestos-related claims on liability insurance where the exposure went back decades. The Piper Alpha rig collapse around that time also triggered some big losses, but I think confined to a few players. This was compounded by unclear reinsurance contracts between Syndicates which resulted in a so-called "spiral", whereby losses went round and round in circles without ever being resolved.
In theory at least, risk management in the market is substantially better now than it was (a good chunk of my day-to-day is supposedly spent ensuring this!) but there are always gaps in the system that no-one's thought of.
The death that is not being mentioned nearly enough is the death of economic activity. Even if we did pick up in June or July where we left off - which will not be happening due to social distancing - the damage is already done. And it is growing by the day.
The death of the economy is being mentioned ALL the time.
On here.
In real life, the majority of my friends who have been furloughed are doing DIY on their houses and expecting to pick everything up exactly where it left off before all this started.
Mildly surprised my tax return hasn't come through yet. Doesn't matter, at the moment, as I need some information I won't get for a while in order to complete it, but slightly surprised (I was expecting a slight delay as I imagine HMRC is quite busy right now).
You mentioned The Last Kingdom recently, watched the first 2 episodes of series 4 last night.
Still most of the elements that made it enjoyable, quite crude but satisfying plot lines, sporadic bursts of extreme violence, cliffhanger endings. I'm probably getting old, but more verbal crudity than I remember (cocks, licking arses etc), and a recurring theme of fear of 'the bastard Scots'.
King Alfred has of course left the building, so on one level at least an historical lynch pin has gone.
What is going to be essential for any sort of "return to normal" (and it won't be) is a substantial fall in the death rate. Yesterday's figures were highly discouraging in that respect. While Italy, Spain and France have all got themselves in the 200s we are still at 739. I appreciate that this has catch up and may well be more comprehensive etc etc but we are still very high. It will be difficult for the government to make substantial moves until the rate is under 100 a day and even then.... I think its a few weeks away yet although there may be some token gestures in the meantime.
We are just a few weeks from the PM nearly dying of this virus. It's all a bit raw right now. And the longer the deaths continue the more people there will be who will know colleagues, friends, relations etc who have been killed by it. That will also have an affect. We face a very tough road ahead. There is no way back to where we were before. New normal is a tired phrase, but it is spot on here. The world has changed irrevocably.
Another point 're the Archers. It has a relatively tiny budget compared to Corrie or Eastenders. The actors aren't full time. There is no army of scriptwriters. The valid criticism is they didn't take the decision early enough. They decides people needed Covid frèe escapism. A position which has become increasingly untenable.
Interesting poll which suggests we've become either paralysed by fear or are rather enjoying netflix and Crucible Classics
Sooner or later the govt needs to start the debate about the economic situation facing us, it seems plenty are very happy to sit at home on 80% wages. When the furlough ends and that job no longer exists I suspect the 23% will at least double.
Welcome!
I’m sure that an exploration of the costs of lockdown will be part of the solution. Right now the public feels like it’s on holiday.
I'm working harder than I ever have before. It's exhausting.
People who say this don't have children.
I am both amused, and sympathetic, Casino. Every parent who’s experienced full on childcare knows where you’re coming from, but you just get used to it in the end. My daughter did not sleep through the night for the first two years of her life (usually not more than a couple of hours at a time); now that was exhausting.
The death that is not being mentioned nearly enough is the death of economic activity. Even if we did pick up in June or July where we left off - which will not be happening due to social distancing - the damage is already done. And it is growing by the day.
The death of the economy is being mentioned ALL the time.
On here.
In real life, the majority of my friends who have been furloughed are doing DIY on their houses and expecting to pick everything up exactly where it left off before all this started.
OT update. Am now - finally - "enjoying" Apple TV via a Firefox browser on my work laptop. Hasn't stopped playing. Yet...
Seriously Apple users, why would you tie yourselves to *this*? Can only use their overpriced tat. Devices built where you have to buy an overpriced adaptor to keep using all your peripherals. Where they keep changing the connector so you have to buy them again. Where the battery is built to fail and if it doesn't the software turns the device into a snail so you WILL buy again. Buy again. Again. Again.
If China turns into an international pariah, how will Apple get around it? I know that a company as Short of Cash as they are won't be able to make their devices outside of semi-slave labour factories in China, might be a problem...
I mean Apple TV+ has always been primarily for those in the Apple ecosystem. I watch it on an Apple TV or my iPad and it works great.
I don’t think Apple are bothered if those who watch it in Firefox on an old Toshiba laptop can no longer do so.
PB has a long tradition of non-Apple users wasting thousands of pixels boring on about their weird Apple obsession.
It's a core issue.
I would get out more, but I can't because we're locked down.
A cursory look through the media gives the explanation for the figures above.
Almost nothing on the enormous economic damage we are doing to our country, and the extremely hard times we face ahead.
I suspect many Britons think lock down is almost a consequence free policy. When they choose to go back to work, their job and their living standards will be waiting there for them.
The enormous propaganda effort to emphasise the threat of this virus, backed by the media, has also vastly exaggerated the danger of this disease to healthy people. I suspect your average Briton's image of it is a gross distortion of the truth. It is a disease that, cruelly, overwhelmingly kills aged people who are sick and frail.
What evidence do you have that containing the virus with a weeks-long lockdown is doing more economic damage than letting it run rampant?
Once again the 1920 pandemic wiped over 20% off our GDP on nominal figures and meant we didn't reach the same GDP on nominal figures for two decades until WWII started.
I think we will do better economically this time than we did this time a century ago. What say you?
Look at the anecdotes on here already starting to filter through. The school friend who may be in severe financial trouble. The schools that are allegedly shutting never to re open.
People think lockdown is a consequence free policy. The government pays them to take a three month holiday then we pick up where we left off, just like that.
Slowly the reality will kick in. That many businesses will not be coming back and there will be no jobs to come back to. That it will not be 80% of your nice fat salary to sit at home, it will be eighty quid a week on universal credit with unemployment running at at least 10% and quite possibly a great deal more.
The death that is not being mentioned nearly enough is the death of economic activity. Even if we did pick up in June or July where we left off - which will not be happening due to social distancing - the damage is already done. And it is growing by the day.
I agree with you that some of this damage was inevitable. However, the furlough scheme has given people a false sense of security and may end up causing more damage by making it possible, even inevitable, that the lockdown will be needlessly prolonged as long as it remains popular.
At the moment people are being insulated from the economic consequences. For how long do you think that is sustainable?
Excellent post. I`d add that Sunak`s swiftness in saying that the three month financial rescue packages (which were originally time-limited to a maximum of three months) would be extended to four is also very worrying. People will think "well if it`s been extended once it can be extended again".
As I`ve posted before, the government didn`t expect so many to stop working and this has made it even more difficult to get the economy going again. Some vivid messaging is going to be needed - messaging that appeals to duty.
"Stay at home, protect the NHS" is an appeal to duty which has been far more successful than anticipated. "Do your duty, go back to work" is going to need to be similarly effective.
All this talk of bravery and cowardice is unhelpful, but then I discovered that the Archers is off the air for three weeks. 😱
Probably for the best. The entire absence of the virus from Ambridge is getting weird, there's bucolic fantasy and then there's bollocks from another planet.
Why is it going off the air? Seems a prime candidate for carrying on - as indeed farms must carry on. A good way to explore the lockdown dramatically. An odd decision by the BBC.
Isn't the Archers used as a vehicle for government propaganda? Perhaps this is the BBC getting back at the Johnson regime for dissing them by not offering up cabinet members for interviews with routine humiliation at the hands of Nick Robinson et al?
If that's satirising a certain view of the BBC, good work!
Farming Today (5:45am) has pivoted to Lockdown Audiodiaries, so the Archers are redundant for the duration.
A cursory look through the media gives the explanation for the figures above.
Almost nothing on the enormous economic damage we are doing to our country, and the extremely hard times we face ahead.
I suspect many Britons think lock down is almost a consequence free policy. When they choose to go back to work, their job and their living standards will be waiting there for them.
The enormous propaganda effort to emphasise the threat of this virus, backed by the media, has also vastly exaggerated the danger of this disease to healthy people. I suspect your average Briton's image of it is a gross distortion of the truth. It is a disease that, cruelly, overwhelmingly kills aged people who are sick and frail.
What evidence do you have that containing the virus with a weeks-long lockdown is doing more economic damage than letting it run rampant?
Once again the 1920 pandemic wiped over 20% off our GDP on nominal figures and meant we didn't reach the same GDP on nominal figures for two decades until WWII started.
I think we will do better economically this time than we did this time a century ago. What say you?
Look at the anecdotes on here already starting to filter through. The school friend who may be in severe financial trouble. The schools that are allegedly shutting never to re open.
People think lockdown is a consequence free policy. The government pays them to take a three month holiday then we pick up where we left off, just like that.
Slowly the reality will kick in. That many businesses will not be coming back and there will be no jobs to come back to. That it will not be 80% of your nice fat salary to sit at home, it will be eighty quid a week on universal credit with unemployment running at at least 10% and quite possibly a great deal more.
The death that is not being mentioned nearly enough is the death of economic activity. Even if we did pick up in June or July where we left off - which will not be happening due to social distancing - the damage is already done. And it is growing by the day.
I agree with you that some of this damage was inevitable. However, the furlough scheme has given people a false sense of security and may end up causing more damage by making it possible, even inevitable, that the lockdown will be needlessly prolonged as long as it remains popular.
At the moment people are being insulated from the economic consequences. For how long do you think that is sustainable?
My wife and I, regular watchers of the Press Conferences, frequently ask each other how this Government has found the Magic Money Tree which, when, a few years ago, they were refusing rises to NHS staff they asserted did not exist. I think we're going to give up these conferences incidentally. I'm planning to re-read my Terry Pratchett Discworld books. Much better fantasy.
The big problem with AppleTV+ is that there's not a lot of good quality content on it, definitely not worth the price of entry. It's ok for free though. I expect Apple will realise how expensive TV production is and how little value it retains around a year from now and sell their shows and subscriber base to someone else.
A cursory look through the media gives the explanation for the figures above.
Almost nothing on the enormous economic damage we are doing to our country, and the extremely hard times we face ahead.
I suspect many Britons think lock down is almost a consequence free policy. When they choose to go back to work, their job and their living standards will be waiting there for them.
The enormous propaganda effort to emphasise the threat of this virus, backed by the media, has also vastly exaggerated the danger of this disease to healthy people. I suspect your average Briton's image of it is a gross distortion of the truth. It is a disease that, cruelly, overwhelmingly kills aged people who are sick and frail.
What evidence do you have that containing the virus with a weeks-long lockdown is doing more economic damage than letting it run rampant?
Once again the 1920 pandemic wiped over 20% off our GDP on nominal figures and meant we didn't reach the same GDP on nominal figures for two decades until WWII started.
I think we will do better economically this time than we did this time a century ago. What say you?
Look at the anecdotes on here already starting to filter through. The school friend who may be in severe financial trouble. The schools that are allegedly shutting never to re open.
People think lockdown is a consequence free policy. The government pays them to take a three month holiday then we pick up where we left off, just like that.
Slowly the reality will kick in. That many businesses will not be coming back and there will be no jobs to come back to. That it will not be 80% of your nice fat salary to sit at home, it will be eighty quid a week on universal credit with unemployment running at at least 10% and quite possibly a great deal more.
The death that is not being mentioned nearly enough is the death of economic activity. Even if we did pick up in June or July where we left off - which will not be happening due to social distancing - the damage is already done. And it is growing by the day.
I agree with you that some of this damage was inevitable. However, the furlough scheme has given people a false sense of security and may end up causing more damage by making it possible, even inevitable, that the lockdown will be needlessly prolonged as long as it remains popular.
At the moment people are being insulated from the economic consequences. For how long do you think that is sustainable?
Excellent post. I`d add that Sunak`s swiftness in saying that the three month financial rescue packages (which were originally time-limited to a maximum of three months) would be extended to four is also very worrying. People will think "well if it`s been extended once it can be extended again".
As I`ve posted before, the government didn`t expect so many to stop working and this has made it even more difficult to get the economy going again. Some vivid messaging is going to be needed - messaging that appeals to duty.
"Stay at home, protect the NHS" is an appeal to duty which has been far more successful than anticipated. "Do your duty, go back to work" is going to need to be similarly effective.
It's funny that - as it's become evident that most people aren't at all keen to end lockdown while the pandemic is still rampant - the message has changed from condemning the government for imprisoning people against their will to condemning it for not forcing people to put their lives at risk for the sake of the economy.
A cursory look through the media gives the explanation for the figures above.
Almost nothing on the enormous economic damage we are doing to our country, and the extremely hard times we face ahead.
I suspect many Britons think lock down is almost a consequence free policy. When they choose to go back to work, their job and their living standards will be waiting there for them.
The enormous propaganda effort to emphasise the threat of this virus, backed by the media, has also vastly exaggerated the danger of this disease to healthy people. I suspect your average Briton's image of it is a gross distortion of the truth. It is a disease that, cruelly, overwhelmingly kills aged people who are sick and frail.
What evidence do you have that containing the virus with a weeks-long lockdown is doing more economic damage than letting it run rampant?
Once again the 1920 pandemic wiped over 20% off our GDP on nominal figures and meant we didn't reach the same GDP on nominal figures for two decades until WWII started.
I think we will do better economically this time than we did this time a century ago. What say you?
Look at the anecdotes on here already starting to filter through. The school friend who may be in severe financial trouble. The schools that are allegedly shutting never to re open.
People think lockdown is a consequence free policy. The government pays them to take a three month holiday then we pick up where we left off, just like that.
Slowly the reality will kick in. That many businesses will not be coming back and there will be no jobs to come back to. That it will not be 80% of your nice fat salary to sit at home, it will be eighty quid a week on universal credit with unemployment running at at least 10% and quite possibly a great deal more.
The death that is not being mentioned nearly enough is the death of economic activity. Even if we did pick up in June or July where we left off - which will not be happening due to social distancing - the damage is already done. And it is growing by the day.
I agree with you that some of this damage was inevitable. However, the furlough scheme has given people a false sense of security and may end up causing more damage by making it possible, even inevitable, that the lockdown will be needlessly prolonged as long as it remains popular.
At the moment people are being insulated from the economic consequences. For how long do you think that is sustainable?
Excellent post. I`d add that Sunak`s swiftness in saying that the three month financial rescue packages (which were originally time-limited to a maximum of three months) would be extended to four is also very worrying. People will think "well if it`s been extended once it can be extended again".
As I`ve posted before, the government didn`t expect so many to stop working and this has made it even more difficult to get the economy going again. Some vivid messaging is going to be needed - messaging that appeals to duty.
"Stay at home, protect the NHS" is an appeal to duty which has been far more successful than anticipated. "Do your duty, go back to work" is going to need to be similarly effective.
It's funny that - as it's become evident that most people aren't at all keen to end lockdown while the pandemic is still rampant - the message has changed from condemning the government for imprisoning people against their will to condemning it for not forcing people to put their lives at risk for the sake of the economy.
As per the more Republican states in Uncle Sam's Fair Land.
OT update. Am now - finally - "enjoying" Apple TV via a Firefox browser on my work laptop. Hasn't stopped playing. Yet...
Seriously Apple users, why would you tie yourselves to *this*? Can only use their overpriced tat. Devices built where you have to buy an overpriced adaptor to keep using all your peripherals. Where they keep changing the connector so you have to buy them again. Where the battery is built to fail and if it doesn't the software turns the device into a snail so you WILL buy again. Buy again. Again. Again.
If China turns into an international pariah, how will Apple get around it? I know that a company as Short of Cash as they are won't be able to make their devices outside of semi-slave labour factories in China, might be a problem...
I mean Apple TV+ has always been primarily for those in the Apple ecosystem. I watch it on an Apple TV or my iPad and it works great.
I don’t think Apple are bothered if those who watch it in Firefox on an old Toshiba laptop can no longer do so.
PB has a long tradition of non-Apple users wasting thousands of pixels boring on about their weird Apple obsession.
It's a core issue.
I would get out more, but I can't because we're locked down.
I`m an I.T. dunce to be sure, but the Apple-lovers v Apple-haters thing has long interested me from a human nature perspective. I found this definition of an Apple Fanboy:
"A single-layered thinking drone originally thought to exist in only small numbers. To help them assimilate into the real world, a computer with only simple functions so that the drones don't get confused was created. Eventually, more products were produced after it was discovered that the number or drones are in the millions. While scientists have been unable to find ways to increase brain performance in this species, a corporation named "Apple" has had financial success in at least convincing that the drone specimen is vastly superior to that of everything else. A specimen of "Apple fanboy" of this species will act partially retarded. "
In our households we all use Apple products. This was an expensive decision, made long ago; a decision that I have to justify repeatedly to my I.T. professional who is despairing of us. All I can say is "well, they work and we can understand them and they look nice". I know.
I can recommend the first three parts (halfway through the third now) of the Chronicles of the Black Gate, by Phil Tucker. It's the equivalent of over one and a half thousand pages for under a fiver (Kindle/Amazon), and it's really rather good.
A cursory look through the media gives the explanation for the figures above.
Almost nothing on the enormous economic damage we are doing to our country, and the extremely hard times we face ahead.
I suspect many Britons think lock down is almost a consequence free policy. When they choose to go back to work, their job and their living standards will be waiting there for them.
The enormous propaganda effort to emphasise the threat of this virus, backed by the media, has also vastly exaggerated the danger of this disease to healthy people. I suspect your average Briton's image of it is a gross distortion of the truth. It is a disease that, cruelly, overwhelmingly kills aged people who are sick and frail.
What evidence do you have that containing the virus with a weeks-long lockdown is doing more economic damage than letting it run rampant?
Once again the 1920 pandemic wiped over 20% off our GDP on nominal figures and meant we didn't reach the same GDP on nominal figures for two decades until WWII started.
I think we will do better economically this time than we did this time a century ago. What say you?
Look at the anecdotes on here already starting to filter through. The school friend who may be in severe financial trouble. The schools that are allegedly shutting never to re open.
People think lockdown is a consequence free policy. The government pays them to take a three month holiday then we pick up where we left off, just like that.
Slowly the reality will kick in. That many businesses will not be coming back and there will be no jobs to come back to. That it will not be 80% of your nice fat salary to sit at home, it will be eighty quid a week on universal credit with unemployment running at at least 10% and quite possibly a great deal more.
The death that is not being mentioned nearly enough is the death of economic activity. Even if we did pick up in June or July where we left off - which will not be happening due to social distancing - the damage is already done. And it is growing by the day.
I agree with you that some of this damage was inevitable. However, the furlough scheme has given people a false sense of security and may end up causing more damage by making it possible, even inevitable, that the lockdown will be needlessly prolonged as long as it remains popular.
At the moment people are being insulated from the economic consequences. For how long do you think that is sustainable?
My wife and I, regular watchers of the Press Conferences, frequently ask each other how this Government has found the Magic Money Tree which, when, a few years ago, they were refusing rises to NHS staff they asserted did not exist. I think we're going to give up these conferences incidentally. I'm planning to re-read my Terry Pratchett Discworld books. Much better fantasy.
Well, it's a different Government, for a start. And the circumstances may have changed somewhat. Although I can't fault your conclusion as to how your time might be better spent.
Does anyone know how to contact HMRC to report a company abusing the furlough by asking employees to answer emails and speak to clients.
Thereby helping to ensure they've got jobs to come back to
While abusing a system that their competitors aren't using to gain an unfair competitive advantage (oh and committing fraud as an incidental addition).
A cursory look through the media gives the explanation for the figures above.
Almost nothing on the enormous economic damage we are doing to our country, and the extremely hard times we face ahead.
I suspect many Britons think lock down is almost a consequence free policy. When they choose to go back to work, their job and their living standards will be waiting there for them.
The enormous propaganda effort to emphasise the threat of this virus, backed by the media, has also vastly exaggerated the danger of this disease to healthy people. I suspect your average Briton's image of it is a gross distortion of the truth. It is a disease that, cruelly, overwhelmingly kills aged people who are sick and frail.
What evidence do you have that containing the virus with a weeks-long lockdown is doing more economic damage than letting it run rampant?
Once again the 1920 pandemic wiped over 20% off our GDP on nominal figures and meant we didn't reach the same GDP on nominal figures for two decades until WWII started.
I think we will do better economically this time than we did this time a century ago. What say you?
Look at the anecdotes on here already starting to filter through. The school friend who may be in severe financial trouble. The schools that are allegedly shutting never to re open.
People think lockdown is a consequence free policy. The government pays them to take a three month holiday then we pick up where we left off, just like that.
Slowly the reality will kick in. That many businesses will not be coming back and there will be no jobs to come back to. That it will not be 80% of your nice fat salary to sit at home, it will be eighty quid a week on universal credit with unemployment running at at least 10% and quite possibly a great deal more.
The death that is not being mentioned nearly enough is the death of economic activity. Even if we did pick up in June or July where we left off - which will not be happening due to social distancing - the damage is already done. And it is growing by the day.
I agree with you that some of this damage was inevitable. However, the furlough scheme has given people a false sense of security and may end up causing more damage by making it possible, even inevitable, that the lockdown will be needlessly prolonged as long as it remains popular.
At the moment people are being insulated from the economic consequences. For how long do you think that is sustainable?
I think for a relatively long time given our government can foot the bill at 0.1% interest per annum. I think the government can foot the bill at 0.1% for far, far, far longer than businesses can foot the bill.
That's why counterintuitively furlough and lockdown can help isolate the economy and reduce the economic damage. Because the moment of high risk for the economy is not while we are furloughed and as you say "insulated" - it is when the insulation ends.
If we lift the lockdown and end the insulation prematurely then people will take matters into their own hands and the economy will collapse. If we lift the lockdown when the public knows it is safe to do so then the public will be very, very grateful to get back to normal.
Yes there will be damage but that was inevitable either way.
52% of ConservativeHome readers want the government to follow a South Korean style approach with mass testing and tracing as a prelude to lifting the lockdown, 30% want to pursue a Swedish style approach with only voluntary social distancing and no lockdown and only 13% want the government to continue with the strict lockdown as it currently stands longer term
If that wasn't the advice then nobody has told my parents, their friends or my over 70 year old neighbours who have all been in total lockdown for weeks.
On topic, Alastair’s excellent header seems to have stirred up quite an argument.
In reality, now the government appears to have started to get its act together on testing, they are actually beginning to think constructively about how to use the capacity.
Next week, it will be used to conduct a survey, run by Imperial and Ipsos Mori, involving 100k people across the country. That should give them a reasonable overview of the current rate of infection, which will inform the lockdown decision. Repeating the exercise regularly should enable them to understand how things change when people get back to work, hopefully before hospital admission start to surge again. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/30/randomised-coronavirus-test-of-100000-will-determine-end-date-of-uk-lockdown
I’m hoping this will render much of the debate moot.
If that wasn't the advice then nobody has told my parents, their friends or my over 70 year old neighbours who have all been in total lockdown for weeks.
Unrelated but interesting post from Steve Baker on that twitter link:
"Cummings opponents never learn that he uses controversy over numbers to keep the numbers in the news. So that the numbers are widely heard by the public."
Gives more context to the 100k tests, it does seem to work every time. Far more people will be impressed by the 100k than offended by the dodgy counting.
Vitriol after the Salmond trial is toxifying the Yes movement - Dani Garavelli
It is now almost five weeks since the end of the Alex Salmond trial, and the attempt to convince the world he was the victim of an orchestrated campaign by SNP careerists/Unionists/MI5/the Deep State is gathering momentum.
A cursory look through the media gives the explanation for the figures above.
Almost nothing on the enormous economic damage we are doing to our country, and the extremely hard times we face ahead.
I suspect many Britons think lock down is almost a consequence free policy. When they choose to go back to work, their job and their living standards will be waiting there for them.
The enormous propaganda effort to emphasise the threat of this virus, backed by the media, has also vastly exaggerated the danger of this disease to healthy people. I suspect your average Briton's image of it is a gross distortion of the truth. It is a disease that, cruelly, overwhelmingly kills aged people who are sick and frail.
What evidence do you have that containing the virus with a weeks-long lockdown is doing more economic damage than letting it run rampant?
Once again the 1920 pandemic wiped over 20% off our GDP on nominal figures and meant we didn't reach the same GDP on nominal figures for two decades until WWII started.
I think we will do better economically this time than we did this time a century ago. What say you?
Look at the anecdotes on here already starting to filter through. The school friend who may be in severe financial trouble. The schools that are allegedly shutting never to re open.
People think lockdown is a consequence free policy. The government pays them to take a three month holiday then we pick up where we left off, just like that.
Slowly the reality will kick in. That many businesses will not be coming back and there will be no jobs to come back to. That it will not be 80% of your nice fat salary to sit at home, it will be eighty quid a week on universal credit with unemployment running at at least 10% and quite possibly a great deal more.
The death that is not being mentioned nearly enough is the death of economic activity. Even if we did pick up in June or July where we left off - which will not be happening due to social distancing - the damage is already done. And it is growing by the day.
I agree with you that some of this damage was inevitable. However, the furlough scheme has given people a false sense of security and may end up causing more damage by making it possible, even inevitable, that the lockdown will be needlessly prolonged as long as it remains popular.
At the moment people are being insulated from the economic consequences. For how long do you think that is sustainable?
My wife and I, regular watchers of the Press Conferences, frequently ask each other how this Government has found the Magic Money Tree which, when, a few years ago, they were refusing rises to NHS staff they asserted did not exist. I think we're going to give up these conferences incidentally. I'm planning to re-read my Terry Pratchett Discworld books. Much better fantasy.
Well, it's a different Government, for a start. And the circumstances may have changed somewhat. Although I can't fault your conclusion as to how your time might be better spent.
OT update. Am now - finally - "enjoying" Apple TV via a Firefox browser on my work laptop. Hasn't stopped playing. Yet...
Seriously Apple users, why would you tie yourselves to *this*? Can only use their overpriced tat. Devices built where you have to buy an overpriced adaptor to keep using all your peripherals. Where they keep changing the connector so you have to buy them again. Where the battery is built to fail and if it doesn't the software turns the device into a snail so you WILL buy again. Buy again. Again. Again.
If China turns into an international pariah, how will Apple get around it? I know that a company as Short of Cash as they are won't be able to make their devices outside of semi-slave labour factories in China, might be a problem...
I mean Apple TV+ has always been primarily for those in the Apple ecosystem. I watch it on an Apple TV or my iPad and it works great.
I don’t think Apple are bothered if those who watch it in Firefox on an old Toshiba laptop can no longer do so.
PB has a long tradition of non-Apple users wasting thousands of pixels boring on about their weird Apple obsession.
It's a core issue.
I would get out more, but I can't because we're locked down.
I`m an I.T. dunce to be sure, but the Apple-lovers v Apple-haters thing has long interested me from a human nature perspective. I found this definition of an Apple Fanboy:
"A single-layered thinking drone originally thought to exist in only small numbers. To help them assimilate into the real world, a computer with only simple functions so that the drones don't get confused was created. Eventually, more products were produced after it was discovered that the number or drones are in the millions. While scientists have been unable to find ways to increase brain performance in this species, a corporation named "Apple" has had financial success in at least convincing that the drone specimen is vastly superior to that of everything else. A specimen of "Apple fanboy" of this species will act partially retarded. "
In our households we all use Apple products. This was an expensive decision, made long ago; a decision that I have to justify repeatedly to my I.T. professional who is despairing of us. All I can say is "well, they work and we can understand them and they look nice". I know.
I worked with Macs in the late eighties, they were very much the non corporate choice, edgier than IBM machines and far superior graphics, which I needed for what I was working on. It’s weird how these comments make them seen like the ‘drone’ choice when the opposite was the case. I remember my 300 dpi laser printer was about four grand and the Mac SE was about three (or was it the other way round?).
"A slow lingering death by drowning in your own body fluids seems like plenty to fear to me."
The standout sentence for me. Nice one, Alastair. But it does not do full justice to this remarkable new illness. Yes, many of the severe and fatal cases of Covid-19 manifest as viral pneumonia (for which the above applies) but many do not. Multiple organ failure, clotting, cardiac arrest, stroke, swollen extremities, delusion, ridiculous fluctuations in blood pressure and other readings, muscle pain so intense as to require sedation, numbing fatigue, you name it. Same virus but several different looking diseases (all of them serious) depending on the individual. And yet for many more it's just a bit of a cold. Doctors have never seen anything like it. It's utterly fascinating if you are interested in this sort of thing.
OT update. Am now - finally - "enjoying" Apple TV via a Firefox browser on my work laptop. Hasn't stopped playing. Yet...
Seriously Apple users, why would you tie yourselves to *this*? Can only use their overpriced tat. Devices built where you have to buy an overpriced adaptor to keep using all your peripherals. Where they keep changing the connector so you have to buy them again. Where the battery is built to fail and if it doesn't the software turns the device into a snail so you WILL buy again. Buy again. Again. Again.
If China turns into an international pariah, how will Apple get around it? I know that a company as Short of Cash as they are won't be able to make their devices outside of semi-slave labour factories in China, might be a problem...
I mean Apple TV+ has always been primarily for those in the Apple ecosystem. I watch it on an Apple TV or my iPad and it works great.
I don’t think Apple are bothered if those who watch it in Firefox on an old Toshiba laptop can no longer do so.
PB has a long tradition of non-Apple users wasting thousands of pixels boring on about their weird Apple obsession.
It's a core issue.
I would get out more, but I can't because we're locked down.
If that wasn't the advice then nobody has told my parents, their friends or my over 70 year old neighbours who have all been in total lockdown for weeks.
Over 70s without medical conditions = clinically vulnerable = essential trips only
Over 70s with medial conditions = extremely clinically vulnerable = shielding = no trips
OT update. Am now - finally - "enjoying" Apple TV via a Firefox browser on my work laptop. Hasn't stopped playing. Yet...
Seriously Apple users, why would you tie yourselves to *this*? Can only use their overpriced tat. Devices built where you have to buy an overpriced adaptor to keep using all your peripherals. Where they keep changing the connector so you have to buy them again. Where the battery is built to fail and if it doesn't the software turns the device into a snail so you WILL buy again. Buy again. Again. Again.
If China turns into an international pariah, how will Apple get around it? I know that a company as Short of Cash as they are won't be able to make their devices outside of semi-slave labour factories in China, might be a problem...
I mean Apple TV+ has always been primarily for those in the Apple ecosystem. I watch it on an Apple TV or my iPad and it works great.
I don’t think Apple are bothered if those who watch it in Firefox on an old Toshiba laptop can no longer do so.
PB has a long tradition of non-Apple users wasting thousands of pixels boring on about their weird Apple obsession.
It's a core issue.
I would get out more, but I can't because we're locked down.
I`m an I.T. dunce to be sure, but the Apple-lovers v Apple-haters thing has long interested me from a human nature perspective. I found this definition of an Apple Fanboy:
"A single-layered thinking drone originally thought to exist in only small numbers. To help them assimilate into the real world, a computer with only simple functions so that the drones don't get confused was created. Eventually, more products were produced after it was discovered that the number or drones are in the millions. While scientists have been unable to find ways to increase brain performance in this species, a corporation named "Apple" has had financial success in at least convincing that the drone specimen is vastly superior to that of everything else. A specimen of "Apple fanboy" of this species will act partially retarded. "
In our households we all use Apple products. This was an expensive decision, made long ago; a decision that I have to justify repeatedly to my I.T. professional who is despairing of us. All I can say is "well, they work and we can understand them and they look nice". I know.
I worked with Macs in the late eighties, they were very much the non corporate choice, edgier than IBM machines and far superior graphics, which I needed for what I was working on. It’s weird how these comments make them seen like the ‘drone’ choice when the opposite was the case. I remember my 300 dpi laser printer was about four grand and the Mac SE was about three (or was it the other way round?).
For me it's fairly simple.
Apple early on tried to pretend that a monochrome postcard sized screen was better than a 14" colour screen.
Treating potential customer like idiots. Add that to the walled garden and the emphasis on prettiness over performance, and it is Apple defenestrated permanently. That is still the status for me.
If that wasn't the advice then nobody has told my parents, their friends or my over 70 year old neighbours who have all been in total lockdown for weeks.
Unrelated but interesting post from Steve Baker on that twitter link:
"Cummings opponents never learn that he uses controversy over numbers to keep the numbers in the news. So that the numbers are widely heard by the public."
Gives more context to the 100k tests, it does seem to work every time. Far more people will be impressed by the 100k than offended by the dodgy counting.
To be used against him with the death toll. The estimated macro one from excess over trend - also a nice round "100k" but of a very different flavour.
The big problem with AppleTV+ is that there's not a lot of good quality content on it, definitely not worth the price of entry. It's ok for free though. I expect Apple will realise how expensive TV production is and how little value it retains around a year from now and sell their shows and subscriber base to someone else.
OT update. Am now - finally - "enjoying" Apple TV via a Firefox browser on my work laptop. Hasn't stopped playing. Yet...
Seriously Apple users, why would you tie yourselves to *this*? Can only use their overpriced tat. Devices built where you have to buy an overpriced adaptor to keep using all your peripherals. Where they keep changing the connector so you have to buy them again. Where the battery is built to fail and if it doesn't the software turns the device into a snail so you WILL buy again. Buy again. Again. Again.
If China turns into an international pariah, how will Apple get around it? I know that a company as Short of Cash as they are won't be able to make their devices outside of semi-slave labour factories in China, might be a problem...
I mean Apple TV+ has always been primarily for those in the Apple ecosystem. I watch it on an Apple TV or my iPad and it works great.
I don’t think Apple are bothered if those who watch it in Firefox on an old Toshiba laptop can no longer do so.
PB has a long tradition of non-Apple users wasting thousands of pixels boring on about their weird Apple obsession.
It's a core issue.
I would get out more, but I can't because we're locked down.
I`m an I.T. dunce to be sure, but the Apple-lovers v Apple-haters thing has long interested me from a human nature perspective. I found this definition of an Apple Fanboy:
"A single-layered thinking drone originally thought to exist in only small numbers. To help them assimilate into the real world, a computer with only simple functions so that the drones don't get confused was created. Eventually, more products were produced after it was discovered that the number or drones are in the millions. While scientists have been unable to find ways to increase brain performance in this species, a corporation named "Apple" has had financial success in at least convincing that the drone specimen is vastly superior to that of everything else. A specimen of "Apple fanboy" of this species will act partially retarded. "
In our households we all use Apple products. This was an expensive decision, made long ago; a decision that I have to justify repeatedly to my I.T. professional who is despairing of us. All I can say is "well, they work and we can understand them and they look nice". I know.
I worked with Macs in the late eighties, they were very much the non corporate choice, edgier than IBM machines and far superior graphics, which I needed for what I was working on. It’s weird how these comments make them seen like the ‘drone’ choice when the opposite was the case. I remember my 300 dpi laser printer was about four grand and the Mac SE was about three (or was it the other way round?).
For me it's fairly simple.
Apple early on tried to pretend that a monochrome postcard sized screen was better than a 14" colour screen.
Treating potential customer like idiots. Add that to the walled garden and it is Apple defenestrated permanently. That is still the status for me.
Weren't Apple Macs originally sold under the Apricot brand.
Does anyone know how to contact HMRC to report a company abusing the furlough by asking employees to answer emails and speak to clients.
Thereby helping to ensure they've got jobs to come back to
Then unfurlough the employee if they are business critical. This is just taxpayer subsidisation of wages.
Correct, but these are unprecedented times. Plenty of people will be doing all they can in the hope they have a job to come back to, as pointed out earlier others are decorating and drinking wine in a state of ignorant bliss.
And with the greatest respect snitching on people with good intentions isn't helpful
52% of ConservativeHome readers want the government to follow a South Korean style approach with mass testing and tracing as a prelude to lifting the lockdown, 30% want to pursue a Swedish style approach with only voluntary social distancing and no lockdown and only 13% want the government to continue with the strict lockdown as it currently stands longer term
- Holiday insurance pools risk. In the overwhelming majority of circumstances, there are few links between Person X needing to cancel/receive medical support/be repatriated/etc and Person Z on a different holiday elsewhere in the world a month later. Accordingly, a few percent of the price of the holiday covers it. Money flows in, money flows out, it all balances.
- If there is a sudden, linked, worldwide event that totally precludes all holidays for a protracted period (and I can't recall hearing many people talking about this ever until the last few weeks), the model breaks down. No money flows in, all money flows out, no balance, it all collapses.
We could argue that holiday companies and travel companies should have held large reserves to cover just this eventuality. It would have required significant investment, tied up huge sums of money, and sent holiday and travel prices up quite a long way. It would also require the consumer to pay those considerably higher prices.
Not just this year, of course, but last year, the year before, and every year previous to that. And the number of people willing to do that, say, in 2012 (to grab a year at random) was twice the square root of sod all.
Unsurprisingly, travel and holiday companies (who have all noted that fact that the consumer, whatever they say, places price squarely front and centre and worries about everything else around the edges, if at all), didn't choose to commit slow suicide. It did, though, mean that they (and insurers, and ATOL, and ABTA, and everyone else involved) happened to be totally exposed if a once-in-a-century natural disaster were to cause that previously unthought-of total curtailment of all holiday activity for a period of multiple months.
If - and it's a big IF - the customers all elect to go for a deferred holiday rather than a complete refund, they'll all survive, and everyone will get their holidays in the end, the companies will continue to operate, workers will continue to have a job, and everyone will breathe a huge sigh of relief. Unfortunately, it's like The Tragedy of the Commons: each individual customer will see it in their personal best interests to get a full refund (as well as be worried that the travel company will go down). If enough of them go through with it, the companies will go down.
More than that - the money just isn't there to refund everyone. Which means that insisting on a refund, if spread widely enough, will ensure few people actually get their money back (and no-one gets a deferred holiday, and all the workers lose their jobs).
This actually incentivises people to go for the refund - to try to be one of the few to get their money back.
The solution to the Tragedy of the Commons is intervention to stop it happening - to preserve the value of what people originally bought (as much as possible; a deferred holiday might not be as valuable as the original date) and to preserve the industry itself.
OT update. Am now - finally - "enjoying" Apple TV via a Firefox browser on my work laptop. Hasn't stopped playing. Yet...
Seriously Apple users, why would you tie yourselves to *this*? Can only use their overpriced tat. Devices built where you have to buy an overpriced adaptor to keep using all your peripherals. Where they keep changing the connector so you have to buy them again. Where the battery is built to fail and if it doesn't the software turns the device into a snail so you WILL buy again. Buy again. Again. Again.
If China turns into an international pariah, how will Apple get around it? I know that a company as Short of Cash as they are won't be able to make their devices outside of semi-slave labour factories in China, might be a problem...
I mean Apple TV+ has always been primarily for those in the Apple ecosystem. I watch it on an Apple TV or my iPad and it works great.
I don’t think Apple are bothered if those who watch it in Firefox on an old Toshiba laptop can no longer do so.
PB has a long tradition of non-Apple users wasting thousands of pixels boring on about their weird Apple obsession.
It's a core issue.
I would get out more, but I can't because we're locked down.
I`m an I.T. dunce to be sure, but the Apple-lovers v Apple-haters thing has long interested me from a human nature perspective. I found this definition of an Apple Fanboy:
"A single-layered thinking drone originally thought to exist in only small numbers. To help them assimilate into the real world, a computer with only simple functions so that the drones don't get confused was created. Eventually, more products were produced after it was discovered that the number or drones are in the millions. While scientists have been unable to find ways to increase brain performance in this species, a corporation named "Apple" has had financial success in at least convincing that the drone specimen is vastly superior to that of everything else. A specimen of "Apple fanboy" of this species will act partially retarded. "
In our households we all use Apple products. This was an expensive decision, made long ago; a decision that I have to justify repeatedly to my I.T. professional who is despairing of us. All I can say is "well, they work and we can understand them and they look nice". I know.
I worked with Macs in the late eighties, they were very much the non corporate choice, edgier than IBM machines and far superior graphics, which I needed for what I was working on. It’s weird how these comments make them seen like the ‘drone’ choice when the opposite was the case. I remember my 300 dpi laser printer was about four grand and the Mac SE was about three (or was it the other way round?).
For me it's fairly simple.
Apple early on tried to pretend that a monochrome postcard sized screen was better than a 14" colour screen.
Treating potential customer like idiots. Add that to the walled garden and it is Apple defenestrated permanently. That is still the status for me.
Weren't Apple Macs originally sold under the Apricot brand.
Don't believe so - Apricot was a British Company based in Birmingham, previous Applied Computer Techniques founded in the 1960s.
If that wasn't the advice then nobody has told my parents, their friends or my over 70 year old neighbours who have all been in total lockdown for weeks.
Over 70s without medical conditions = clinically vulnerable = essential trips only
Over 70s with medial conditions = extremely clinically vulnerable = shielding = no trips
Not over 70 so not been paying full attention but still confused.
Is the only difference for over 70s vs under 70 that the over 70s shouldnt be working? Because we are all on essential trips only regardless of age.
- Holiday insurance is pools risk. In the overwhelming majority of circumstances, there are few links between Person X needing to cancel/receive medical support/be repatriated/etc and Person Z on a different holiday elsewhere in the world a month later. Accordingly, a few percent of the price of the holiday covers it. Money flows in, money flows out, it all balances.
- If there is a sudden, linked, worldwide event that totally precludes all holidays for a protracted period (and I can't recall hearing many people talking about this ever until the last few weeks), the model breaks down. No money flows in, all money flows out, no balance, it all collapses.
We could argue that holiday companies and travel companies should have held large reserves to cover just this eventuality. It would have required significant investment, tied up huge sums of money, and sent holiday and travel prices up quite a long way. It would also require the consumer to pay those considerably higher prices.
Not just this year, of course, but last year, the year before, and every year previous to that. And the number of people willing to do that, say, in 2012 (to grab a year at random) was twice the square root of sod all.
Unsurprisingly, travel and holiday companies (who have all noted that fact that the consumer, whatever they say, places price squarely front and centre and worries about everything else around the edges, if at all), didn't choose to commit slow suicide. It did, though, mean that they (and insurers, and ATOL, and ABTA, and everyone else involved) happened to be totally exposed if a once-in-a-century natural disaster were to cause that previously unthought-of total curtailment of all holiday activity for a period of multiple months.
If - and it's a big IF - the customers all elect to go for a deferred holiday rather than a complete refund, they'll all survive, and everyone will get their holidays in the end, the companies will continue to operate, workers will continue to have a job, and everyone will breathe a huge sigh of relief. Unfortunately, it's like The Tragedy of the Commons: each individual customer will see it in their personal best interests to get a full refund (as well as be worried that the travel company will go down). If enough of them go through with it, the companies will go down.
More than that - the money just isn't there to refund everyone. Which means that insisting on a refund, if spread widely enough, will ensure few people actually get their money back (and no-one gets a deferred holiday, and all the workers lose their jobs).
This actually incentivises people to go for the refund - to try to be one of the few to get their money back.
The solution to the Tragedy of the Commons is intervention to stop it happening - to preserve the value of what people originally bought (as much as possible; a deferred holiday might not be as valuable as the original date) and to preserve the industry itself.
OT update. Am now - finally - "enjoying" Apple TV via a Firefox browser on my work laptop. Hasn't stopped playing. Yet...
Seriously Apple users, why would you tie yourselves to *this*? Can only use their overpriced tat. Devices built where you have to buy an overpriced adaptor to keep using all your peripherals. Where they keep changing the connector so you have to buy them again. Where the battery is built to fail and if it doesn't the software turns the device into a snail so you WILL buy again. Buy again. Again. Again.
If China turns into an international pariah, how will Apple get around it? I know that a company as Short of Cash as they are won't be able to make their devices outside of semi-slave labour factories in China, might be a problem...
I mean Apple TV+ has always been primarily for those in the Apple ecosystem. I watch it on an Apple TV or my iPad and it works great.
I don’t think Apple are bothered if those who watch it in Firefox on an old Toshiba laptop can no longer do so.
PB has a long tradition of non-Apple users wasting thousands of pixels boring on about their weird Apple obsession.
It's a core issue.
I would get out more, but I can't because we're locked down.
I've enjoyed catching up on the holiday refund debate down thread. We were lucky in not having made any bookings and indeed saved a few quid by not renewing our annual travel insurance.
However the money we are not spending on holidays is also the money I am not earning due to my temporary pay cut. So I'm glad that the money was not spent.
I do hope that everyone gets the refund they are entitled to, as I'm sure that many people now need the money for something else.
OT update. Am now - finally - "enjoying" Apple TV via a Firefox browser on my work laptop. Hasn't stopped playing. Yet...
Seriously Apple users, why would you tie yourselves to *this*? Can only use their overpriced tat. Devices built where you have to buy an overpriced adaptor to keep using all your peripherals. Where they keep changing the connector so you have to buy them again. Where the battery is built to fail and if it doesn't the software turns the device into a snail so you WILL buy again. Buy again. Again. Again.
If China turns into an international pariah, how will Apple get around it? I know that a company as Short of Cash as they are won't be able to make their devices outside of semi-slave labour factories in China, might be a problem...
I mean Apple TV+ has always been primarily for those in the Apple ecosystem. I watch it on an Apple TV or my iPad and it works great.
I don’t think Apple are bothered if those who watch it in Firefox on an old Toshiba laptop can no longer do so.
PB has a long tradition of non-Apple users wasting thousands of pixels boring on about their weird Apple obsession.
It's a core issue.
I would get out more, but I can't because we're locked down.
I`m an I.T. dunce to be sure, but the Apple-lovers v Apple-haters thing has long interested me from a human nature perspective. I found this definition of an Apple Fanboy:
"A single-layered thinking drone originally thought to exist in only small numbers. To help them assimilate into the real world, a computer with only simple functions so that the drones don't get confused was created. Eventually, more products were produced after it was discovered that the number or drones are in the millions. While scientists have been unable to find ways to increase brain performance in this species, a corporation named "Apple" has had financial success in at least convincing that the drone specimen is vastly superior to that of everything else. A specimen of "Apple fanboy" of this species will act partially retarded. "
In our households we all use Apple products. This was an expensive decision, made long ago; a decision that I have to justify repeatedly to my I.T. professional who is despairing of us. All I can say is "well, they work and we can understand them and they look nice". I know.
I worked with Macs in the late eighties, they were very much the non corporate choice, edgier than IBM machines and far superior graphics, which I needed for what I was working on. It’s weird how these comments make them seen like the ‘drone’ choice when the opposite was the case. I remember my 300 dpi laser printer was about four grand and the Mac SE was about three (or was it the other way round?).
For me it's fairly simple.
Apple early on tried to pretend that a monochrome postcard sized screen was better than a 14" colour screen.
Treating potential customer like idiots. Add that to the walled garden and the emphasis on prettiness over performance, and it is Apple defenestrated permanently. That is still the status for me.
Apple make the best mass-market mobile chips on the planet. Fact. “Prettiness over performance” is just “fanboy” nonsense.
Many wealthy (almost by definition ) older people willing to support lockdown and frown on those that don't but don't really want to share any (even minor) financial consequences - just listen to the moaning of 60 plus people who have booked a week in Tuscany this summer and cannot get their few hundred quid deposit back . Generally people want all the good things and none of the bad consequences. The older you get the consequences are limited to lost minor deposits on holidays (and they will demand them back!) but for the young they are losing their education, freedom and opportunity.
I understand your frustration and fear for the future but would caution that the vast majority of pensioners are far from wealthy and the lost holidays are not only deposits, but full price payments, and include many millions of families and younger people
The idea those of us in 12 weeks lockdown, unable to be with our family and hug our grandchildren, are laid back about the lockdown is far from true. My wife and I hope the lockdown will be eased gradually and responsibly and indeed we accept being in lockdown, as others are freed to start the process of regaining some normality in their lives
It is a great importance we do not set up a them against us, i.e. the old v the young as that creates division just at the time we need to be kinder to each other and show compassion to everyone who is suffering, including obviously yourself
We do feel your pain
I doubt there are millions of lost holiday payments. Most bookings are protected multiple times over, by legal rights in the event of cancellation, by their credit card companies, by travel insurance, and by ABTA/ATOL.
We are soon to be in the main holiday season when millions travel abroad on holiday and will now be near or will have paid the full price of their holiday
Sadly the EU of all organisations is about to remove the protections you refer to in an outrageous move to remove the right to a refund within 14 days of cancellation of holiday. The EU valuing and safeguarding big business at the expense of all just ordinary families wanting their summer holiday is just wrong
You may not have read my explanation to Stodge on the battle I have had with BA to get my air fare refunded when they cancelled our flights to Vancouver in May. Many companies in the travel industry will not survive due to their inability to fund the refunds and lost holiday payments will just disappear
The loss and/or delay over travel refunds this summer will be one of the biggest scandals aided and abetted by the EU
Delay is inevitable, given the cash flow crisis travel companies now have. Look at the cruise industry - hundreds of thousands of people being made to wait two months or more for their refunds, mostly Americans and Brits. Nothing to do with the EU.
However, given the multiple protections I highlighted downthread, it is very unlikely that much of the losses will end up with the holidaymakers.
Actually they will be victims in all of this
Firstly, insurers are refusing to pay out as they maintain it is not an insurable amount
Secondly, airlines, travel companies and others are offering travel vouchers just at the time they are facing bankruptcy and rendering the vouchers worthless
Third, you cannot easily dismiss the appalling behaviour of the EU as they remove the right to a 14 day refund in an act of highway robbery against families and holidaymakers across the EU and in so doing removes the rights of UK consumers to obtain a 14 daybrefund on cancellation of their cruise
I would just say that it would be refreshing if those who support the EU actually condemned them rather than made excuses. It is not excusable
Your first comment doesn't make any sense - an insurance company should be paying out to the point of bankruptcy unless they have legal get out clauses.
Yes I know they are trying it on (as they all do) but I suspect the ombudsman will be giving those arguments very short shrift.
Being a Name (on Lloyds) is a bit of a downer.
Lloyds Names take on low probability high exposure risk. Someone who becomes a Name without being able to stay solvent when something goes wrong is a fool.
As I said before, there are hardly any individual Names left - most of the capital has been corporate-based for decades - but this isn't really true anyway. Most of the time, being a Name is an investment that should deliver a return most years, and positive in the long run, but with pretty volatile experience along the way. There is also the potential for some very large losses, but generally it should look like an investment in early stage companies.
The big difference was the unlimited personal liability, which meant that, technically, "being able to stay solvent when something goes wrong" wasn't actually possible. Fortunately, this is now mostly a relic of a bygone age since Equitas.
Thanks for the clarification. I seem to remember in the 90s (was it theyear of the Nick Leeson crime?) there were quite a lot of famous people were complaining that they had to pay huge debts to LLoyds.
If corporate companies go bust because of LLoyds debts then I have even less sympathy. I realise that the exposure is unlimited, but so do the Names. Again I have no sympathy with people who take on an unlimited risk and then complain when they have to pay out.
The issue with Lloyd’s was that many of the Names weren’t properly aware of the reality of unlimited liability. There was a lot of mis-selling.
Does anyone know how to contact HMRC to report a company abusing the furlough by asking employees to answer emails and speak to clients.
Thereby helping to ensure they've got jobs to come back to
Then unfurlough the employee if they are business critical. This is just taxpayer subsidisation of wages.
Correct, but these are unprecedented times. Plenty of people will be doing all they can in the hope they have a job to come back to, as pointed out earlier others are decorating and drinking wine in a state of ignorant bliss.
And with the greatest respect snitching on people with good intentions isn't helpful
As I said, if the system is being abused by furloughed staff so working on proposal documents or on second level support - that's an unfair advantage that should be stamped out on.
Personally, you seem to be defending what to me is indefensible.
OT update. Am now - finally - "enjoying" Apple TV via a Firefox browser on my work laptop. Hasn't stopped playing. Yet...
Seriously Apple users, why would you tie yourselves to *this*? Can only use their overpriced tat. Devices built where you have to buy an overpriced adaptor to keep using all your peripherals. Where they keep changing the connector so you have to buy them again. Where the battery is built to fail and if it doesn't the software turns the device into a snail so you WILL buy again. Buy again. Again. Again.
If China turns into an international pariah, how will Apple get around it? I know that a company as Short of Cash as they are won't be able to make their devices outside of semi-slave labour factories in China, might be a problem...
I mean Apple TV+ has always been primarily for those in the Apple ecosystem. I watch it on an Apple TV or my iPad and it works great.
I don’t think Apple are bothered if those who watch it in Firefox on an old Toshiba laptop can no longer do so.
PB has a long tradition of non-Apple users wasting thousands of pixels boring on about their weird Apple obsession.
It's a core issue.
I would get out more, but I can't because we're locked down.
I can recommend the first three parts (halfway through the third now) of the Chronicles of the Black Gate, by Phil Tucker. It's the equivalent of over one and a half thousand pages for under a fiver (Kindle/Amazon), and it's really rather good.
OT update. Am now - finally - "enjoying" Apple TV via a Firefox browser on my work laptop. Hasn't stopped playing. Yet...
Seriously Apple users, why would you tie yourselves to *this*? Can only use their overpriced tat. Devices built where you have to buy an overpriced adaptor to keep using all your peripherals. Where they keep changing the connector so you have to buy them again. Where the battery is built to fail and if it doesn't the software turns the device into a snail so you WILL buy again. Buy again. Again. Again.
If China turns into an international pariah, how will Apple get around it? I know that a company as Short of Cash as they are won't be able to make their devices outside of semi-slave labour factories in China, might be a problem...
I mean Apple TV+ has always been primarily for those in the Apple ecosystem. I watch it on an Apple TV or my iPad and it works great.
I don’t think Apple are bothered if those who watch it in Firefox on an old Toshiba laptop can no longer do so.
PB has a long tradition of non-Apple users wasting thousands of pixels boring on about their weird Apple obsession.
It's a core issue.
I would get out more, but I can't because we're locked down.
I`m an I.T. dunce to be sure, but the Apple-lovers v Apple-haters thing has long interested me from a human nature perspective. I found this definition of an Apple Fanboy:
"A single-layered thinking drone originally thought to exist in only small numbers. To help them assimilate into the real world, a computer with only simple functions so that the drones don't get confused was created. Eventually, more products were produced after it was discovered that the number or drones are in the millions. While scientists have been unable to find ways to increase brain performance in this species, a corporation named "Apple" has had financial success in at least convincing that the drone specimen is vastly superior to that of everything else. A specimen of "Apple fanboy" of this species will act partially retarded. "
In our households we all use Apple products. This was an expensive decision, made long ago; a decision that I have to justify repeatedly to my I.T. professional who is despairing of us. All I can say is "well, they work and we can understand them and they look nice". I know.
I worked with Macs in the late eighties, they were very much the non corporate choice, edgier than IBM machines and far superior graphics, which I needed for what I was working on. It’s weird how these comments make them seen like the ‘drone’ choice when the opposite was the case. I remember my 300 dpi laser printer was about four grand and the Mac SE was about three (or was it the other way round?).
For me it's fairly simple.
Apple early on tried to pretend that a monochrome postcard sized screen was better than a 14" colour screen.
Treating potential customer like idiots. Add that to the walled garden and the emphasis on prettiness over performance, and it is Apple defenestrated permanently. That is still the status for me.
Apple make the best mass-market mobile chips on the planet. Fact. “Prettiness over performance” is just “fanboy” nonsense.
Perfectly happy with my 9 year old iMac......most PCs lasted 3 years, 4 at a push.
A cursory look through the media gives the explanation for the figures above.
Almost nothing on the enormous economic damage we are doing to our country, and the extremely hard times we face ahead.
I suspect many Britons think lock down is almost a consequence free policy. When they choose to go back to work, their job and their living standards will be waiting there for them.
The enormous propaganda effort to emphasise the threat of this virus, backed by the media, has also vastly exaggerated the danger of this disease to healthy people. I suspect your average Briton's image of it is a gross distortion of the truth. It is a disease that, cruelly, overwhelmingly kills aged people who are sick and frail.
What evidence do you have that containing the virus with a weeks-long lockdown is doing more economic damage than letting it run rampant?
Once again the 1920 pandemic wiped over 20% off our GDP on nominal figures and meant we didn't reach the same GDP on nominal figures for two decades until WWII started.
I think we will do better economically this time than we did this time a century ago. What say you?
Look at the anecdotes on here already starting to filter through. The school friend who may be in severe financial trouble. The schools that are allegedly shutting never to re open.
People think lockdown is a consequence free policy. The government pays them to take a three month holiday then we pick up where we left off, just like that.
Slowly the reality will kick in. That many businesses will not be coming back and there will be no jobs to come back to. That it will not be 80% of your nice fat salary to sit at home, it will be eighty quid a week on universal credit with unemployment running at at least 10% and quite possibly a great deal more.
The death that is not being mentioned nearly enough is the death of economic activity. Even if we did pick up in June or July where we left off - which will not be happening due to social distancing - the damage is already done. And it is growing by the day.
I agree with you that some of this damage was inevitable. However, the furlough scheme has given people a false sense of security and may end up causing more damage by making it possible, even inevitable, that the lockdown will be needlessly prolonged as long as it remains popular.
At the moment people are being insulated from the economic consequences. For how long do you think that is sustainable?
My wife and I, regular watchers of the Press Conferences, frequently ask each other how this Government has found the Magic Money Tree which, when, a few years ago, they were refusing rises to NHS staff they asserted did not exist. I think we're going to give up these conferences incidentally. I'm planning to re-read my Terry Pratchett Discworld books. Much better fantasy.
Very simple
Pay rises are an annual and permanent commitment
Furlough is - hopefully - a temporary measure that can be funded in due course by a one off tax
Does anyone know how to contact HMRC to report a company abusing the furlough by asking employees to answer emails and speak to clients.
Thereby helping to ensure they've got jobs to come back to
Then unfurlough the employee if they are business critical. This is just taxpayer subsidisation of wages.
Correct, but these are unprecedented times. Plenty of people will be doing all they can in the hope they have a job to come back to, as pointed out earlier others are decorating and drinking wine in a state of ignorant bliss.
And with the greatest respect snitching on people with good intentions isn't helpful
As I said, if the system is being abused by furloughed staff so working on proposal documents or on second level support - that's an unfair advantage that should be stamped out on.
Personally, you seem to be defending what to me is indefensible.
If it is much more than an inadvertent one off (which will undoubtedly be the case for numerous companies, despite the requirement to warn employees not to do so), then it is likely criminal fraud. Of course the police tend to leave most reported fraud un-investigated, let alone prosecuted.
If that wasn't the advice then nobody has told my parents, their friends or my over 70 year old neighbours who have all been in total lockdown for weeks.
And what about all the vitriol directed at poor old Jeremy Corbyn for daring to show his face occasionally?
- Holiday insurance pools risk. In the overwhelming majority of circumstances, there are few links between Person X needing to cancel/receive medical support/be repatriated/etc and Person Z on a different holiday elsewhere in the world a month later. Accordingly, a few percent of the price of the holiday covers it. Money flows in, money flows out, it all balances.
- If there is a sudden, linked, worldwide event that totally precludes all holidays for a protracted period (and I can't recall hearing many people talking about this ever until the last few weeks), the model breaks down. No money flows in, all money flows out, no balance, it all collapses.
We could argue that holiday companies and travel companies should have held large reserves to cover just this eventuality. It would have required significant investment, tied up huge sums of money, and sent holiday and travel prices up quite a long way. It would also require the consumer to pay those considerably higher prices.
Not just this year, of course, but last year, the year before, and every year previous to that. And the number of people willing to do that, say, in 2012 (to grab a year at random) was twice the square root of sod all.
Unsurprisingly, travel and holiday companies (who have all noted that fact that the consumer, whatever they say, places price squarely front and centre and worries about everything else around the edges, if at all), didn't choose to commit slow suicide. It did, though, mean that they (and insurers, and ATOL, and ABTA, and everyone else involved) happened to be totally exposed if a once-in-a-century natural disaster were to cause that previously unthought-of total curtailment of all holiday activity for a period of multiple months.
If - and it's a big IF - the customers all elect to go for a deferred holiday rather than a complete refund, they'll all survive, and everyone will get their holidays in the end, the companies will continue to operate, workers will continue to have a job, and everyone will breathe a huge sigh of relief. Unfortunately, it's like The Tragedy of the Commons: each individual customer will see it in their personal best interests to get a full refund (as well as be worried that the travel company will go down). If enough of them go through with it, the companies will go down.
More than that - the money just isn't there to refund everyone. Which means that insisting on a refund, if spread widely enough, will ensure few people actually get their money back (and no-one gets a deferred holiday, and all the workers lose their jobs).
This actually incentivises people to go for the refund - to try to be one of the few to get their money back.
The solution to the Tragedy of the Commons is intervention to stop it happening - to preserve the value of what people originally bought (as much as possible; a deferred holiday might not be as valuable as the original date) and to preserve the industry itself.
Hmm. Not sure I agree with all of this.
In particular, UK insurers are required to hold sufficient capital that they can expect to stay solvent up to a 1 in 200 year scenario, under the Solvency II legislation implemented in 2016. A pandemic of this nature is definitely within those bounds, so this should have featured in their planning.
The issue is much more likely to be coverage, and specifically, whether the insurer believed they would be required to pay out claims in the event of mass cancellations due to a pandemic. The answer is almost certainly not: pandemics are a typical exclusion, and many policies aren't designed to cover cancellation costs anyway, due to consumer's price sensitivity (as you point out) and the various other protections in place.
Of course, there is the issue of whether the exclusions were spelled out properly to the consumer, and beyond that whether the wording was even sufficiently clear in the first place. But substantially, travel insurers are not the people who should be footing the bill to keep travel operators and airlines in business.
(Pedant point: insurers hold reserves against things that, in their best estimate, will happen or have already happened. They hold capital against things that might happen or have happened.)
A cursory look through the media gives the explanation for the figures above.
Almost nothing on the enormous economic damage we are doing to our country, and the extremely hard times we face ahead.
I suspect many Britons think lock down is almost a consequence free policy. When they choose to go back to work, their job and their living standards will be waiting there for them.
The enormous propaganda effort to emphasise the threat of this virus, backed by the media, has also vastly exaggerated the danger of this disease to healthy people. I suspect your average Briton's image of it is a gross distortion of the truth. It is a disease that, cruelly, overwhelmingly kills aged people who are sick and frail.
What evidence do you have that containing the virus with a weeks-long lockdown is doing more economic damage than letting it run rampant?
Once again the 1920 pandemic wiped over 20% off our GDP on nominal figures and meant we didn't reach the same GDP on nominal figures for two decades until WWII started.
I think we will do better economically this time than we did this time a century ago. What say you?
Look at the anecdotes on here already starting to filter through. The school friend who may be in severe financial trouble. The schools that are allegedly shutting never to re open.
People think lockdown is a consequence free policy. The government pays them to take a three month holiday then we pick up where we left off, just like that.
Slowly the reality will kick in. That many businesses will not be coming back and there will be no jobs to come back to. That it will not be 80% of your nice fat salary to sit at home, it will be eighty quid a week on universal credit with unemployment running at at least 10% and quite possibly a great deal more.
The death that is not being mentioned nearly enough is the death of economic activity. Even if we did pick up in June or July where we left off - which will not be happening due to social distancing - the damage is already done. And it is growing by the day.
I agree with you that some of this damage was inevitable. However, the furlough scheme has given people a false sense of security and may end up causing more damage by making it possible, even inevitable, that the lockdown will be needlessly prolonged as long as it remains popular.
At the moment people are being insulated from the economic consequences. For how long do you think that is sustainable?
My wife and I, regular watchers of the Press Conferences, frequently ask each other how this Government has found the Magic Money Tree which, when, a few years ago, they were refusing rises to NHS staff they asserted did not exist. I think we're going to give up these conferences incidentally. I'm planning to re-read my Terry Pratchett Discworld books. Much better fantasy.
Very simple
Pay rises are an annual and permanent commitment
Furlough is - hopefully - a temporary measure that can be funded in due course by a one off tax
Does anyone know how to contact HMRC to report a company abusing the furlough by asking employees to answer emails and speak to clients.
Thereby helping to ensure they've got jobs to come back to
Then unfurlough the employee if they are business critical. This is just taxpayer subsidisation of wages.
Correct, but these are unprecedented times. Plenty of people will be doing all they can in the hope they have a job to come back to, as pointed out earlier others are decorating and drinking wine in a state of ignorant bliss.
And with the greatest respect snitching on people with good intentions isn't helpful
As I said, if the system is being abused by furloughed staff so working on proposal documents or on second level support - that's an unfair advantage that should be stamped out on.
Personally, you seem to be defending what to me is indefensible.
That's fair enough, I just don't want us to gather a sort of Stasi mentality without establishing facts or speaking to the alleged offenders first
Close in Texas. Interesting. Biden is POTUS on these numbers surely? Can they be sustained once the worst of Trump's virus performance starts to be forgotten?
OT update. Am now - finally - "enjoying" Apple TV via a Firefox browser on my work laptop. Hasn't stopped playing. Yet...
Seriously Apple users, why would you tie yourselves to *this*? Can only use their overpriced tat. Devices built where you have to buy an overpriced adaptor to keep using all your peripherals. Where they keep changing the connector so you have to buy them again. Where the battery is built to fail and if it doesn't the software turns the device into a snail so you WILL buy again. Buy again. Again. Again.
If China turns into an international pariah, how will Apple get around it? I know that a company as Short of Cash as they are won't be able to make their devices outside of semi-slave labour factories in China, might be a problem...
I mean Apple TV+ has always been primarily for those in the Apple ecosystem. I watch it on an Apple TV or my iPad and it works great.
I don’t think Apple are bothered if those who watch it in Firefox on an old Toshiba laptop can no longer do so.
PB has a long tradition of non-Apple users wasting thousands of pixels boring on about their weird Apple obsession.
It's a core issue.
I would get out more, but I can't because we're locked down.
A cursory look through the media gives the explanation for the figures above.
Almost nothing on the enormous economic damage we are doing to our country, and the extremely hard times we face ahead.
I suspect many Britons think lock down is almost a consequence free policy. When they choose to go back to work, their job and their living standards will be waiting there for them.
The enormous propaganda effort to emphasise the threat of this virus, backed by the media, has also vastly exaggerated the danger of this disease to healthy people. I suspect your average Briton's image of it is a gross distortion of the truth. It is a disease that, cruelly, overwhelmingly kills aged people who are sick and frail.
What evidence do you have that containing the virus with a weeks-long lockdown is doing more economic damage than letting it run rampant?
Once again the 1920 pandemic wiped over 20% off our GDP on nominal figures and meant we didn't reach the same GDP on nominal figures for two decades until WWII started.
I think we will do better economically this time than we did this time a century ago. What say you?
Look at the anecdotes on here already starting to filter through. The school friend who may be in severe financial trouble. The schools that are allegedly shutting never to re open.
People think lockdown is a consequence free policy. The government pays them to take a three month holiday then we pick up where we left off, just like that.
Slowly the reality will kick in. That many businesses will not be coming back and there will be no jobs to come back to. That it will not be 80% of your nice fat salary to sit at home, it will be eighty quid a week on universal credit with unemployment running at at least 10% and quite possibly a great deal more.
The death that is not being mentioned nearly enough is the death of economic activity. Even if we did pick up in June or July where we left off - which will not be happening due to social distancing - the damage is already done. And it is growing by the day.
I agree with you that some of this damage was inevitable. However, the furlough scheme has given people a false sense of security and may end up causing more damage by making it possible, even inevitable, that the lockdown will be needlessly prolonged as long as it remains popular.
At the moment people are being insulated from the economic consequences. For how long do you think that is sustainable?
My wife and I, regular watchers of the Press Conferences, frequently ask each other how this Government has found the Magic Money Tree which, when, a few years ago, they were refusing rises to NHS staff they asserted did not exist. I think we're going to give up these conferences incidentally. I'm planning to re-read my Terry Pratchett Discworld books. Much better fantasy.
Very simple
Pay rises are an annual and permanent commitment
Furlough is - hopefully - a temporary measure that can be funded in due course by a one off tax
Or at 0.1% interest may not need much funding at all.
It is like saying why have you found money for a new boiler after yours broke down but not for buying annual vacations in the Bahamas. The furlough is a one off necessity so needs much but permanent annual commitments that can't be afforded is another matter.
52% of ConservativeHome readers want the government to follow a South Korean style approach with mass testing and tracing as a prelude to lifting the lockdown, 30% want to pursue a Swedish style approach with only voluntary social distancing and no lockdown and only 13% want the government to continue with the strict lockdown as it currently stands longer term
If that wasn't the advice then nobody has told my parents, their friends or my over 70 year old neighbours who have all been in total lockdown for weeks.
Unrelated but interesting post from Steve Baker on that twitter link:
"Cummings opponents never learn that he uses controversy over numbers to keep the numbers in the news. So that the numbers are widely heard by the public."
Gives more context to the 100k tests, it does seem to work every time. Far more people will be impressed by the 100k than offended by the dodgy counting.
I hope (but not confidently) that isn't what's happened.
At some point soon, the government is going to need most people to trust their numbers, and #ClassicDom will have burnt up that trust.
OT update. Am now - finally - "enjoying" Apple TV via a Firefox browser on my work laptop. Hasn't stopped playing. Yet...
Seriously Apple users, why would you tie yourselves to *this*? Can only use their overpriced tat. Devices built where you have to buy an overpriced adaptor to keep using all your peripherals. Where they keep changing the connector so you have to buy them again. Where the battery is built to fail and if it doesn't the software turns the device into a snail so you WILL buy again. Buy again. Again. Again.
If China turns into an international pariah, how will Apple get around it? I know that a company as Short of Cash as they are won't be able to make their devices outside of semi-slave labour factories in China, might be a problem...
I mean Apple TV+ has always been primarily for those in the Apple ecosystem. I watch it on an Apple TV or my iPad and it works great.
I don’t think Apple are bothered if those who watch it in Firefox on an old Toshiba laptop can no longer do so.
PB has a long tradition of non-Apple users wasting thousands of pixels boring on about their weird Apple obsession.
It's a core issue.
I would get out more, but I can't because we're locked down.
OT update. Am now - finally - "enjoying" Apple TV via a Firefox browser on my work laptop. Hasn't stopped playing. Yet...
Seriously Apple users, why would you tie yourselves to *this*? Can only use their overpriced tat. Devices built where you have to buy an overpriced adaptor to keep using all your peripherals. Where they keep changing the connector so you have to buy them again. Where the battery is built to fail and if it doesn't the software turns the device into a snail so you WILL buy again. Buy again. Again. Again.
If China turns into an international pariah, how will Apple get around it? I know that a company as Short of Cash as they are won't be able to make their devices outside of semi-slave labour factories in China, might be a problem...
I mean Apple TV+ has always been primarily for those in the Apple ecosystem. I watch it on an Apple TV or my iPad and it works great.
I don’t think Apple are bothered if those who watch it in Firefox on an old Toshiba laptop can no longer do so.
PB has a long tradition of non-Apple users wasting thousands of pixels boring on about their weird Apple obsession.
It's a core issue.
I would get out more, but I can't because we're locked down.
Your punning truly takes the pip.
Losing is a peal for me.
I know. He's such a tart.
I am sure he will crumble in the face of such vociferous attack.
If that wasn't the advice then nobody has told my parents, their friends or my over 70 year old neighbours who have all been in total lockdown for weeks.
And what about all the vitriol directed at poor old Jeremy Corbyn for daring to show his face occasionally?
OT update. Am now - finally - "enjoying" Apple TV via a Firefox browser on my work laptop. Hasn't stopped playing. Yet...
Seriously Apple users, why would you tie yourselves to *this*? Can only use their overpriced tat. Devices built where you have to buy an overpriced adaptor to keep using all your peripherals. Where they keep changing the connector so you have to buy them again. Where the battery is built to fail and if it doesn't the software turns the device into a snail so you WILL buy again. Buy again. Again. Again.
If China turns into an international pariah, how will Apple get around it? I know that a company as Short of Cash as they are won't be able to make their devices outside of semi-slave labour factories in China, might be a problem...
I mean Apple TV+ has always been primarily for those in the Apple ecosystem. I watch it on an Apple TV or my iPad and it works great.
I don’t think Apple are bothered if those who watch it in Firefox on an old Toshiba laptop can no longer do so.
PB has a long tradition of non-Apple users wasting thousands of pixels boring on about their weird Apple obsession.
It's a core issue.
I would get out more, but I can't because we're locked down.
Your punning truly takes the pip.
Losing is a peal for me.
I know. He's such a tart.
I am sure he will crumble in the face of such vociferous attack.
Close in Texas. Interesting. Biden is POTUS on these numbers surely? Can they be sustained once the worst of Trump's virus performance starts to be forgotten?
I think so. If anything the crisis is propping Trump up. He's like that cartoon character who runs off a cliff and for a short time his legs whir away in the air and he hovers there. Then, reality hits and he plummets.
My stupidly early call is Biden by 5 points in the PV and Trump below 200 in the EC.
A cursory look through the media gives the explanation for the figures above.
Almost nothing on the enormous economic damage we are doing to our country, and the extremely hard times we face ahead.
I suspect many Britons think lock down is almost a consequence free policy. When they choose to go back to work, their job and their living standards will be waiting there for them.
The enormous propaganda effort to emphasise the threat of this virus, backed by the media, has also vastly exaggerated the danger of this disease to healthy people. I suspect your average Briton's image of it is a gross distortion of the truth. It is a disease that, cruelly, overwhelmingly kills aged people who are sick and frail.
What evidence do you have that containing the virus with a weeks-long lockdown is doing more economic damage than letting it run rampant?
Once again the 1920 pandemic wiped over 20% off our GDP on nominal figures and meant we didn't reach the same GDP on nominal figures for two decades until WWII started.
I think we will do better economically this time than we did this time a century ago. What say you?
Look at the anecdotes on here already starting to filter through. The school friend who may be in severe financial trouble. The schools that are allegedly shutting never to re open.
People think lockdown is a consequence free policy. The government pays them to take a three month holiday then we pick up where we left off, just like that.
Slowly the reality will kick in. That many businesses will not be coming back and there will be no jobs to come back to. That it will not be 80% of your nice fat salary to sit at home, it will be eighty quid a week on universal credit with unemployment running at at least 10% and quite possibly a great deal more.
The death that is not being mentioned nearly enough is the death of economic activity. Even if we did pick up in June or July where we left off - which will not be happening due to social distancing - the damage is already done. And it is growing by the day.
I agree with you that some of this damage was inevitable. However, the furlough scheme has given people a false sense of security and may end up causing more damage by making it possible, even inevitable, that the lockdown will be needlessly prolonged as long as it remains popular.
At the moment people are being insulated from the economic consequences. For how long do you think that is sustainable?
My wife and I, regular watchers of the Press Conferences, frequently ask each other how this Government has found the Magic Money Tree which, when, a few years ago, they were refusing rises to NHS staff they asserted did not exist. I think we're going to give up these conferences incidentally. I'm planning to re-read my Terry Pratchett Discworld books. Much better fantasy.
Very simple
Pay rises are an annual and permanent commitment
Furlough is - hopefully - a temporary measure that can be funded in due course by a one off tax
Point taken, but it's not just furlough, is it?
Yes, but most of the pandemic costs are one off in nature. The consequences could be recurring (eg higher unemployment)
There should be a separate discussion once we are out of this about what is the right level of resilience to build into the system. Higher resilience comes with higher costs and therefore higher taxes.
I would hope that they would be separate but I suspect that they will be conflated by those who want to raise taxes in any event
A cursory look through the media gives the explanation for the figures above.
Almost nothing on the enormous economic damage we are doing to our country, and the extremely hard times we face ahead.
I suspect many Britons think lock down is almost a consequence free policy. When they choose to go back to work, their job and their living standards will be waiting there for them.
The enormous propaganda effort to emphasise the threat of this virus, backed by the media, has also vastly exaggerated the danger of this disease to healthy people. I suspect your average Briton's image of it is a gross distortion of the truth. It is a disease that, cruelly, overwhelmingly kills aged people who are sick and frail.
What evidence do you have that containing the virus with a weeks-long lockdown is doing more economic damage than letting it run rampant?
Once again the 1920 pandemic wiped over 20% off our GDP on nominal figures and meant we didn't reach the same GDP on nominal figures for two decades until WWII started.
I think we will do better economically this time than we did this time a century ago. What say you?
Look at the anecdotes on here already starting to filter through. The school friend who may be in severe financial trouble. The schools that are allegedly shutting never to re open.
People think lockdown is a consequence free policy. The government pays them to take a three month holiday then we pick up where we left off, just like that.
Slowly the reality will kick in. That many businesses will not be coming back and there will be no jobs to come back to. That it will not be 80% of your nice fat salary to sit at home, it will be eighty quid a week on universal credit with unemployment running at at least 10% and quite possibly a great deal more.
The death that is not being mentioned nearly enough is the death of economic activity. Even if we did pick up in June or July where we left off - which will not be happening due to social distancing - the damage is already done. And it is growing by the day.
I agree with you that some of this damage was inevitable. However, the furlough scheme has given people a false sense of security and may end up causing more damage by making it possible, even inevitable, that the lockdown will be needlessly prolonged as long as it remains popular.
At the moment people are being insulated from the economic consequences. For how long do you think that is sustainable?
My wife and I, regular watchers of the Press Conferences, frequently ask each other how this Government has found the Magic Money Tree which, when, a few years ago, they were refusing rises to NHS staff they asserted did not exist. I think we're going to give up these conferences incidentally. I'm planning to re-read my Terry Pratchett Discworld books. Much better fantasy.
Very simple
Pay rises are an annual and permanent commitment
Furlough is - hopefully - a temporary measure that can be funded in due course by a one off tax
Point taken, but it's not just furlough, is it?
What else is there that you take issue with?
And remember that they said that austerity had ended and payrises had started before this pandemic began.
Close in Texas. Interesting. Biden is POTUS on these numbers surely? Can they be sustained once the worst of Trump's virus performance starts to be forgotten?
If there was an election nationally tomorrow Biden would win on those numbers certainly.
It will likely narrow but interestingly Biden is now polling better in Michigan and Pennsylvania than he is nationally, so it is possible Biden could win the Electoral College but Trump win the popular vote, a reverse of 2016
I think this says a lot more about Corbyn than Starmer. But it is a huge change for Labour to have a leader who does not automatically repel the majority of voters ... twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1256720377604161537
Not being under constant attack from his own party or even the opposition parties probably helps a bit too.
Comments
People think lockdown is a consequence free policy. The government pays them to take a three month holiday then we pick up where we left off, just like that.
Slowly the reality will kick in. That many businesses will not be coming back and there will be no jobs to come back to. That it will not be 80% of your nice fat salary to sit at home, it will be eighty quid a week on universal credit with unemployment running at at least 10% and quite possibly a great deal more.
The death that is not being mentioned nearly enough is the death of economic activity. Even if we did pick up in June or July where we left off - which will not be happening due to social distancing - the damage is already done. And it is growing by the day.
I agree with you that some of this damage was inevitable. However, the furlough scheme has given people a false sense of security and may end up causing more damage by making it possible, even inevitable, that the lockdown will be needlessly prolonged as long as it remains popular.
At the moment people are being insulated from the economic consequences. For how long do you think that is sustainable?
If corporate companies go bust because of LLoyds debts then I have even less sympathy. I realise that the exposure is unlimited, but so do the Names. Again I have no sympathy with people who take on an unlimited risk and then complain when they have to pay out.
The shows.sre 'recorded 9 weeks in advance. Hence no outbreak in Ambridge thus far.
The scripts obviously come earlier. So it has had to be red written entirely.
Many of the cast are ancient. The actress for Peggy is 103! Actors need to be trained in WFH tech. This has taken longer than expected.
So 3 week break, then back in lockdown. With mostly monologues, phone calls and 2 handers.
I was listening to a podcast the other day (one of many) (thank goodness for podcasts). The left-leaning presenters seemed fine with lockdown and pontificated over it`s ending maybe in autumn or maybe next year. One presenter was looking forward to her first coffee in her favourite coffee shop. The naviety! They seem to think that the government can cover wages indefinitely for one. And for another it doesn`t seem to have occurred to them that the coffee shop will likely be bankrupt by then.
I wonder if we'll have one of the characters quoted as coming on here for a discussion!
The Holiday Inn in Vancouver also waived their charges after I told them my insurer had declined cancellation cover
My arguments this morning are not about me, not least because I have only lost about £300 in total on the cost of the visit to my son and daughter in law in Vancouver but
a much wider issue of the fight so many are facing to get their holiday costs refunded
I have recently been having treatment by our practice nurse who is currently struggling to get back nearly 4,000 for a cancelled holiday.
It is not financial hardship and I have already apologised if any thought I was arguing this over my own self interest.
That is far from the truth, it is the many like my nurse I am concerned about
The 90s losses were before my time, but primarily related to the emergence of asbestos-related claims on liability insurance where the exposure went back decades. The Piper Alpha rig collapse around that time also triggered some big losses, but I think confined to a few players. This was compounded by unclear reinsurance contracts between Syndicates which resulted in a so-called "spiral", whereby losses went round and round in circles without ever being resolved.
In theory at least, risk management in the market is substantially better now than it was (a good chunk of my day-to-day is supposedly spent ensuring this!) but there are always gaps in the system that no-one's thought of.
In real life, the majority of my friends who have been furloughed are doing DIY on their houses and expecting to pick everything up exactly where it left off before all this started.
Still most of the elements that made it enjoyable, quite crude but satisfying plot lines, sporadic bursts of extreme violence, cliffhanger endings. I'm probably getting old, but more verbal crudity than I remember (cocks, licking arses etc), and a recurring theme of fear of 'the bastard Scots'.
King Alfred has of course left the building, so on one level at least an historical lynch pin has gone.
The valid criticism is they didn't take the decision early enough. They decides people needed Covid frèe escapism. A position which has become increasingly untenable.
Every parent who’s experienced full on childcare knows where you’re coming from, but you just get used to it in the end. My daughter did not sleep through the night for the first two years of her life (usually not more than a couple of hours at a time); now that was exhausting.
I would get out more, but I can't because we're locked down.
As I`ve posted before, the government didn`t expect so many to stop working and this has made it even more difficult to get the economy going again. Some vivid messaging is going to be needed - messaging that appeals to duty.
"Stay at home, protect the NHS" is an appeal to duty which has been far more successful than anticipated. "Do your duty, go back to work" is going to need to be similarly effective.
I would be interested in the correlation between these numbers vs length of lockdown.
I think we're going to give up these conferences incidentally. I'm planning to re-read my Terry Pratchett Discworld books. Much better fantasy.
"A single-layered thinking drone originally thought to exist in only small numbers. To help them assimilate into the real world, a computer with only simple functions so that the drones don't get confused was created. Eventually, more products were produced after it was discovered that the number or drones are in the millions. While scientists have been unable to find ways to increase brain performance in this species, a corporation named "Apple" has had financial success in at least convincing that the drone specimen is vastly superior to that of everything else. A specimen of "Apple fanboy" of this species will act partially retarded. "
In our households we all use Apple products. This was an expensive decision, made long ago; a decision that I have to justify repeatedly to my I.T. professional who is despairing of us. All I can say is "well, they work and we can understand them and they look nice". I know.
Can you explain the etymology of this Moth Name? Previously coxcomb also meant 'jester's cap'.
I can recommend the first three parts (halfway through the third now) of the Chronicles of the Black Gate, by Phil Tucker. It's the equivalent of over one and a half thousand pages for under a fiver (Kindle/Amazon), and it's really rather good.
Well, I'm enjoying it anyway.
Edited extra bit: more recommendations based on samples, for those interested:
http://thaddeusthesixth.blogspot.com/2019/02/snapshots-pick-of-bunch.html
That's why counterintuitively furlough and lockdown can help isolate the economy and reduce the economic damage. Because the moment of high risk for the economy is not while we are furloughed and as you say "insulated" - it is when the insulation ends.
If we lift the lockdown and end the insulation prematurely then people will take matters into their own hands and the economy will collapse. If we lift the lockdown when the public knows it is safe to do so then the public will be very, very grateful to get back to normal.
Yes there will be damage but that was inevitable either way.
https://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2020/05/our-survey-half-the-respondents-back-the-governments-south-korean-type-plan-just-under-a-third-want-a-sweden-style-approach.html
https://twitter.com/jillongovt/status/1256872624849813505
If that wasn't the advice then nobody has told my parents, their friends or my over 70 year old neighbours who have all been in total lockdown for weeks.
In reality, now the government appears to have started to get its act together on testing, they are actually beginning to think constructively about how to use the capacity.
Next week, it will be used to conduct a survey, run by Imperial and Ipsos Mori, involving 100k people across the country. That should give them a reasonable overview of the current rate of infection, which will inform the lockdown decision.
Repeating the exercise regularly should enable them to understand how things change when people get back to work, hopefully before hospital admission start to surge again.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/30/randomised-coronavirus-test-of-100000-will-determine-end-date-of-uk-lockdown
I’m hoping this will render much of the debate moot.
Roche claims theirs is 100% sensitive and 99.8% specific:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/03/pharma-giant-roche-gets-us-go-ahead-for-covid-19-antibody-test
Which if true, is excellent news.
Informed decisions are immeasurably better and less contentious than uninformed ones.
"Cummings opponents never learn that he uses controversy over numbers to keep the numbers in the news. So that the numbers are widely heard by the public."
Gives more context to the 100k tests, it does seem to work every time. Far more people will be impressed by the 100k than offended by the dodgy counting.
It is now almost five weeks since the end of the Alex Salmond trial, and the attempt to convince the world he was the victim of an orchestrated campaign by SNP careerists/Unionists/MI5/the Deep State is gathering momentum.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/vitriol-after-salmond-trial-toxifying-yes-movement-dani-garavelli-2787310
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/breaking-coronavirus-government-actively-looking-21966025
Fear not! Shapps is on the case....
The standout sentence for me. Nice one, Alastair. But it does not do full justice to this remarkable new illness. Yes, many of the severe and fatal cases of Covid-19 manifest as viral pneumonia (for which the above applies) but many do not. Multiple organ failure, clotting, cardiac arrest, stroke, swollen extremities, delusion, ridiculous fluctuations in blood pressure and other readings, muscle pain so intense as to require sedation, numbing fatigue, you name it. Same virus but several different looking diseases (all of them serious) depending on the individual. And yet for many more it's just a bit of a cold. Doctors have never seen anything like it. It's utterly fascinating if you are interested in this sort of thing.
Possibly.
Over 70s with medial conditions = extremely clinically vulnerable = shielding = no trips
Apple early on tried to pretend that a monochrome postcard sized screen was better than a 14" colour screen.
Treating potential customer like idiots. Add that to the walled garden and the emphasis on prettiness over performance, and it is Apple defenestrated permanently. That is still the status for me.
And with the greatest respect snitching on people with good intentions isn't helpful
- Holiday insurance pools risk. In the overwhelming majority of circumstances, there are few links between Person X needing to cancel/receive medical support/be repatriated/etc and Person Z on a different holiday elsewhere in the world a month later. Accordingly, a few percent of the price of the holiday covers it. Money flows in, money flows out, it all balances.
- If there is a sudden, linked, worldwide event that totally precludes all holidays for a protracted period (and I can't recall hearing many people talking about this ever until the last few weeks), the model breaks down. No money flows in, all money flows out, no balance, it all collapses.
We could argue that holiday companies and travel companies should have held large reserves to cover just this eventuality. It would have required significant investment, tied up huge sums of money, and sent holiday and travel prices up quite a long way. It would also require the consumer to pay those considerably higher prices.
Not just this year, of course, but last year, the year before, and every year previous to that. And the number of people willing to do that, say, in 2012 (to grab a year at random) was twice the square root of sod all.
Unsurprisingly, travel and holiday companies (who have all noted that fact that the consumer, whatever they say, places price squarely front and centre and worries about everything else around the edges, if at all), didn't choose to commit slow suicide. It did, though, mean that they (and insurers, and ATOL, and ABTA, and everyone else involved) happened to be totally exposed if a once-in-a-century natural disaster were to cause that previously unthought-of total curtailment of all holiday activity for a period of multiple months.
If - and it's a big IF - the customers all elect to go for a deferred holiday rather than a complete refund, they'll all survive, and everyone will get their holidays in the end, the companies will continue to operate, workers will continue to have a job, and everyone will breathe a huge sigh of relief. Unfortunately, it's like The Tragedy of the Commons: each individual customer will see it in their personal best interests to get a full refund (as well as be worried that the travel company will go down). If enough of them go through with it, the companies will go down.
More than that - the money just isn't there to refund everyone. Which means that insisting on a refund, if spread widely enough, will ensure few people actually get their money back (and no-one gets a deferred holiday, and all the workers lose their jobs).
This actually incentivises people to go for the refund - to try to be one of the few to get their money back.
The solution to the Tragedy of the Commons is intervention to stop it happening - to preserve the value of what people originally bought (as much as possible; a deferred holiday might not be as valuable as the original date) and to preserve the industry itself.
Is the only difference for over 70s vs under 70 that the over 70s shouldnt be working? Because we are all on essential trips only regardless of age.
However the money we are not spending on holidays is also the money I am not earning due to my temporary pay cut. So I'm glad that the money was not spent.
I do hope that everyone gets the refund they are entitled to, as I'm sure that many people now need the money for something else.
Personally, you seem to be defending what to me is indefensible.
Pay rises are an annual and permanent commitment
Furlough is - hopefully - a temporary measure that can be funded in due course by a one off tax
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1256763970154835970?s=20
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1256777199056805891?s=20
Of course the police tend to leave most reported fraud un-investigated, let alone prosecuted.
In particular, UK insurers are required to hold sufficient capital that they can expect to stay solvent up to a 1 in 200 year scenario, under the Solvency II legislation implemented in 2016. A pandemic of this nature is definitely within those bounds, so this should have featured in their planning.
The issue is much more likely to be coverage, and specifically, whether the insurer believed they would be required to pay out claims in the event of mass cancellations due to a pandemic. The answer is almost certainly not: pandemics are a typical exclusion, and many policies aren't designed to cover cancellation costs anyway, due to consumer's price sensitivity (as you point out) and the various other protections in place.
Of course, there is the issue of whether the exclusions were spelled out properly to the consumer, and beyond that whether the wording was even sufficiently clear in the first place. But substantially, travel insurers are not the people who should be footing the bill to keep travel operators and airlines in business.
(Pedant point: insurers hold reserves against things that, in their best estimate, will happen or have already happened. They hold capital against things that might happen or have happened.)
It is like saying why have you found money for a new boiler after yours broke down but not for buying annual vacations in the Bahamas. The furlough is a one off necessity so needs much but permanent annual commitments that can't be afforded is another matter.
Perhaps there is hope for the nation.
At some point soon, the government is going to need most people to trust their numbers, and #ClassicDom will have burnt up that trust.
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1256720377604161537
I am not sure I even understand what that means.
My stupidly early call is Biden by 5 points in the PV and Trump below 200 in the EC.
There should be a separate discussion once we are out of this about what is the right level of resilience to build into the system. Higher resilience comes with higher costs and therefore higher taxes.
I would hope that they would be separate but I suspect that they will be conflated by those who want to raise taxes in any event
And remember that they said that austerity had ended and payrises had started before this pandemic began.
It will likely narrow but interestingly Biden is now polling better in Michigan and Pennsylvania than he is nationally, so it is possible Biden could win the Electoral College but Trump win the popular vote, a reverse of 2016