BigRich posted an interesting comment about why Sweden has probably done the right thing, and nearly all of the replies were to do with a grammar dispute.
Sometimes people do not seem willing to engage in sciientific discussion on this site.The graph yesterday showing that the R figure was below 1 before the lockdown and that the reduction coincided with the hand washing advice I thought was really striking. Yet alI I got was abuse for discussing it and no one seemed interested in it. If science does not agree with someones opinion then it seems it is not worthy.
Because it comes from an account who has continually shifted and twisted to 'prove' that there wasn't a Covid problem at all. And when it became impossible to deny there was a problem he shifted the argument to that lockdown wasn't helping
Vox pops on the app. People more willing to install it if it were Apple or Google. Much less likely to do so atm. Will just go about their business without the app and wait for an Apple or Google version.
I think that's absolute bovine manure as many vox pops are and probably after a leading question.
For one thing Apple and Google aren't inventing their own versions. They're doing an API, each country still needs to do its own version.
The app when its launched will be an NHS branded app. We know what people in this country think of the NHS and I don't believe a non-NHS app would get more downloads. "Download the NHS app to protect the NHS and save lives" is a powerful message that will resonate.
They can brand it whatever they want, the calculation people have made is that Google and Apple already know their location all the time anyway. This is letting the government know, that's a step a lot of people just won't take, NHS branding or not. I expect we'll never get near the 80% or whatever is necessary.
Can I let you in on a secret?
The government can identify your location from your phone already anyway.
Yes, by cell tower triangulation. But that's in real time, inaccurate and needs the target to be moving at more than walking pace. It's not the same thing.
It pretty much is. If the government wants to track you then this app will not be how they do it. There's already tremendous infrastructure involved in tracking persons of interest - more than most people realise.
If you wish to go off the grid then what app you have on your phone won't matter.
I've been thinking, and I can't identify a single negative outcome from the government knowing where I am at any one specific moment in time.
That's because they haven't yet put you on the list of the guilty.
See China, where someone who writes a critical online comment on social media finds themselves banned from public transport. Orwell's writing was intended to be a warning to future governments, not an instruction manual.
Vox pops on the app. People more willing to install it if it were Apple or Google. Much less likely to do so atm. Will just go about their business without the app and wait for an Apple or Google version.
I think that's absolute bovine manure as many vox pops are and probably after a leading question.
For one thing Apple and Google aren't inventing their own versions. They're doing an API, each country still needs to do its own version.
The app when its launched will be an NHS branded app. We know what people in this country think of the NHS and I don't believe a non-NHS app would get more downloads. "Download the NHS app to protect the NHS and save lives" is a powerful message that will resonate.
They can brand it whatever they want, the calculation people have made is that Google and Apple already know their location all the time anyway. This is letting the government know, that's a step a lot of people just won't take, NHS branding or not. I expect we'll never get near the 80% or whatever is necessary.
Can I let you in on a secret?
The government can identify your location from your phone already anyway.
Yes, by cell tower triangulation. But that's in real time, inaccurate and needs the target to be moving at more than walking pace. It's not the same thing.
It pretty much is. If the government wants to track you then this app will not be how they do it. There's already tremendous infrastructure involved in tracking persons of interest - more than most people realise.
If you wish to go off the grid then what app you have on your phone won't matter.
The way to go off the grid is first to dump your phone, then pay with everything by cash. And raise the cash by a combination of very occasional cash-in-hand jobs and begging. Need to sleep rough, or at least wild, too.
Never enter cities either, or go on public transport.
BigRich posted an interesting comment about why Sweden has probably done the right thing, and nearly all of the replies were to do with a grammar dispute.
Sometimes people do not seem willing to engage in sciientific discussion on this site.The graph yesterday showing that the R figure was below 1 before the lockdown and that the reduction coincided with the hand washing advice I thought was really striking. Yet alI I got was abuse for discussing it and no one seemed interested in it. If science does not agree with someones opinion then it seems it is not worthy.
Brady is right, but some companies have driven this. The government advice was to carry on working (from home where possible). The government is aware of the perplexing problem that it has in getting the economy going again.
What companies? Some sectors where closed down and that has had a cascading impact on the rest of the economy. I'm really not aware of a single company not impacted in some way.
Sunik's fear will be the fact that companies are discovering they can manage just fine without their furloughed staff. Some firms seem to have noticed that as Personal Today had an article last week pointing out that you can use Furlough money to pay redundancy payments.
Sunak's fear is that many thousands of smaller businesses simply won;t re-open.
The tax base is being destroyed at the same time as debt is soaring.
This is inevitable. Despite the grants and guaranteed loans hundreds of thousands of small businesses have continued to rack up overhead with minimal income. They will have become balance sheet insolvent. The government has relaxed wrongful trading laws to allow them a chance to trade themselves out of it but if they have a restaurant, a café or a pub I really don't see how they do unless they can take the capital loss. They are not going to make up the loss, indeed trading profitably is going to be an enormous challenge. Someone who has given a personal guarantee to their bank should think very carefully about whether further trading is in their interests.
Most of those businesses would face disaster with or without the lockdown, though. Some will have a chance, if the lockdown and subsequent control measures can keep the virus sufficiently in check.
As in Korea's most affected city, Daegu: http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13349607 ...In late April, a large banner still hung at a major hospital nearby that stated: “We are a base hospital for treating the novel coronavirus. We are doing everything in our power to ensure the safety of people in the community.”
But it was an entirely different picture inside the market.
Dozens of cars were trying to enter the market’s parking lot.
Inside, shoppers wearing face masks were so densely packed that they were unable to pass each other without touching shoulders.
Seemingly without a care in the world, smiling shoppers chowed down on noodle soup dishes and munched snacks in close physical proximity as if the pandemic had never happened....
It is a fact that nearly all these businesses fail. But not all at once. Failing together will have major implications for rents, high street occupancy and employment.
It is, and in many cases the government intervention is only going to give them a few more months. We are going to have to rethink our high streets, as many, many retailers (who were on the brink anyway) are just not coming back from this. There is, of course, a serious housing shortage. Reinventing liveable town centres is a possible solution (and would benefit the businesses that remain).
But for others (and I can think of at least two in my own experience), it has been lifesaving, and they will probably be able to keep going, even with the expected restrictions post lockdown. In a year's time they could be prospering again.
If you don't want the government and big business to have the potential to know about your movements and habits, you need to stop carrying a smartphone altogether, definitely stay off Facebook and all other social media applications, stop paying by credit card and especially contactless, and stop doing Google searches. Downloading or not an NHS contract-tracing app is 100% irrelevant.
Vox pops on the app. People more willing to install it if it were Apple or Google. Much less likely to do so atm. Will just go about their business without the app and wait for an Apple or Google version.
I think that's absolute bovine manure as many vox pops are and probably after a leading question.
For one thing Apple and Google aren't inventing their own versions. They're doing an API, each country still needs to do its own version.
The app when its launched will be an NHS branded app. We know what people in this country think of the NHS and I don't believe a non-NHS app would get more downloads. "Download the NHS app to protect the NHS and save lives" is a powerful message that will resonate.
They can brand it whatever they want, the calculation people have made is that Google and Apple already know their location all the time anyway. This is letting the government know, that's a step a lot of people just won't take, NHS branding or not. I expect we'll never get near the 80% or whatever is necessary.
Can I let you in on a secret?
The government can identify your location from your phone already anyway.
Yes, by cell tower triangulation. But that's in real time, inaccurate and needs the target to be moving at more than walking pace. It's not the same thing.
It pretty much is. If the government wants to track you then this app will not be how they do it. There's already tremendous infrastructure involved in tracking persons of interest - more than most people realise.
If you wish to go off the grid then what app you have on your phone won't matter.
The way to go off the grid is first to dump your phone, then pay with everything by cash. And raise the cash by a combination of very occasional cash-in-hand jobs and begging. Need to sleep rough, or at least wild, too.
We were going to make cuts - don't forget that the Labour manifesto in 2010 would have spent slightly less than the coalition did.
As I have been pointing out the problem wasn't cutting spending but what was cut and how.
When the Tory PM writes to his Tory council leader saying look here, why are you cutting front line services when we have made all this money available to you, the council leader details no you haven't, and number 10 responds yes we have that's the austerity problem in a single example.
It's not enough to say "we spent more on the NHS". What did you spend it on in the NHS? More money spent but savage cuts to provision shows money being syphoned off to more traditional Tory causes like consultants and lawyers and pointless layers of management.
The fact was that the Government didn't notice they had both increased the demands on the council and yet decreased the money available. As a simplified example to show the actual issue:-
Previously: Government Adult Social care £10m Council expenditure £10m Total available £20m
After reforms: Council Expenditure £15m Total available: £15m
Osbourne and Cameron's Government sat there and said we've given you £5m more a year but ignored the fact they are increased Council required Expenditure by £10m.
Are Councils required to pay themselves more than the Prime Minister gets paid?
Ever heard of market powers? Once one council starts paying over the odds to poach a leader from another council it becomes inevitable...
Guess what happened in the market for competent Council leaders.
If you consider that very few people switch from the public to the private sector, the Government should set national pay bands for councils and force top salaries down.
I thought Conservatives believed in free market capitalism? I’m confused.
Absolutely. We believe in capitalism.
There is no free market there. People taking taxes by force of the law and giving it in largesse to themselves while whining they haven't got enough money and cutting services is not free market capitalism.
If it was a free market company that was slashing its services while paying over the odds to its Chief Executives a competitor that was leaner would arise and people would take their consumption and expenditure to that one. That can't happen with taxes though. Appeals to some 'market' are absurd.
A good Council leader would be one who lives within the budget they have, getting their best results possible and being paid accordingly. Not slashing services and being paid well over the odds.
You assume there is an infinite supply of people able to put up with crap from Councillors and willing to lead councils. My view is that there is a finite supply of such people, and an even smaller supply of competent and the demand for such competent people is far greater than the actual supply.
And what evidence do you have for that proposition?
My view is that it is a pampered, unaffordable luxury to be paying county staff more than the Prime Minister of the country - and if you can afford to do that then there hasn't been enough austerity yet.
I would suggest thinking about what the job entails and then deciding that. A lot of the highest paid chief executives are actually running 2 or more councils.
Oh and remember the only reason why the PM's pay is what it is, is because Gordon Brown pulled a fast one in the days before the 2010 election and hadn't taken the full amount before then.
Indeed but Blair was when the government was spending far, far too much money. At least from 2002 onwards.
Given that Councils have needed to cut their cloth since then they should have done that from the top. If they can't afford an executive so be it, say goodbye to them and hire someone they can afford. Brighton and Hove Albion have no divine right to afford the wages of Virgil van Dijk.
If Councils can afford to pay ludicrously high wages then their budgets are still full of largesse and can be cut further.
So you would prefer a council to be run by amateurs rather than professionals people. It's a view I suppose but personally I'm happy to pay people money if the money they cost is less than the money I save overall.
Professional people who can maintain services with the budget they have absolutely pay them what they want.
If they need to cut services then start from the top with their own wages. If that means getting in amateurs so be it.
You do realise that every council is cutting services because they physically can’t afford to keep them going? An extra £50k per year is NOTHING compared to the cost of these services. It’s almost like you have no concept of the budgets of local councils.
'£50k here, £30k there and soon we're talking real money'
The annual budget of Newcastle City Council is circa £900m I believe? Even if a Chief Executive was being paid £1m per year that’s only 0.001% of the budget.
Which can be the same for any expenditure. If you're taking that attitude with executive pay, where else are you taking that attitude?
EDIT: And you're out by a factor of 100!!
How do you work that out , 1/900 = .0011111111111
Agreed that is what it is. And what is 0.0011111111111 in percentage terms?
Or are you proposing that if a budget was 900 million and the executive paid themselves 900 million then they were only getting paid 1% of the budget?
Eh it is very simple , 900/900 = 1 which is 100% , 1/900 =0. 001 which is 0.001%
BigRich posted an interesting comment about why Sweden has probably done the right thing, and nearly all of the replies were to do with a grammar dispute.
Sometimes people do not seem willing to engage in sciientific discussion on this site.The graph yesterday showing that the R figure was below 1 before the lockdown and that the reduction coincided with the hand washing advice I thought was really striking. Yet alI I got was abuse for discussing it and no one seemed interested in it. If science does not agree with someones opinion then it seems it is not worthy.
Because it comes from an account who has continually shifted and twisted to 'prove' that there wasn't a Covid problem at all. And when it became impossible to deny there was a problem he shifted the argument to that lockdown wasn't helping
My rough analysis (And it is very rough) shows true infections probably started going negative ( R < 1 ) with the start of the lockdown.
I wuldn't quite consider The Register a reliable source, but at least they're technically competent.
The Register specialises in ultra-cynical tech - everything is shit, all companies are corrupt wastoids and nobody ever does anything right - as for technically competent - true to the extent that anyone who goes into journalism about something rather than the thing itself is competent.
Vox pops on the app. People more willing to install it if it were Apple or Google. Much less likely to do so atm. Will just go about their business without the app and wait for an Apple or Google version.
I think that's absolute bovine manure as many vox pops are and probably after a leading question.
For one thing Apple and Google aren't inventing their own versions. They're doing an API, each country still needs to do its own version.
The app when its launched will be an NHS branded app. We know what people in this country think of the NHS and I don't believe a non-NHS app would get more downloads. "Download the NHS app to protect the NHS and save lives" is a powerful message that will resonate.
They can brand it whatever they want, the calculation people have made is that Google and Apple already know their location all the time anyway. This is letting the government know, that's a step a lot of people just won't take, NHS branding or not. I expect we'll never get near the 80% or whatever is necessary.
Can I let you in on a secret?
The government can identify your location from your phone already anyway.
Yes, by cell tower triangulation. But that's in real time, inaccurate and needs the target to be moving at more than walking pace. It's not the same thing.
It pretty much is. If the government wants to track you then this app will not be how they do it. There's already tremendous infrastructure involved in tracking persons of interest - more than most people realise.
If you wish to go off the grid then what app you have on your phone won't matter.
No it's not. This is historical movement data. The government doesn't have access to that currently and they need a warrant from a judge to get Google or Apple to hand it over.
The tremendous infrastructure on movement tracking is privately owned by commercial entities. I don't care that Google has all of my data because I know they're really only going to use it to make money.
I actually don't care that the government will have my own data, what worries me is that they will suddenly have access to all of this amazing user data under the guise of the NHS and will not want to let go of it.
If the app comes with a hard sunset clause then I think a lot of the reservations go away, but as it stands 27/29 people in my WhatsApp chat don't want to install it. That changes to just 10/29 if it were done by Google or Apple.
If the government wants access to that they can get it at the minute already.
The app comes with a hard sunset clause. You can uninstall it whenever you want, that is your sunset clause. It has a sunset clause of whenever you want.
No they can't. Under what mechanism can the government get my movements from yesterday? Cell tower triangulation only works in real time.
Again, I'm not worried about me, it's the millions of people who will literally just forget to uninstall it. We should not be handing this kind of data to the government so lightly. Maybe you trust them to act fairly, on balance I think I do as well, but it's setting an absolutely awful precedent.
Vox pops on the app. People more willing to install it if it were Apple or Google. Much less likely to do so atm. Will just go about their business without the app and wait for an Apple or Google version.
I think that's absolute bovine manure as many vox pops are and probably after a leading question.
For one thing Apple and Google aren't inventing their own versions. They're doing an API, each country still needs to do its own version.
The app when its launched will be an NHS branded app. We know what people in this country think of the NHS and I don't believe a non-NHS app would get more downloads. "Download the NHS app to protect the NHS and save lives" is a powerful message that will resonate.
They can brand it whatever they want, the calculation people have made is that Google and Apple already know their location all the time anyway. This is letting the government know, that's a step a lot of people just won't take, NHS branding or not. I expect we'll never get near the 80% or whatever is necessary.
Can I let you in on a secret?
The government can identify your location from your phone already anyway.
Yes, by cell tower triangulation. But that's in real time, inaccurate and needs the target to be moving at more than walking pace. It's not the same thing.
It pretty much is. If the government wants to track you then this app will not be how they do it. There's already tremendous infrastructure involved in tracking persons of interest - more than most people realise.
If you wish to go off the grid then what app you have on your phone won't matter.
No it's not. This is historical movement data. The government doesn't have access to that currently and they need a warrant from a judge to get Google or Apple to hand it over.
The tremendous infrastructure on movement tracking is privately owned by commercial entities. I don't care that Google has all of my data because I know they're really only going to use it to make money.
I actually don't care that the government will have my own data, what worries me is that they will suddenly have access to all of this amazing user data under the guise of the NHS and will not want to let go of it.
If the app comes with a hard sunset clause then I think a lot of the reservations go away, but as it stands 27/29 people in my WhatsApp chat don't want to install it. That changes to just 10/29 if it were done by Google or Apple.
Agreed. A legally watertight sunset provision is essential.
BigRich posted an interesting comment about why Sweden has probably done the right thing, and nearly all of the replies were to do with a grammar dispute.
Sometimes people do not seem willing to engage in sciientific discussion on this site.The graph yesterday showing that the R figure was below 1 before the lockdown and that the reduction coincided with the hand washing advice I thought was really striking. Yet alI I got was abuse for discussing it and no one seemed interested in it. If science does not agree with someones opinion then it seems it is not worthy.
Because it comes from an account who has continually shifted and twisted to 'prove' that there wasn't a Covid problem at all. And when it became impossible to deny there was a problem he shifted the argument to that lockdown wasn't helping
My rough analysis (And it is very rough) shows true infections probably started going negative ( R < 1 ) with the start of the lockdown.
Funny that.
And I assume it would be trivial to bump your assumptions to make Rt drop below 0 whenever you so pleased.
If you don't want the government and big business to have the potential to know about your movements and habits, you need to stop carrying a smartphone altogether, definitely stay off Facebook and all other social media applications, stop paying by credit card and especially contactless, and stop doing Google searches. Downloading or not an NHS contract-tracing app is 100% irrelevant.
No, I don't care about big business having my data. You've conflated the argument there. No one cares about Google or Apple knowing where they are.
If a previously functioning business activity is restricted by law, it is unconscionable not to pay/loan/grant that business from the state (Or good as) whilst it is restricted. If a business activity is not restricted by law, you can't ask the public to stay away from that business (The pub debacle just before lockdown). So if you want the public to stay away from a business or service you need to pay/loan/grant the supplier of that business to sit at home.
That's basically the furlough scheme.
Is it's for a time limited period, it's fine. It's not a structural debt. But it can't go on forever.
The real problems come when a business is not closed by law, but can only operate to a certain capability or capacity by distancing measures.
This will be an issue for F&B outlets, especially late-night bars and clubs where the business model relies on packing people in. Many operators will find that they simply can't afford to operate with the same costs as before, but only a half or a third of the revenue.
Well rents will go down for such premises, they will employ fewer people and serve fewer people at higher prices, but there would still be a majority of viable places, with a significant minority closing.
Most clubs have already disappeared over the last 20 years and been replaced by late night bars, the world moves on. Business are always impacted by their environment and have to adapt.
Support during the pandemic and in the period immediately after is absolutely right but we shouldnt be trying to maintain a Feb2020 status quo for businesses beyond the next few months.
If you don't want the government and big business to have the potential to know about your movements and habits, you need to stop carrying a smartphone altogether, definitely stay off Facebook and all other social media applications, stop paying by credit card and especially contactless, and stop doing Google searches. Downloading or not an NHS contract-tracing app is 100% irrelevant.
That is true. I have a friend at the dear, departed (and not as culpable as many might have thought) CA. And the amount of information that is freely available about you is mind-boggling without you sharing your birthday or breakfast on the internet also.
As was evident at the time, just take a quick look through The Guardian's "privacy and use of your data" policies if you want to know what people do with your personal information. We're all happy when adverts for mail order brides, er, Charles Tyrwhitt shirts pop up on our web pages because we understand that's how life works.
The government, however, has powers that the Apple Store simply doesn't have and that is what worries me.
Vox pops on the app. People more willing to install it if it were Apple or Google. Much less likely to do so atm. Will just go about their business without the app and wait for an Apple or Google version.
I think that's absolute bovine manure as many vox pops are and probably after a leading question.
For one thing Apple and Google aren't inventing their own versions. They're doing an API, each country still needs to do its own version.
The app when its launched will be an NHS branded app. We know what people in this country think of the NHS and I don't believe a non-NHS app would get more downloads. "Download the NHS app to protect the NHS and save lives" is a powerful message that will resonate.
They can brand it whatever they want, the calculation people have made is that Google and Apple already know their location all the time anyway. This is letting the government know, that's a step a lot of people just won't take, NHS branding or not. I expect we'll never get near the 80% or whatever is necessary.
Can I let you in on a secret?
The government can identify your location from your phone already anyway.
Yes, by cell tower triangulation. But that's in real time, inaccurate and needs the target to be moving at more than walking pace. It's not the same thing.
It pretty much is. If the government wants to track you then this app will not be how they do it. There's already tremendous infrastructure involved in tracking persons of interest - more than most people realise.
If you wish to go off the grid then what app you have on your phone won't matter.
No it's not. This is historical movement data. The government doesn't have access to that currently and they need a warrant from a judge to get Google or Apple to hand it over.
The tremendous infrastructure on movement tracking is privately owned by commercial entities. I don't care that Google has all of my data because I know they're really only going to use it to make money.
I actually don't care that the government will have my own data, what worries me is that they will suddenly have access to all of this amazing user data under the guise of the NHS and will not want to let go of it.
If the app comes with a hard sunset clause then I think a lot of the reservations go away, but as it stands 27/29 people in my WhatsApp chat don't want to install it. That changes to just 10/29 if it were done by Google or Apple.
If the government wants access to that they can get it at the minute already.
The app comes with a hard sunset clause. You can uninstall it whenever you want, that is your sunset clause. It has a sunset clause of whenever you want.
Does it have a sunset clause? If a 0 day exploit is being used to get it to work, how can you be sure there isn't another 0 day exploit being used to keep part of the App in place when the rest is removed?
BigRich posted an interesting comment about why Sweden has probably done the right thing, and nearly all of the replies were to do with a grammar dispute.
Sometimes people do not seem willing to engage in sciientific discussion on this site.The graph yesterday showing that the R figure was below 1 before the lockdown and that the reduction coincided with the hand washing advice I thought was really striking. Yet alI I got was abuse for discussing it and no one seemed interested in it. If science does not agree with someones opinion then it seems it is not worthy.
Because it comes from an account who has continually shifted and twisted to 'prove' that there wasn't a Covid problem at all. And when it became impossible to deny there was a problem he shifted the argument to that lockdown wasn't helping
My rough analysis (And it is very rough) shows true infections probably started going negative ( R < 1 ) with the start of the lockdown.
Funny that.
And I assume it would be trivial to bump your assumptions to make Rt drop below 0 whenever you so pleased.
Brady is right, but some companies have driven this. The government advice was to carry on working (from home where possible). The government is aware of the perplexing problem that it has in getting the economy going again.
What companies? Some sectors where closed down and that has had a cascading impact on the rest of the economy. I'm really not aware of a single company not impacted in some way.
Sunik's fear will be the fact that companies are discovering they can manage just fine without their furloughed staff. Some firms seem to have noticed that as Personal Today had an article last week pointing out that you can use Furlough money to pay redundancy payments.
Sunak's fear is that many thousands of smaller businesses simply won;t re-open.
The tax base is being destroyed at the same time as debt is soaring.
Indeed. Prematurely lifting the lockdown will ensure those smaller businesses won't reopen or will reopen, find they have no customers and shutter permanently.
Ideally lifting the lockdown should coincide with when the public is confident, willing and eager to go out.
contarian's logic is fundamentally flawed, because the choice wasn't between economic problems with the lockdown vs sweetness and light without it.
It was a choice between economic problems with the lockdown (and to be clear, I don't underplay it) all the associated costs and economic armageddon combined with health service failure without it.
The lockdown is inordinately expensive, but affordable at a push. Not having it would have resulted in ruin.
I you actually read my posts you would see that I have never argued that our economy would not take a bad hit whatever the circumstances. Of course it would.
The thrust of my argument is that the government's policy has made the hit far, far worse than it needed to be economically, and the argument that it has 'saved lives' is at least questionable and possibly completely bogus.
Except you have provided zero evidence for why the hit is "far, far, worse than it needed to be economically".
Why is the government paying businesses primary cost (wages) via virtually interest-free borrowing an economic hit?
I am amazed you asked that question but OK. That debt will have to be repaid at some juncture. If it isn;t then some will need to be rolled over, possibly at much higher borrowing costs. Almost certainly not at lower ones. Depending on the maturities the government goes for, the roll overs could start quite soon.
The debt will have to be serviced by a private sector that has been smashed to pieces. Corona was always going to have a big effect I grant you that. But I don;t think that anybody could argue the government has made it much worse than a much lighter, shorter lockdown would have.
Indeed Sweden shows us this is true. I understand its economy has shrunk at a much slower rate than its Scandy peers. Against which it has endured more deaths now (though this too is arguable) but it is in a much stronger position to save them in the future.
The government borrows typically at 10, 30 or 50 year intervals for rollover and is currently borrowing at about 0.1% interest. Why would the rollovers start "quite soon" then? Why wouldn't they start in 10 plus years and if so why not take the big picture view on what is good for the economy?
Sweden is running a furlough scheme just like we are. In fact Sweden's furlough scheme is 90% of wages.
The debt would have to be serviced by an economy that has been smashed to pieces if we did what you want. The government is looking into the future not tomorrow and today.
Fine as long as we can service our debt, inflation expectations are kept in check and while we still print our own money. Of course. But that stands whether the government is BoJo or Ed Milliband or Jeremy Corbyn or SKS. 75% of those are and have been criticised strongly (perhaps by your good self) for wanting to borrow large amounts of money.
Because the key words are so long as we can service it and keep inflation expectations in check.
We can do that if we are doing this while inflation is very low [it is currently below target] and for a one-off emergency. We can't do it for ongoing expenditure.
It's almost impossible to know what proportion of excess deaths are due to non-Corona. Because it is certainly impossible to accurately know what the "excess deaths" number actually is. We do not have a non-Corona world to compare with
Deaths are not constant year by year, there is a few thousand fluctuation week by week when you compare 2015 with 2016, 2017, 2018 etc. So these bar charts saying that there are x (precise) number of excess deaths are guesses at best.
Having said that some form of limited easing of lockdown must come soon, there's very little case for continuing as stringently as we are given the clear and sustained fall in deaths and cases.
Brady is right, but some companies have driven this. The government advice was to carry on working (from home where possible). The government is aware of the perplexing problem that it has in getting the economy going again.
What companies? Some sectors where closed down and that has had a cascading impact on the rest of the economy. I'm really not aware of a single company not impacted in some way.
Sunik's fear will be the fact that companies are discovering they can manage just fine without their furloughed staff. Some firms seem to have noticed that as Personal Today had an article last week pointing out that you can use Furlough money to pay redundancy payments.
Sunak's fear is that many thousands of smaller businesses simply won;t re-open.
The tax base is being destroyed at the same time as debt is soaring.
This is inevitable. Despite the grants and guaranteed loans hundreds of thousands of small businesses have continued to rack up overhead with minimal income. They will have become balance sheet insolvent. The government has relaxed wrongful trading laws to allow them a chance to trade themselves out of it but if they have a restaurant, a café or a pub I really don't see how they do unless they can take the capital loss. They are not going to make up the loss, indeed trading profitably is going to be an enormous challenge. Someone who has given a personal guarantee to their bank should think very carefully about whether further trading is in their interests.
Most of those businesses would face disaster with or without the lockdown, though. Some will have a chance, if the lockdown and subsequent control measures can keep the virus sufficiently in check.
As in Korea's most affected city, Daegu: http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13349607 ...In late April, a large banner still hung at a major hospital nearby that stated: “We are a base hospital for treating the novel coronavirus. We are doing everything in our power to ensure the safety of people in the community.”
But it was an entirely different picture inside the market.
Dozens of cars were trying to enter the market’s parking lot.
Inside, shoppers wearing face masks were so densely packed that they were unable to pass each other without touching shoulders.
Seemingly without a care in the world, smiling shoppers chowed down on noodle soup dishes and munched snacks in close physical proximity as if the pandemic had never happened....
Daegu also illustrates the utility of regional lockdowns. Which is something the government ought to be considering for the post lockdown period.
BigRich posted an interesting comment about why Sweden has probably done the right thing, and nearly all of the replies were to do with a grammar dispute.
Sometimes people do not seem willing to engage in sciientific discussion on this site.The graph yesterday showing that the R figure was below 1 before the lockdown and that the reduction coincided with the hand washing advice I thought was really striking. Yet alI I got was abuse for discussing it and no one seemed interested in it. If science does not agree with someones opinion then it seems it is not worthy.
If R figure was below 1 before lockdown, I agree this would be significant news. Can it be true though? I`m struggling with it to be honest. Any more evidence?
Vox pops on the app. People more willing to install it if it were Apple or Google. Much less likely to do so atm. Will just go about their business without the app and wait for an Apple or Google version.
I think that's absolute bovine manure as many vox pops are and probably after a leading question.
For one thing Apple and Google aren't inventing their own versions. They're doing an API, each country still needs to do its own version.
The app when its launched will be an NHS branded app. We know what people in this country think of the NHS and I don't believe a non-NHS app would get more downloads. "Download the NHS app to protect the NHS and save lives" is a powerful message that will resonate.
They can brand it whatever they want, the calculation people have made is that Google and Apple already know their location all the time anyway. This is letting the government know, that's a step a lot of people just won't take, NHS branding or not. I expect we'll never get near the 80% or whatever is necessary.
Can I let you in on a secret?
The government can identify your location from your phone already anyway.
Yes, by cell tower triangulation. But that's in real time, inaccurate and needs the target to be moving at more than walking pace. It's not the same thing.
It pretty much is. If the government wants to track you then this app will not be how they do it. There's already tremendous infrastructure involved in tracking persons of interest - more than most people realise.
If you wish to go off the grid then what app you have on your phone won't matter.
No it's not. This is historical movement data. The government doesn't have access to that currently and they need a warrant from a judge to get Google or Apple to hand it over.
The tremendous infrastructure on movement tracking is privately owned by commercial entities. I don't care that Google has all of my data because I know they're really only going to use it to make money.
I actually don't care that the government will have my own data, what worries me is that they will suddenly have access to all of this amazing user data under the guise of the NHS and will not want to let go of it.
If the app comes with a hard sunset clause then I think a lot of the reservations go away, but as it stands 27/29 people in my WhatsApp chat don't want to install it. That changes to just 10/29 if it were done by Google or Apple.
If the government wants access to that they can get it at the minute already.
The app comes with a hard sunset clause. You can uninstall it whenever you want, that is your sunset clause. It has a sunset clause of whenever you want.
Does it have a sunset clause? If a 0 day exploit is being used to get it to work, how can you be sure there isn't another 0 day exploit being used to keep part of the App in place when the rest is removed?
I've seen zero evidence of that but if you're that concerned you could reset your phone to factory settings.
If you don't want the government and big business to have the potential to know about your movements and habits, you need to stop carrying a smartphone altogether, definitely stay off Facebook and all other social media applications, stop paying by credit card and especially contactless, and stop doing Google searches. Downloading or not an NHS contract-tracing app is 100% irrelevant.
Partially correct, the Gov't doesn't even have its own systems linked together properly. (DSS and HMRC I believe don't share everything) even when it might be more convenient. Anyway I'll probably download the App, the problem is that others might not, and so critical mass won't be achieved.
BigRich posted an interesting comment about why Sweden has probably done the right thing, and nearly all of the replies were to do with a grammar dispute.
Sometimes people do not seem willing to engage in sciientific discussion on this site.The graph yesterday showing that the R figure was below 1 before the lockdown and that the reduction coincided with the hand washing advice I thought was really striking. Yet alI I got was abuse for discussing it and no one seemed interested in it. If science does not agree with someones opinion then it seems it is not worthy.
Because it comes from an account who has continually shifted and twisted to 'prove' that there wasn't a Covid problem at all. And when it became impossible to deny there was a problem he shifted the argument to that lockdown wasn't helping
My rough analysis (And it is very rough) shows true infections probably started going negative ( R < 1 ) with the start of the lockdown.
Funny that.
And I assume it would be trivial to bump your assumptions to make Rt drop below 0 whenever you so pleased.
FPT Last night I read a comment by TGOF666 re people putting their parents into care homes. I also saw some robust responses, but I did want to make my own response.
My mother got dementia not too long ago. She has since died. My father with our support decided she would definitely NOT go into care. We would look after her. I can only assume TGOF666 has not gone through this. Here are just a few examples of what can happen:
At 3 in the morning the washing up needs doing, while you are asleep, which includes the toaster.
Just wandering off any time of the day or night and not knowing where they are.
Start cooking on the hob and leaving it. Running taps and leaving them.
Attacking your husband (aged 90) with a walking stick because he is having an affair with the woman of the non existent other family living in the house.
Screaming at your son in front of his children 'why didn't you tell me my mother was a man' (she visualised my father as her mother). I was one of the few people who could sit down with my mother and explain what was going on, but this stumped me.
This requires 24 hour monitoring - when do you sleep?
Much to my surprise I was very impressed with the social care provided by social services and the Alzheimer society were magnificent. My mother ended up in a care home, which was also great and the staff magnificent - I don't know how they have the patience.
TGOF666 post was disgraceful.
No-one who hasn't gone through something like this, or seen it first hand, has much an idea what it's like. And, the irrational behaviour is spasmodic and unpredictable.
The family, as kjh"s, start off with the very best of intentions, but the situation becomes impossible.
If you don't want the government and big business to have the potential to know about your movements and habits, you need to stop carrying a smartphone altogether, definitely stay off Facebook and all other social media applications, stop paying by credit card and especially contactless, and stop doing Google searches. Downloading or not an NHS contract-tracing app is 100% irrelevant.
No, I don't care about big business having my data. You've conflated the argument there. No one cares about Google or Apple knowing where they are.
.. and Vodafone, and BT, and Visa, and Mastercard, and the people who run all those loyalty programmes. Oh, and the US intelligence services if they're interested, and no doubt ours as well. A smartphone is a walking, talking, broadcasting privacy violation device, but we already knew that, didn't we?
What's most remarkable is that people violate their own privacy so enthusiastically that you don't even need to be a spook to track a hell of a lot on info on individuals, just look at publicly-visible stuff. Not downloading this app, but posting selfies on Facebook or Twitter, which many people do, would be a curious approach to protecting privacy.
If you don't want the government and big business to have the potential to know about your movements and habits, you need to stop carrying a smartphone altogether, definitely stay off Facebook and all other social media applications, stop paying by credit card and especially contactless, and stop doing Google searches. Downloading or not an NHS contract-tracing app is 100% irrelevant.
Partially correct, the Gov't doesn't even have its own systems linked together properly. (DSS and HMRC I believe don't share everything) even when it might be more convenient. Anyway I'll probably download the App, the problem is that others might not, and so critical mass won't be achieved.
Both departments have good reason not to trust the other due to abuse of the available information.
We were going to make cuts - don't forget that the Labour manifesto in 2010 would have spent slightly less than the coalition did.
As I have been pointing out the problem wasn't cutting spending but what was cut and how.
When the Tory PM writes to his Tory council leader saying look here, why are you cutting front line services when we have made all this money available to you, the council leader details no you haven't, and number 10 responds yes we have that's the austerity problem in a single example.
It's not enough to say "we spent more on the NHS". What did you spend it on in the NHS? More money spent but savage cuts to provision shows money being syphoned off to more traditional Tory causes like consultants and lawyers and pointless layers of management.
The fact was that the Government didn't notice they had both increased the demands on the council and yet decreased the money available. As a simplified example to show the actual issue:-
Previously: Government Adult Social care £10m Council expenditure £10m Total available £20m
After reforms: Council Expenditure £15m Total available: £15m
Osbourne and Cameron's Government sat there and said we've given you £5m more a year but ignored the fact they are increased Council required Expenditure by £10m.
Are Councils required to pay themselves more than the Prime Minister gets paid?
Ever heard of market powers? Once one council starts paying over the odds to poach a leader from another council it becomes inevitable...
Guess what happened in the market for competent Council leaders.
If you consider that very few people switch from the public to the private sector, the Government should set national pay bands for councils and force top salaries down.
I thought Conservatives believed in free market capitalism? I’m confused.
Absolutely. We believe in capitalism.
There is no free market there. People taking taxes by force of the law and giving it in largesse to themselves while whining they haven't got enough money and cutting services is not free market capitalism.
If it was a free market company that was slashing its services while paying over the odds to its Chief Executives a competitor that was leaner would arise and people would take their consumption and expenditure to that one. That can't happen with taxes though. Appeals to some 'market' are absurd.
A good Council leader would be one who lives within the budget they have, getting their best results possible and being paid accordingly. Not slashing services and being paid well over the odds.
You assume there is an infinite supply of people able to put up with crap from Councillors and willing to lead councils. My view is that there is a finite supply of such people, and an even smaller supply of competent and the demand for such competent people is far greater than the actual supply.
And what evidence do you have for that proposition?
My view is that it is a pampered, unaffordable luxury to be paying county staff more than the Prime Minister of the country - and if you can afford to do that then there hasn't been enough austerity yet.
I would suggest thinking about what the job entails and then deciding that. A lot of the highest paid chief executives are actually running 2 or more councils.
Oh and remember the only reason why the PM's pay is what it is, is because Gordon Brown pulled a fast one in the days before the 2010 election and hadn't taken the full amount before then.
Indeed but Blair was when the government was spending far, far too much money. At least from 2002 onwards.
Given that Councils have needed to cut their cloth since then they should have done that from the top. If they can't afford an executive so be it, say goodbye to them and hire someone they can afford. Brighton and Hove Albion have no divine right to afford the wages of Virgil van Dijk.
If Councils can afford to pay ludicrously high wages then their budgets are still full of largesse and can be cut further.
So you would prefer a council to be run by amateurs rather than professionals people. It's a view I suppose but personally I'm happy to pay people money if the money they cost is less than the money I save overall.
Professional people who can maintain services with the budget they have absolutely pay them what they want.
If they need to cut services then start from the top with their own wages. If that means getting in amateurs so be it.
You do realise that every council is cutting services because they physically can’t afford to keep them going? An extra £50k per year is NOTHING compared to the cost of these services. It’s almost like you have no concept of the budgets of local councils.
'£50k here, £30k there and soon we're talking real money'
The annual budget of Newcastle City Council is circa £900m I believe? Even if a Chief Executive was being paid £1m per year that’s only 0.001% of the budget.
Which can be the same for any expenditure. If you're taking that attitude with executive pay, where else are you taking that attitude?
EDIT: And you're out by a factor of 100!!
How do you work that out , 1/900 = .0011111111111
Agreed that is what it is. And what is 0.0011111111111 in percentage terms?
Or are you proposing that if a budget was 900 million and the executive paid themselves 900 million then they were only getting paid 1% of the budget?
Eh it is very simple , 900/900 = 1 which is 100% , 1/900 =0. 001 which is 0.001%
In this case, 0.001 is 0.1%, malcolm.
? confused ... 0.001 rounds to 0 to nearest whole number
Vox pops on the app. People more willing to install it if it were Apple or Google. Much less likely to do so atm. Will just go about their business without the app and wait for an Apple or Google version.
I think that's absolute bovine manure as many vox pops are and probably after a leading question.
For one thing Apple and Google aren't inventing their own versions. They're doing an API, each country still needs to do its own version.
The app when its launched will be an NHS branded app. We know what people in this country think of the NHS and I don't believe a non-NHS app would get more downloads. "Download the NHS app to protect the NHS and save lives" is a powerful message that will resonate.
They can brand it whatever they want, the calculation people have made is that Google and Apple already know their location all the time anyway. This is letting the government know, that's a step a lot of people just won't take, NHS branding or not. I expect we'll never get near the 80% or whatever is necessary.
Can I let you in on a secret?
The government can identify your location from your phone already anyway.
Yes, by cell tower triangulation. But that's in real time, inaccurate and needs the target to be moving at more than walking pace. It's not the same thing.
It pretty much is. If the government wants to track you then this app will not be how they do it. There's already tremendous infrastructure involved in tracking persons of interest - more than most people realise.
If you wish to go off the grid then what app you have on your phone won't matter.
No it's not. This is historical movement data. The government doesn't have access to that currently and they need a warrant from a judge to get Google or Apple to hand it over.
The tremendous infrastructure on movement tracking is privately owned by commercial entities. I don't care that Google has all of my data because I know they're really only going to use it to make money.
I actually don't care that the government will have my own data, what worries me is that they will suddenly have access to all of this amazing user data under the guise of the NHS and will not want to let go of it.
If the app comes with a hard sunset clause then I think a lot of the reservations go away, but as it stands 27/29 people in my WhatsApp chat don't want to install it. That changes to just 10/29 if it were done by Google or Apple.
If the government wants access to that they can get it at the minute already.
The app comes with a hard sunset clause. You can uninstall it whenever you want, that is your sunset clause. It has a sunset clause of whenever you want.
Does it have a sunset clause? If a 0 day exploit is being used to get it to work, how can you be sure there isn't another 0 day exploit being used to keep part of the App in place when the rest is removed?
All important questions.
If they've genuinely had the GCHQ hackers use an IOS 0-day to make this app work, they're about to run into a whole world of hurt. Apple *really* stands up to crap like this.
BigRich posted an interesting comment about why Sweden has probably done the right thing, and nearly all of the replies were to do with a grammar dispute.
Sometimes people do not seem willing to engage in sciientific discussion on this site.The graph yesterday showing that the R figure was below 1 before the lockdown and that the reduction coincided with the hand washing advice I thought was really striking. Yet alI I got was abuse for discussing it and no one seemed interested in it. If science does not agree with someones opinion then it seems it is not worthy.
If R figure was below 1 before lockdown, I agree this would be significant news. Can it be true though? I`m struggling with it to be honest. Any more evidence?
That was based on reverse engineering the deaths data and saying the infection date was 23 days before death.
With no evidence as to why that date was chosen other than it created the graph he wanted. Other evidence seems to be ~5 days to show symptoms and 10 days then to death which would push back crossover by more than a week.
We were going to make cuts - don't forget that the Labour manifesto in 2010 would have spent slightly less than the coalition did.
As I have been pointing out the problem wasn't cutting spending but what was cut and how.
When the Tory PM writes to his Tory council leader saying look here, why are you cutting front line services when we have made all this money available to you, the council leader details no you haven't, and number 10 responds yes we have that's the austerity problem in a single example.
It's not enough to say "we spent more on the NHS". What did you spend it on in the NHS? More money spent but savage cuts to provision shows money being syphoned off to more traditional Tory causes like consultants and lawyers and pointless layers of management.
The fact was that the Government didn't notice they had both increased the demands on the council and yet decreased the money available. As a simplified example to show the actual issue:-
Previously: Government Adult Social care £10m Council expenditure £10m Total available £20m
After reforms: Council Expenditure £15m Total available: £15m
Osbourne and Cameron's Government sat there and said we've given you £5m more a year but ignored the fact they are increased Council required Expenditure by £10m.
Are Councils required to pay themselves more than the Prime Minister gets paid?
Ever heard of market powers? Once one council starts paying over the odds to poach a leader from another council it becomes inevitable...
Guess what happened in the market for competent Council leaders.
If you consider that very few people switch from the public to the private sector, the Government should set national pay bands for councils and force top salaries down.
I thought Conservatives believed in free market capitalism? I’m confused.
Absolutely. We believe in capitalism.
There is no free market there. People taking taxes by force of the law and giving it in largesse to themselves while whining they haven't got enough money and cutting services is not free market capitalism.
If it was a free market company that was slashing its services while paying over the odds to its Chief Executives a competitor that was leaner would arise and people would take their consumption and expenditure to that one. That can't happen with taxes though. Appeals to some 'market' are absurd.
A good Council leader would be one who lives within the budget they have, getting their best results possible and being paid accordingly. Not slashing services and being paid well over the odds.
You assume there is an infinite supply of people able to put up with crap from Councillors and willing to lead councils. My view is that there is a finite supply of such people, and an even smaller supply of competent and the demand for such competent people is far greater than the actual supply.
And what evidence do you have for that proposition?
My view is that it is a pampered, unaffordable luxury to be paying county staff more than the Prime Minister of the country - and if you can afford to do that then there hasn't been enough austerity yet.
I would suggest thinking about what the job entails and then deciding that. A lot of the highest paid chief executives are actually running 2 or more councils.
Oh and remember the only reason why the PM's pay is what it is, is because Gordon Brown pulled a fast one in the days before the 2010 election and hadn't taken the full amount before then.
Indeed but Blair was when the government was spending far, far too much money. At least from 2002 onwards.
Given that Councils have needed to cut their cloth since then they should have done that from the top. If they can't afford an executive so be it, say goodbye to them and hire someone they can afford. Brighton and Hove Albion have no divine right to afford the wages of Virgil van Dijk.
If Councils can afford to pay ludicrously high wages then their budgets are still full of largesse and can be cut further.
So you would prefer a council to be run by amateurs rather than professionals people. It's a view I suppose but personally I'm happy to pay people money if the money they cost is less than the money I save overall.
Professional people who can maintain services with the budget they have absolutely pay them what they want.
If they need to cut services then start from the top with their own wages. If that means getting in amateurs so be it.
You do realise that every council is cutting services because they physically can’t afford to keep them going? An extra £50k per year is NOTHING compared to the cost of these services. It’s almost like you have no concept of the budgets of local councils.
'£50k here, £30k there and soon we're talking real money'
The annual budget of Newcastle City Council is circa £900m I believe? Even if a Chief Executive was being paid £1m per year that’s only 0.001% of the budget.
Which can be the same for any expenditure. If you're taking that attitude with executive pay, where else are you taking that attitude?
EDIT: And you're out by a factor of 100!!
How do you work that out , 1/900 = .0011111111111
Oh dear.
1% of 900M is 9M. 0.1% is 0.9M, or 900K, less than the £1M you claim is 0.0011%
If you don't want the government and big business to have the potential to know about your movements and habits, you need to stop carrying a smartphone altogether, definitely stay off Facebook and all other social media applications, stop paying by credit card and especially contactless, and stop doing Google searches. Downloading or not an NHS contract-tracing app is 100% irrelevant.
Partially correct, the Gov't doesn't even have its own systems linked together properly. (DSS and HMRC I believe don't share everything) even when it might be more convenient. Anyway I'll probably download the App, the problem is that others might not, and so critical mass won't be achieved.
For those who don't know - the premise is that a genius builds an expert system, for the government, to discern *intent* from mass surveillance data. This has consequences.
If you don't want the government and big business to have the potential to know about your movements and habits, you need to stop carrying a smartphone altogether, definitely stay off Facebook and all other social media applications, stop paying by credit card and especially contactless, and stop doing Google searches. Downloading or not an NHS contract-tracing app is 100% irrelevant.
No, I don't care about big business having my data. You've conflated the argument there. No one cares about Google or Apple knowing where they are.
Brady is right, but some companies have driven this. The government advice was to carry on working (from home where possible). The government is aware of the perplexing problem that it has in getting the economy going again.
What companies? Some sectors where closed down and that has had a cascading impact on the rest of the economy. I'm really not aware of a single company not impacted in some way.
Sunik's fear will be the fact that companies are discovering they can manage just fine without their furloughed staff. Some firms seem to have noticed that as Personal Today had an article last week pointing out that you can use Furlough money to pay redundancy payments.
Sunak's fear is that many thousands of smaller businesses simply won;t re-open.
The tax base is being destroyed at the same time as debt is soaring.
Indeed. Prematurely lifting the lockdown will ensure those smaller businesses won't reopen or will reopen, find they have no customers and shutter permanently.
Ideally lifting the lockdown should coincide with when the public is confident, willing and eager to go out.
contarian's logic is fundamentally flawed, because the choice wasn't between economic problems with the lockdown vs sweetness and light without it.
It was a choice between economic problems with the lockdown (and to be clear, I don't underplay it) all the associated costs and economic armageddon combined with health service failure without it.
The lockdown is inordinately expensive, but affordable at a push. Not having it would have resulted in ruin.
I you actually read my posts you would see that I have never argued that our economy would not take a bad hit whatever the circumstances. Of course it would.
The thrust of my argument is that the government's policy has made the hit far, far worse than it needed to be economically, and the argument that it has 'saved lives' is at least questionable and possibly completely bogus.
Except you have provided zero evidence for why the hit is "far, far, worse than it needed to be economically".
Why is the government paying businesses primary cost (wages) via virtually interest-free borrowing an economic hit?
I am amazed you asked that question but OK. That debt will have to be repaid at some juncture. If it isn;t then some will need to be rolled over, possibly at much higher borrowing costs. Almost certainly not at lower ones. Depending on the maturities the government goes for, the roll overs could start quite soon.
The debt will have to be serviced by a private sector that has been smashed to pieces. Corona was always going to have a big effect I grant you that. But I don;t think that anybody could argue the government has made it much worse than a much lighter, shorter lockdown would have.
Indeed Sweden shows us this is true. I understand its economy has shrunk at a much slower rate than its Scandy peers. Against which it has endured more deaths now (though this too is arguable) but it is in a much stronger position to save them in the future.
The government borrows typically at 10, 30 or 50 year intervals for rollover and is currently borrowing at about 0.1% interest. Why would the rollovers start "quite soon" then? Why wouldn't they start in 10 plus years and if so why not take the big picture view on what is good for the economy?
Sweden is running a furlough scheme just like we are. In fact Sweden's furlough scheme is 90% of wages.
The debt would have to be serviced by an economy that has been smashed to pieces if we did what you want. The government is looking into the future not tomorrow and today.
Fine as long as we can service our debt, inflation expectations are kept in check and while we still print our own money. Of course. But that stands whether the government is BoJo or Ed Milliband or Jeremy Corbyn or SKS. 75% of those are and have been criticised strongly (perhaps by your good self) for wanting to borrow large amounts of money.
Because the key words are so long as we can service it and keep inflation expectations in check.
We can do that if we are doing this while inflation is very low [it is currently below target] and for a one-off emergency. We can't do it for ongoing expenditure.
Thing is, the Labour Party could legitimately site, say, homelessness as a one off emergency. Or the state of social housing. Or...or.... OK so a pandemic might be pretty objectively an unusual event but so is the thousands dying of poverty in the UK. Or whatever Labour decides is an emergency - and who's to say they're not right in so doing?
BigRich posted an interesting comment about why Sweden has probably done the right thing, and nearly all of the replies were to do with a grammar dispute.
Sometimes people do not seem willing to engage in sciientific discussion on this site.The graph yesterday showing that the R figure was below 1 before the lockdown and that the reduction coincided with the hand washing advice I thought was really striking. Yet alI I got was abuse for discussing it and no one seemed interested in it. If science does not agree with someones opinion then it seems it is not worthy.
If R figure was below 1 before lockdown, I agree this would be significant news. Can it be true though? I`m struggling with it to be honest. Any more evidence?
That was based on reverse engineering the deaths data and saying the infection date was 23 days before death.
With no evidence as to why that date was chosen other than it created the graph he wanted. Other evidence seems to be ~5 days to show symptoms and 10 days then to death which would push back crossover by more than a week.
It's almost impossible to know what proportion of excess deaths are due to non-Corona. Because it is certainly impossible to accurately know what the "excess deaths" number actually is. We do not have a non-Corona world to compare with
Deaths are not constant year by year, there is a few thousand fluctuation week by week when you compare 2015 with 2016, 2017, 2018 etc. So these bar charts saying that there are x (precise) number of excess deaths are guesses at best.
Having said that some form of limited easing of lockdown must come soon, there's very little case for continuing as stringently as we are given the clear and sustained fall in deaths and cases.
The world would look very different if the government followed stringently medical advice on, say, smoking or drink driving, or dangerous sports, or driving over 17MPH or....
If you don't want the government and big business to have the potential to know about your movements and habits, you need to stop carrying a smartphone altogether, definitely stay off Facebook and all other social media applications, stop paying by credit card and especially contactless, and stop doing Google searches. Downloading or not an NHS contract-tracing app is 100% irrelevant.
No, I don't care about big business having my data. You've conflated the argument there. No one cares about Google or Apple knowing where they are.
.. and Vodafone, and BT, and Visa, and Mastercard, and the people who run all those loyalty programmes. Oh, and the US intelligence services if they're interested, and no doubt ours as well. A smartphone is a walking, talking, broadcasting privacy violation device, but we already knew that, didn't we?
What's most remarkable is that people violate their own privacy so enthusiastically that you don't even need to be a spook to track a hell of a lot on info on individuals, just look at publicly-visible stuff. Not downloading this app, but positing selfies on Facebook or Twitter, which many people do, would be a curious approach to protecting privacy.
Again, no doubt. I'm happy for all of those companies to have access to the data and even the spooks. Giving the government access to masses of user data is just wrong. It sets a very bad precedent and they've ignored the alternative route which respects user privacy, or at least lets the same commercial companies who already have all the data deal with it.
The government has made a series of missteps with this crisis. It ignored advice from Europe on starting the lockdown earlier, it didn't and comically still hasnt banned flights from overseas, it ignored advice from Germany about testing, it stupidly gave up on test, trace, quarantine when it was still a manageable prospect and now we're going down the same path of ignoring the advice on the app. Maybe, just maybe, our experts aren't as smart as they think they are.
If you don't want the government and big business to have the potential to know about your movements and habits, you need to stop carrying a smartphone altogether, definitely stay off Facebook and all other social media applications, stop paying by credit card and especially contactless, and stop doing Google searches. Downloading or not an NHS contract-tracing app is 100% irrelevant.
Partially correct, the Gov't doesn't even have its own systems linked together properly. (DSS and HMRC I believe don't share everything) even when it might be more convenient. Anyway I'll probably download the App, the problem is that others might not, and so critical mass won't be achieved.
Both departments have good reason not to trust the other due to abuse of the available information.
It's all the Government, unless they actively don't want to be efficient. Which I'm sure is also true. Maybe the treasury should just run everything, it seems a more competent department than most.
We were going to make cuts - don't forget that the Labour manifesto in 2010 would have spent slightly less than the coalition did.
As I have been pointing out the problem wasn't cutting spending but what was cut and how.
When the Tory PM writes to his Tory council leader saying look here, why are you cutting front line services when we have made all this money available to you, the council leader details no you haven't, and number 10 responds yes we have that's the austerity problem in a single example.
It's not enough to say "we spent more on the NHS". What did you spend it on in the NHS? More money spent but savage cuts to provision shows money being syphoned off to more traditional Tory causes like consultants and lawyers and pointless layers of management.
The fact was that the Government didn't notice they had both increased the demands on the council and yet decreased the money available. As a simplified example to show the actual issue:-
Previously: Government Adult Social care £10m Council expenditure £10m Total available £20m
After reforms: Council Expenditure £15m Total available: £15m
Osbourne and Cameron's Government sat there and said we've given you £5m more a year but ignored the fact they are increased Council required Expenditure by £10m.
Are Councils required to pay themselves more than the Prime Minister gets paid?
Ever heard of market powers? Once one council starts paying over the odds to poach a leader from another council it becomes inevitable...
Guess what happened in the market for competent Council leaders.
If you consider that very few people switch from the public to the private sector, the Government should set national pay bands for councils and force top salaries down.
I thought Conservatives believed in free market capitalism? I’m confused.
Absolutely. We believe in capitalism.
There is no free market there. People taking taxes by force of the law and giving it in largesse to themselves while whining they haven't got enough money and cutting services is not free market capitalism.
If it was a free market company that was slashing its services while paying over the odds to its Chief Executives a competitor that was leaner would arise and people would take their consumption and expenditure to that one. That can't happen with taxes though. Appeals to some 'market' are absurd.
A good Council leader would be one who lives within the budget they have, getting their best results possible and being paid accordingly. Not slashing services and being paid well over the odds.
You assume there is an infinite supply of people able to put up with crap from Councillors and willing to lead councils. My view is that there is a finite supply of such people, and an even smaller supply of competent and the demand for such competent people is far greater than the actual supply.
And what evidence do you have for that proposition?
My view is that it is a pampered, unaffordable luxury to be paying county staff more than the Prime Minister of the country - and if you can afford to do that then there hasn't been enough austerity yet.
I would suggest thinking about what the job entails and then deciding that. A lot of the highest paid chief executives are actually running 2 or more councils.
Oh and remember the only reason why the PM's pay is what it is, is because Gordon Brown pulled a fast one in the days before the 2010 election and hadn't taken the full amount before then.
Indeed but Blair was when the government was spending far, far too much money. At least from 2002 onwards.
Given that Councils have needed to cut their cloth since then they should have done that from the top. If they can't afford an executive so be it, say goodbye to them and hire someone they can afford. Brighton and Hove Albion have no divine right to afford the wages of Virgil van Dijk.
If Councils can afford to pay ludicrously high wages then their budgets are still full of largesse and can be cut further.
So you would prefer a council to be run by amateurs rather than professionals people. It's a view I suppose but personally I'm happy to pay people money if the money they cost is less than the money I save overall.
Professional people who can maintain services with the budget they have absolutely pay them what they want.
If they need to cut services then start from the top with their own wages. If that means getting in amateurs so be it.
You do realise that every council is cutting services because they physically can’t afford to keep them going? An extra £50k per year is NOTHING compared to the cost of these services. It’s almost like you have no concept of the budgets of local councils.
'£50k here, £30k there and soon we're talking real money'
The annual budget of Newcastle City Council is circa £900m I believe? Even if a Chief Executive was being paid £1m per year that’s only 0.001% of the budget.
Which can be the same for any expenditure. If you're taking that attitude with executive pay, where else are you taking that attitude?
EDIT: And you're out by a factor of 100!!
How do you work that out , 1/900 = .0011111111111
Agreed that is what it is. And what is 0.0011111111111 in percentage terms?
Or are you proposing that if a budget was 900 million and the executive paid themselves 900 million then they were only getting paid 1% of the budget?
Eh it is very simple , 900/900 = 1 which is 100% , 1/900 =0. 001 which is 0.001%
Sadly, I really have no idea if this is trolling or not.
It seems unlikely the government can convince people they're not going to be tracked for non-covid purposes so they need to legalize drugs until the crisis is over.
We were going to make cuts - don't forget that the Labour manifesto in 2010 would have spent slightly less than the coalition did.
As I have been pointing out the problem wasn't cutting spending but what was cut and how.
When the Tory PM writes to his Tory council leader saying look here, why are you cutting front line services when we have made all this money available to you, the council leader details no you haven't, and number 10 responds yes we have that's the austerity problem in a single example.
It's not enough to say "we spent more on the NHS". What did you spend it on in the NHS? More money spent but savage cuts to provision shows money being syphoned off to more traditional Tory causes like consultants and lawyers and pointless layers of management.
The fact was that the Government didn't notice they had both increased the demands on the council and yet decreased the money available. As a simplified example to show the actual issue:-
Previously: Government Adult Social care £10m Council expenditure £10m Total available £20m
After reforms: Council Expenditure £15m Total available: £15m
Osbourne and Cameron's Government sat there and said we've given you £5m more a year but ignored the fact they are increased Council required Expenditure by £10m.
Are Councils required to pay themselves more than the Prime Minister gets paid?
Ever heard of market powers? Once one council starts paying over the odds to poach a leader from another council it becomes inevitable...
Guess what happened in the market for competent Council leaders.
If you consider that very few people switch from the public to the private sector, the Government should set national pay bands for councils and force top salaries down.
I thought Conservatives believed in free market capitalism? I’m confused.
Absolutely. We believe in capitalism.
There is no free market there. People taking taxes by force of the law and giving it in largesse to themselves while whining they haven't got enough money and cutting services is not free market capitalism.
If it was a free market company that was slashing its services while paying over the odds to its Chief Executives a competitor that was leaner would arise and people would take their consumption and expenditure to that one. That can't happen with taxes though. Appeals to some 'market' are absurd.
A good Council leader would be one who lives within the budget they have, getting their best results possible and being paid accordingly. Not slashing services and being paid well over the odds.
You assume there is an infinite supply of people able to put up with crap from Councillors and willing to lead councils. My view is that there is a finite supply of such people, and an even smaller supply of competent and the demand for such competent people is far greater than the actual supply.
And what evidence do you have for that proposition?
My view is that it is a pampered, unaffordable luxury to be paying county staff more than the Prime Minister of the country - and if you can afford to do that then there hasn't been enough austerity yet.
I would suggest thinking about what the job entails and then deciding that. A lot of the highest paid chief executives are actually running 2 or more councils.
Oh and remember the only reason why the PM's pay is what it is, is because Gordon Brown pulled a fast one in the days before the 2010 election and hadn't taken the full amount before then.
Indeed but Blair was when the government was spending far, far too much money. At least from 2002 onwards.
Given that Councils have needed to cut their cloth since then they should have done that from the top. If they can't afford an executive so be it, say goodbye to them and hire someone they can afford. Brighton and Hove Albion have no divine right to afford the wages of Virgil van Dijk.
If Councils can afford to pay ludicrously high wages then their budgets are still full of largesse and can be cut further.
So you would prefer a council to be run by amateurs rather than professionals people. It's a view I suppose but personally I'm happy to pay people money if the money they cost is less than the money I save overall.
Professional people who can maintain services with the budget they have absolutely pay them what they want.
If they need to cut services then start from the top with their own wages. If that means getting in amateurs so be it.
You do realise that every council is cutting services because they physically can’t afford to keep them going? An extra £50k per year is NOTHING compared to the cost of these services. It’s almost like you have no concept of the budgets of local councils.
'£50k here, £30k there and soon we're talking real money'
The annual budget of Newcastle City Council is circa £900m I believe? Even if a Chief Executive was being paid £1m per year that’s only 0.001% of the budget.
Which can be the same for any expenditure. If you're taking that attitude with executive pay, where else are you taking that attitude?
EDIT: And you're out by a factor of 100!!
How do you work that out , 1/900 = .0011111111111
Agreed that is what it is. And what is 0.0011111111111 in percentage terms?
Or are you proposing that if a budget was 900 million and the executive paid themselves 900 million then they were only getting paid 1% of the budget?
Eh it is very simple , 900/900 = 1 which is 100% , 1/900 =0. 001 which is 0.001%
In this case, 0.001 is 0.1%, malcolm.
It was a good try though Nigel, unfortunately he did not fall for it.
We were going to make cuts - don't forget that the Labour manifesto in 2010 would have spent slightly less than the coalition did.
As I have been pointing out the problem wasn't cutting spending but what was cut and how.
When the Tory PM writes to his Tory council leader saying look here, why are you cutting front line services when we have made all this money available to you, the council leader details no you haven't, and number 10 responds yes we have that's the austerity problem in a single example.
It's not enough to say "we spent more on the NHS". What did you spend it on in the NHS? More money spent but savage cuts to provision shows money being syphoned off to more traditional Tory causes like consultants and lawyers and pointless layers of management.
The fact was that the Government didn't notice they had both increased the demands on the council and yet decreased the money available. As a simplified example to show the actual issue:-
Previously: Government Adult Social care £10m Council expenditure £10m Total available £20m
After reforms: Council Expenditure £15m Total available: £15m
Osbourne and Cameron's Government sat there and said we've given you £5m more a year but ignored the fact they are increased Council required Expenditure by £10m.
Are Councils required to pay themselves more than the Prime Minister gets paid?
Ever heard of market powers? Once one council starts paying over the odds to poach a leader from another council it becomes inevitable...
Guess what happened in the market for competent Council leaders.
If you consider that very few people switch from the public to the private sector, the Government should set national pay bands for councils and force top salaries down.
I thought Conservatives believed in free market capitalism? I’m confused.
Absolutely. We believe in capitalism.
There is no free market there. People taking taxes by force of the law and giving it in largesse to themselves while whining they haven't got enough money and cutting services is not free market capitalism.
If it was a free market company that was slashing its services while paying over the odds to its Chief Executives a competitor that was leaner would arise and people would take their consumption and expenditure to that one. That can't happen with taxes though. Appeals to some 'market' are absurd.
A good Council leader would be one who lives within the budget they have, getting their best results possible and being paid accordingly. Not slashing services and being paid well over the odds.
You assume there is an infinite supply of people able to put up with crap from Councillors and willing to lead councils. My view is that there is a finite supply of such people, and an even smaller supply of competent and the demand for such competent people is far greater than the actual supply.
And what evidence do you have for that proposition?
My view is that it is a pampered, unaffordable luxury to be paying county staff more than the Prime Minister of the country - and if you can afford to do that then there hasn't been enough austerity yet.
I would suggest thinking about what the job entails and then deciding that. A lot of the highest paid chief executives are actually running 2 or more councils.
Oh and remember the only reason why the PM's pay is what it is, is because Gordon Brown pulled a fast one in the days before the 2010 election and hadn't taken the full amount before then.
Yeah I personally think the Prime Minister is criminally underpaid. Should be at least hitting 500k. It is arguably the most important job in the country.
I would certainly raise the PM's pay to at least £162 000 which would put them in the top 1% of earners but at the same time the PM is still in a public service, public sector role not a private sector role creating wealth so I wouldn't go as far as paying them £500k which is even more than the US President gets paid
PM is a Top Job - none topper - and IMO the occupant should receive a hefty financial reward for doing it. Not sure about this current one though. Anything north of £75k looks excessive for Boris Johnson. He seems to be forever either electioneering, on holiday, off sick, or otherwise incommunicado and trying to sort out his private life. True or not, this is the perception of many shrewd observers. Perhaps it's harsh, I sense it might be, but perception really matters in politics - especially the perception of shrewd observers.
. Maybe, just maybe, our experts aren't as smart as they think they are.
That's possible. An alternative possibility is that their armchair critics aren't. A third possibility - likely to be the correct one - is that there are no simple answers to any of this, and that difficult decisions had to be taken on the basis of incomplete data.
FPT Last night I read a comment by TGOF666 re people putting their parents into care homes. I also saw some robust responses, but I did want to make my own response.
My mother got dementia not too long ago. She has since died. My father with our support decided she would definitely NOT go into care. We would look after her. I can only assume TGOF666 has not gone through this. Here are just a few examples of what can happen:
At 3 in the morning the washing up needs doing, while you are asleep, which includes the toaster.
Just wandering off any time of the day or night and not knowing where they are.
Start cooking on the hob and leaving it. Running taps and leaving them.
Attacking your husband (aged 90) with a walking stick because he is having an affair with the woman of the non existent other family living in the house.
Screaming at your son in front of his children 'why didn't you tell me my mother was a man' (she visualised my father as her mother). I was one of the few people who could sit down with my mother and explain what was going on, but this stumped me.
This requires 24 hour monitoring - when do you sleep?
Much to my surprise I was very impressed with the social care provided by social services and the Alzheimer society were magnificent. My mother ended up in a care home, which was also great and the staff magnificent - I don't know how they have the patience.
TGOF666 post was disgraceful.
Makes me wonder why you didn't put your kids up for adoption - they can be quite tiring too.
I've been thinking, and I can't identify a single negative outcome from the government knowing where I am at any one specific moment in time.
What about when some 10 quid/hour contractor presses the wrong button and your location data gets swapped for that of a regular at the Finsbury Park mosque who has a timeshare in Raqqa.
We were going to make cuts - don't forget that the Labour manifesto in 2010 would have spent slightly less than the coalition did.
As I have been pointing out the problem wasn't cutting spending but what was cut and how.
When the Tory PM writes to his Tory council leader saying look here, why are you cutting front line services when we have made all this money available to you, the council leader details no you haven't, and number 10 responds yes we have that's the austerity problem in a single example.
It's not enough to say "we spent more on the NHS". What did you spend it on in the NHS? More money spent but savage cuts to provision shows money being syphoned off to more traditional Tory causes like consultants and lawyers and pointless layers of management.
The fact was that the Government didn't notice they had both increased the demands on the council and yet decreased the money available. As a simplified example to show the actual issue:-
Previously: Government Adult Social care £10m Council expenditure £10m Total available £20m
After reforms: Council Expenditure £15m Total available: £15m
Osbourne and Cameron's Government sat there and said we've given you £5m more a year but ignored the fact they are increased Council required Expenditure by £10m.
Are Councils required to pay themselves more than the Prime Minister gets paid?
Ever heard of market powers? Once one council starts paying over the odds to poach a leader from another council it becomes inevitable...
Guess what happened in the market for competent Council leaders.
If you consider that very few people switch from the public to the private sector, the Government should set national pay bands for councils and force top salaries down.
I thought Conservatives believed in free market capitalism? I’m confused.
Absolutely. We believe in capitalism.
There is no free market there. People taking taxes by force of the law and giving it in largesse to themselves while whining they haven't got enough money and cutting services is not free market capitalism.
If it was a free market company that was slashing its services while paying over the odds to its Chief Executives a competitor that was leaner would arise and people would take their consumption and expenditure to that one. That can't happen with taxes though. Appeals to some 'market' are absurd.
A good Council leader would be one who lives within the budget they have, getting their best results possible and being paid accordingly. Not slashing services and being paid well over the odds.
You assume there is an infinite supply of people able to put up with crap from Councillors and willing to lead councils. My view is that there is a finite supply of such people, and an even smaller supply of competent and the demand for such competent people is far greater than the actual supply.
And what evidence do you have for that proposition?
My view is that it is a pampered, unaffordable luxury to be paying county staff more than the Prime Minister of the country - and if you can afford to do that then there hasn't been enough austerity yet.
I would suggest thinking about what the job entails and then deciding that. A lot of the highest paid chief executives are actually running 2 or more councils.
Oh and remember the only reason why the PM's pay is what it is, is because Gordon Brown pulled a fast one in the days before the 2010 election and hadn't taken the full amount before then.
Indeed but Blair was when the government was spending far, far too much money. At least from 2002 onwards.
Given that Councils have needed to cut their cloth since then they should have done that from the top. If they can't afford an executive so be it, say goodbye to them and hire someone they can afford. Brighton and Hove Albion have no divine right to afford the wages of Virgil van Dijk.
If Councils can afford to pay ludicrously high wages then their budgets are still full of largesse and can be cut further.
So you would prefer a council to be run by amateurs rather than professionals people. It's a view I suppose but personally I'm happy to pay people money if the money they cost is less than the money I save overall.
Professional people who can maintain services with the budget they have absolutely pay them what they want.
If they need to cut services then start from the top with their own wages. If that means getting in amateurs so be it.
You do realise that every council is cutting services because they physically can’t afford to keep them going? An extra £50k per year is NOTHING compared to the cost of these services. It’s almost like you have no concept of the budgets of local councils.
'£50k here, £30k there and soon we're talking real money'
The annual budget of Newcastle City Council is circa £900m I believe? Even if a Chief Executive was being paid £1m per year that’s only 0.001% of the budget.
Which can be the same for any expenditure. If you're taking that attitude with executive pay, where else are you taking that attitude?
EDIT: And you're out by a factor of 100!!
How do you work that out , 1/900 = .0011111111111
Oh dear.
1% of 900M is 9M. 0.1% is 0.9M, or 900K, less than the £1M you claim is 0.0011%
I can now only see the top of your spade
It would have fooled some , but unfortunately not Philip in this occasion. PS: I liked your response though
FPT Last night I read a comment by TGOF666 re people putting their parents into care homes. I also saw some robust responses, but I did want to make my own response.
My mother got dementia not too long ago. She has since died. My father with our support decided she would definitely NOT go into care. We would look after her. I can only assume TGOF666 has not gone through this. Here are just a few examples of what can happen:
At 3 in the morning the washing up needs doing, while you are asleep, which includes the toaster.
Just wandering off any time of the day or night and not knowing where they are.
Start cooking on the hob and leaving it. Running taps and leaving them.
Attacking your husband (aged 90) with a walking stick because he is having an affair with the woman of the non existent other family living in the house.
Screaming at your son in front of his children 'why didn't you tell me my mother was a man' (she visualised my father as her mother). I was one of the few people who could sit down with my mother and explain what was going on, but this stumped me.
This requires 24 hour monitoring - when do you sleep?
Much to my surprise I was very impressed with the social care provided by social services and the Alzheimer society were magnificent. My mother ended up in a care home, which was also great and the staff magnificent - I don't know how they have the patience.
TGOF666 post was disgraceful.
Makes me wonder why you didn't put your kids up for adoption - they can be quite tiring too.
Vox pops on the app. People more willing to install it if it were Apple or Google. Much less likely to do so atm. Will just go about their business without the app and wait for an Apple or Google version.
I think that's absolute bovine manure as many vox pops are and probably after a leading question.
For one thing Apple and Google aren't inventing their own versions. They're doing an API, each country still needs to do its own version.
The app when its launched will be an NHS branded app. We know what people in this country think of the NHS and I don't believe a non-NHS app would get more downloads. "Download the NHS app to protect the NHS and save lives" is a powerful message that will resonate.
They can brand it whatever they want, the calculation people have made is that Google and Apple already know their location all the time anyway. This is letting the government know, that's a step a lot of people just won't take, NHS branding or not. I expect we'll never get near the 80% or whatever is necessary.
Can I let you in on a secret?
The government can identify your location from your phone already anyway.
Yes, by cell tower triangulation. But that's in real time, inaccurate and needs the target to be moving at more than walking pace. It's not the same thing.
It pretty much is. If the government wants to track you then this app will not be how they do it. There's already tremendous infrastructure involved in tracking persons of interest - more than most people realise.
If you wish to go off the grid then what app you have on your phone won't matter.
I've been thinking, and I can't identify a single negative outcome from the government knowing where I am at any one specific moment in time.
That's because they haven't yet put you on the list of the guilty.
See China, where someone who writes a critical online comment on social media finds themselves banned from public transport. Orwell's writing was intended to be a warning to future governments, not an instruction manual.
Meh. Seems unlikely.
Right now and for the foreseeable future, I'd rather they knew where everyone was than no-one.
We were going to make cuts - don't forget that the Labour manifesto in 2010 would have spent slightly less than the coalition did.
As I have been pointing out the problem wasn't cutting spending but what was cut and how.
When the Tory PM writes to his Tory council leader saying look here, why are you cutting front line services when we have made all this money available to you, the council leader details no you haven't, and number 10 responds yes we have that's the austerity problem in a single example.
It's not enough to say "we spent more on the NHS". What did you spend it on in the NHS? More money spent but savage cuts to provision shows money being syphoned off to more traditional Tory causes like consultants and lawyers and pointless layers of management.
The fact was that the Government didn't notice they had both increased the demands on the council and yet decreased the money available. As a simplified example to show the actual issue:-
Previously: Government Adult Social care £10m Council expenditure £10m Total available £20m
After reforms: Council Expenditure £15m Total available: £15m
Osbourne and Cameron's Government sat there and said we've given you £5m more a year but ignored the fact they are increased Council required Expenditure by £10m.
Are Councils required to pay themselves more than the Prime Minister gets paid?
Ever heard of market powers? Once one council starts paying over the odds to poach a leader from another council it becomes inevitable...
Guess what happened in the market for competent Council leaders.
If you consider that very few people switch from the public to the private sector, the Government should set national pay bands for councils and force top salaries down.
I thought Conservatives believed in free market capitalism? I’m confused.
Absolutely. We believe in capitalism.
There is no free market there. People taking taxes by force of the law and giving it in largesse to themselves while whining they haven't got enough money and cutting services is not free market capitalism.
If it was a free market company that was slashing its services while paying over the odds to its Chief Executives a competitor that was leaner would arise and people would take their consumption and expenditure to that one. That can't happen with taxes though. Appeals to some 'market' are absurd.
A good Council leader would be one who lives within the budget they have, getting their best results possible and being paid accordingly. Not slashing services and being paid well over the odds.
You assume there is an infinite supply of people able to put up with crap from Councillors and willing to lead councils. My view is that there is a finite supply of such people, and an even smaller supply of competent and the demand for such competent people is far greater than the actual supply.
And what evidence do you have for that proposition?
My view is that it is a pampered, unaffordable luxury to be paying county staff more than the Prime Minister of the country - and if you can afford to do that then there hasn't been enough austerity yet.
I would suggest thinking about what the job entails and then deciding that. A lot of the highest paid chief executives are actually running 2 or more councils.
Oh and remember the only reason why the PM's pay is what it is, is because Gordon Brown pulled a fast one in the days before the 2010 election and hadn't taken the full amount before then.
Yeah I personally think the Prime Minister is criminally underpaid. Should be at least hitting 500k. It is arguably the most important job in the country.
I would certainly raise the PM's pay to at least £162 000 which would put them in the top 1% of earners but at the same time the PM is still in a public service, public sector role not a private sector role creating wealth so I wouldn't go as far as paying them £500k which is even more than the US President gets paid
PM is a Top Job - none topper - and IMO the occupant should receive a hefty financial reward for doing it. Not sure about this current one though. Anything north of £75k looks excessive for Boris Johnson. He seems to be forever either electioneering, on holiday, off sick, or otherwise incommunicado and trying to sort out his private life. True or not, this is the perception of many shrewd observers. Perhaps it's harsh, I sense it might be, but perception really matters in politics - especially the perception of shrewd observers.
"Shrewd"observers like £250,000 Laura K?
I'd say the PM deserves his £150,000 salary way more than the BBC's political editor deserves her 67% higher one, judging by their relative performances over the past few weeks...
FPT Last night I read a comment by TGOF666 re people putting their parents into care homes. I also saw some robust responses, but I did want to make my own response.
My mother got dementia not too long ago. She has since died. My father with our support decided she would definitely NOT go into care. We would look after her. I can only assume TGOF666 has not gone through this. Here are just a few examples of what can happen:
At 3 in the morning the washing up needs doing, while you are asleep, which includes the toaster.
Just wandering off any time of the day or night and not knowing where they are.
Start cooking on the hob and leaving it. Running taps and leaving them.
Attacking your husband (aged 90) with a walking stick because he is having an affair with the woman of the non existent other family living in the house.
Screaming at your son in front of his children 'why didn't you tell me my mother was a man' (she visualised my father as her mother). I was one of the few people who could sit down with my mother and explain what was going on, but this stumped me.
This requires 24 hour monitoring - when do you sleep?
Much to my surprise I was very impressed with the social care provided by social services and the Alzheimer society were magnificent. My mother ended up in a care home, which was also great and the staff magnificent - I don't know how they have the patience.
TGOF666 post was disgraceful.
Makes me wonder why you didn't put your kids up for adoption - they can be quite tiring too.
You are a complete bastard.
My point was - using a care home is a choice.
If you are content to take the benefits, then accept the risks.
This Alastair Haimes makes two contradictory claims.
1. If you work back from an 8th April peak through an average 23 days from infection to death you get to 15th(?) March as time of maximum infection. This before lockdown and therefore lockdown had no useful effect [yesterday's claim] 2. Any excess deaths after 8th April must therefore be due to lockdown and not the disease itself [today's claim]
Actually what today's ONS figures show is that peak death happened sometime after 17th April. Working back 23 days takes us to peak infections some time after 22nd April. Lockdown started 23rd.
Vox pops on the app. People more willing to install it if it were Apple or Google. Much less likely to do so atm. Will just go about their business without the app and wait for an Apple or Google version.
I think that's absolute bovine manure as many vox pops are and probably after a leading question.
For one thing Apple and Google aren't inventing their own versions. They're doing an API, each country still needs to do its own version.
The app when its launched will be an NHS branded app. We know what people in this country think of the NHS and I don't believe a non-NHS app would get more downloads. "Download the NHS app to protect the NHS and save lives" is a powerful message that will resonate.
They can brand it whatever they want, the calculation people have made is that Google and Apple already know their location all the time anyway. This is letting the government know, that's a step a lot of people just won't take, NHS branding or not. I expect we'll never get near the 80% or whatever is necessary.
Can I let you in on a secret?
The government can identify your location from your phone already anyway.
Yes, by cell tower triangulation. But that's in real time, inaccurate and needs the target to be moving at more than walking pace. It's not the same thing.
It pretty much is. If the government wants to track you then this app will not be how they do it. There's already tremendous infrastructure involved in tracking persons of interest - more than most people realise.
If you wish to go off the grid then what app you have on your phone won't matter.
I've been thinking, and I can't identify a single negative outcome from the government knowing where I am at any one specific moment in time.
That's because they haven't yet put you on the list of the guilty.
See China, where someone who writes a critical online comment on social media finds themselves banned from public transport. Orwell's writing was intended to be a warning to future governments, not an instruction manual.
Where does our Gov't suddenly get the surge of competence needed to put in place such a measure even if it wanted to from ?
FPT Last night I read a comment by TGOF666 re people putting their parents into care homes. I also saw some robust responses, but I did want to make my own response.
My mother got dementia not too long ago. She has since died. My father with our support decided she would definitely NOT go into care. We would look after her. I can only assume TGOF666 has not gone through this. Here are just a few examples of what can happen:
At 3 in the morning the washing up needs doing, while you are asleep, which includes the toaster.
Just wandering off any time of the day or night and not knowing where they are.
Start cooking on the hob and leaving it. Running taps and leaving them.
Attacking your husband (aged 90) with a walking stick because he is having an affair with the woman of the non existent other family living in the house.
Screaming at your son in front of his children 'why didn't you tell me my mother was a man' (she visualised my father as her mother). I was one of the few people who could sit down with my mother and explain what was going on, but this stumped me.
This requires 24 hour monitoring - when do you sleep?
Much to my surprise I was very impressed with the social care provided by social services and the Alzheimer society were magnificent. My mother ended up in a care home, which was also great and the staff magnificent - I don't know how they have the patience.
TGOF666 post was disgraceful.
Makes me wonder why you didn't put your kids up for adoption - they can be quite tiring too.
Current Italy deaths, 29000+ Current UK deaths, 28000+
He started off with pushing "It's no worse than the average flu". He's never said he was wrong. He spent weeks torturing data to make it no worse than the flu. Then once the amount of deaths got too bad he seamlessly transitioned to Rt and lockdown effect, which he has now spent weeks torturing data to make lockdown have no effect.
Vox pops on the app. People more willing to install it if it were Apple or Google. Much less likely to do so atm. Will just go about their business without the app and wait for an Apple or Google version.
I think that's absolute bovine manure as many vox pops are and probably after a leading question.
For one thing Apple and Google aren't inventing their own versions. They're doing an API, each country still needs to do its own version.
The app when its launched will be an NHS branded app. We know what people in this country think of the NHS and I don't believe a non-NHS app would get more downloads. "Download the NHS app to protect the NHS and save lives" is a powerful message that will resonate.
They can brand it whatever they want, the calculation people have made is that Google and Apple already know their location all the time anyway. This is letting the government know, that's a step a lot of people just won't take, NHS branding or not. I expect we'll never get near the 80% or whatever is necessary.
Can I let you in on a secret?
The government can identify your location from your phone already anyway.
Yes, by cell tower triangulation. But that's in real time, inaccurate and needs the target to be moving at more than walking pace. It's not the same thing.
It pretty much is. If the government wants to track you then this app will not be how they do it. There's already tremendous infrastructure involved in tracking persons of interest - more than most people realise.
If you wish to go off the grid then what app you have on your phone won't matter.
I've been thinking, and I can't identify a single negative outcome from the government knowing where I am at any one specific moment in time.
That's because they haven't yet put you on the list of the guilty.
See China, where someone who writes a critical online comment on social media finds themselves banned from public transport. Orwell's writing was intended to be a warning to future governments, not an instruction manual.
Meh. Seems unlikely.
Right now and for the foreseeable future, I'd rather they knew where everyone was than no-one.
The foreseeable future. You have answered your own question right there.
As Frank Kitson wrote, on warfare, the next conflict will be unforseeable.
FPT Last night I read a comment by TGOF666 re people putting their parents into care homes. I also saw some robust responses, but I did want to make my own response.
My mother got dementia not too long ago. She has since died. My father with our support decided she would definitely NOT go into care. We would look after her. I can only assume TGOF666 has not gone through this. Here are just a few examples of what can happen:
At 3 in the morning the washing up needs doing, while you are asleep, which includes the toaster.
Just wandering off any time of the day or night and not knowing where they are.
Start cooking on the hob and leaving it. Running taps and leaving them.
Attacking your husband (aged 90) with a walking stick because he is having an affair with the woman of the non existent other family living in the house.
Screaming at your son in front of his children 'why didn't you tell me my mother was a man' (she visualised my father as her mother). I was one of the few people who could sit down with my mother and explain what was going on, but this stumped me.
This requires 24 hour monitoring - when do you sleep?
Much to my surprise I was very impressed with the social care provided by social services and the Alzheimer society were magnificent. My mother ended up in a care home, which was also great and the staff magnificent - I don't know how they have the patience.
TGOF666 post was disgraceful.
Makes me wonder why you didn't put your kids up for adoption - they can be quite tiring too.
FPT Last night I read a comment by TGOF666 re people putting their parents into care homes. I also saw some robust responses, but I did want to make my own response.
My mother got dementia not too long ago. She has since died. My father with our support decided she would definitely NOT go into care. We would look after her. I can only assume TGOF666 has not gone through this. Here are just a few examples of what can happen:
At 3 in the morning the washing up needs doing, while you are asleep, which includes the toaster.
Just wandering off any time of the day or night and not knowing where they are.
Start cooking on the hob and leaving it. Running taps and leaving them.
Attacking your husband (aged 90) with a walking stick because he is having an affair with the woman of the non existent other family living in the house.
Screaming at your son in front of his children 'why didn't you tell me my mother was a man' (she visualised my father as her mother). I was one of the few people who could sit down with my mother and explain what was going on, but this stumped me.
This requires 24 hour monitoring - when do you sleep?
Much to my surprise I was very impressed with the social care provided by social services and the Alzheimer society were magnificent. My mother ended up in a care home, which was also great and the staff magnificent - I don't know how they have the patience.
TGOF666 post was disgraceful.
Makes me wonder why you didn't put your kids up for adoption - they can be quite tiring too.
While I don't wish Alzheimers on your parents I actually do hope you discover the hell that kjh had to go through.
A lot of people try to look after parents with dementia, it really is a completely impossible and thankless task (as the person forgets all about you) and giving up when you finally are convinced that you have no choice is heartbreaking
We were going to make cuts - don't forget that the Labour manifesto in 2010 would have spent slightly less than the coalition did.
As I have been pointing out the problem wasn't cutting spending but what was cut and how.
When the Tory PM writes to his Tory council leader saying look here, why are you cutting front line services when we have made all this money available to you, the council leader details no you haven't, and number 10 responds yes we have that's the austerity problem in a single example.
It's not enough to say "we spent more on the NHS". What did you spend it on in the NHS? More money spent but savage cuts to provision shows money being syphoned off to more traditional Tory causes like consultants and lawyers and pointless layers of management.
The fact was that the Government didn't notice they had both increased the demands on the council and yet decreased the money available. As a simplified example to show the actual issue:-
Previously: Government Adult Social care £10m Council expenditure £10m Total available £20m
After reforms: Council Expenditure £15m Total available: £15m
Osbourne and Cameron's Government sat there and said we've given you £5m more a year but ignored the fact they are increased Council required Expenditure by £10m.
Are Councils required to pay themselves more than the Prime Minister gets paid?
Ever heard of market powers? Once one council starts paying over the odds to poach a leader from another council it becomes inevitable...
Guess what happened in the market for competent Council leaders.
If you consider that very few people switch from the public to the private sector, the Government should set national pay bands for councils and force top salaries down.
I thought Conservatives believed in free market capitalism? I’m confused.
Absolutely. We believe in capitalism.
There is no free market there. People taking taxes by force of the law and giving it in largesse to themselves while whining they haven't got enough money and cutting services is not free market capitalism.
If it was a free market company that was slashing its services while paying over the odds to its Chief Executives a competitor that was leaner would arise and people would take their consumption and expenditure to that one. That can't happen with taxes though. Appeals to some 'market' are absurd.
A good Council leader would be one who lives within the budget they have, getting their best results possible and being paid accordingly. Not slashing services and being paid well over the odds.
You assume there is an infinite supply of people able to put up with crap from Councillors and willing to lead councils. My view is that there is a finite supply of such people, and an even smaller supply of competent and the demand for such competent people is far greater than the actual supply.
And what evidence do you have for that proposition?
My view is that it is a pampered, unaffordable luxury to be paying county staff more than the Prime Minister of the country - and if you can afford to do that then there hasn't been enough austerity yet.
I would suggest thinking about what the job entails and then deciding that. A lot of the highest paid chief executives are actually running 2 or more councils.
Oh and remember the only reason why the PM's pay is what it is, is because Gordon Brown pulled a fast one in the days before the 2010 election and hadn't taken the full amount before then.
Yeah I personally think the Prime Minister is criminally underpaid. Should be at least hitting 500k. It is arguably the most important job in the country.
I would certainly raise the PM's pay to at least £162 000 which would put them in the top 1% of earners but at the same time the PM is still in a public service, public sector role not a private sector role creating wealth so I wouldn't go as far as paying them £500k which is even more than the US President gets paid
PM is a Top Job - none topper - and IMO the occupant should receive a hefty financial reward for doing it. Not sure about this current one though. Anything north of £75k looks excessive for Boris Johnson. He seems to be forever either electioneering, on holiday, off sick, or otherwise incommunicado and trying to sort out his private life. True or not, this is the perception of many shrewd observers. Perhaps it's harsh, I sense it might be, but perception really matters in politics - especially the perception of shrewd observers.
"Shrewd"observers like £250,000 Laura K?
I'd say the PM deserves his £150,000 salary way more than the BBC's political editor deserves her 67% higher one, judging by their relative performances over the past few weeks...
Point is though that both are overpaid , just BBC salaries are way out of whack and they should be forced to make their own money rather than public being forced to fund these fcukwits. Boris could do something useful like limiting BBC salaries to under 100K whilst it is publicly funded.
We were going to make cuts - don't forget that the Labour manifesto in 2010 would have spent slightly less than the coalition did.
As I have been pointing out the problem wasn't cutting spending but what was cut and how.
When the Tory PM writes to his Tory council leader saying look here, why are you cutting front line services when we have made all this money available to you, the council leader details no you haven't, and number 10 responds yes we have that's the austerity problem in a single example.
It's not enough to say "we spent more on the NHS". What did you spend it on in the NHS? More money spent but savage cuts to provision shows money being syphoned off to more traditional Tory causes like consultants and lawyers and pointless layers of management.
The fact was that the Government didn't notice they had both increased the demands on the council and yet decreased the money available. As a simplified example to show the actual issue:-
Previously: Government Adult Social care £10m Council expenditure £10m Total available £20m
After reforms: Council Expenditure £15m Total available: £15m
Osbourne and Cameron's Government sat there and said we've given you £5m more a year but ignored the fact they are increased Council required Expenditure by £10m.
Are Councils required to pay themselves more than the Prime Minister gets paid?
Ever heard of market powers? Once one council starts paying over the odds to poach a leader from another council it becomes inevitable...
Guess what happened in the market for competent Council leaders.
If you consider that very few people switch from the public to the private sector, the Government should set national pay bands for councils and force top salaries down.
I thought Conservatives believed in free market capitalism? I’m confused.
Absolutely. We believe in capitalism.
There is no free market there. People taking taxes by force of the law and giving it in largesse to themselves while whining they haven't got enough money and cutting services is not free market capitalism.
If it was a free market company that was slashing its services while paying over the odds to its Chief Executives a competitor that was leaner would arise and people would take their consumption and expenditure to that one. That can't happen with taxes though. Appeals to some 'market' are absurd.
A good Council leader would be one who lives within the budget they have, getting their best results possible and being paid accordingly. Not slashing services and being paid well over the odds.
You assume there is an infinite supply of people able to put up with crap from Councillors and willing to lead councils. My view is that there is a finite supply of such people, and an even smaller supply of competent and the demand for such competent people is far greater than the actual supply.
And what evidence do you have for that proposition?
My view is that it is a pampered, unaffordable luxury to be paying county staff more than the Prime Minister of the country - and if you can afford to do that then there hasn't been enough austerity yet.
I would suggest thinking about what the job entails and then deciding that. A lot of the highest paid chief executives are actually running 2 or more councils.
Oh and remember the only reason why the PM's pay is what it is, is because Gordon Brown pulled a fast one in the days before the 2010 election and hadn't taken the full amount before then.
Yeah I personally think the Prime Minister is criminally underpaid. Should be at least hitting 500k. It is arguably the most important job in the country.
I would certainly raise the PM's pay to at least £162 000 which would put them in the top 1% of earners but at the same time the PM is still in a public service, public sector role not a private sector role creating wealth so I wouldn't go as far as paying them £500k which is even more than the US President gets paid
Funny that the private sector wealth creators seem to be struggling at the moment. Almost like they need some kind of stable, open society to operate in.
We were going to make cuts - don't forget that the Labour manifesto in 2010 would have spent slightly less than the coalition did.
As I have been pointing out the problem wasn't cutting spending but what was cut and how.
When the Tory PM writes to his Tory council leader saying look here, why are you cutting front line services when we have made all this money available to you, the council leader details no you haven't, and number 10 responds yes we have that's the austerity problem in a single example.
It's not enough to say "we spent more on the NHS". What did you spend it on in the NHS? More money spent but savage cuts to provision shows money being syphoned off to more traditional Tory causes like consultants and lawyers and pointless layers of management.
The fact was that the Government didn't notice they had both increased the demands on the council and yet decreased the money available. As a simplified example to show the actual issue:-
Previously: Government Adult Social care £10m Council expenditure £10m Total available £20m
After reforms: Council Expenditure £15m Total available: £15m
Osbourne and Cameron's Government sat there and said we've given you £5m more a year but ignored the fact they are increased Council required Expenditure by £10m.
Are Councils required to pay themselves more than the Prime Minister gets paid?
Ever heard of market powers? Once one council starts paying over the odds to poach a leader from another council it becomes inevitable...
Guess what happened in the market for competent Council leaders.
If you consider that very few people switch from the public to the private sector, the Government should set national pay bands for councils and force top salaries down.
I thought Conservatives believed in free market capitalism? I’m confused.
Absolutely. We believe in capitalism.
There is no free market there. People taking taxes by force of the law and giving it in largesse to themselves while whining they haven't got enough money and cutting services is not free market capitalism.
If it was a free market company that was slashing its services while paying over the odds to its Chief Executives a competitor that was leaner would arise and people would take their consumption and expenditure to that one. That can't happen with taxes though. Appeals to some 'market' are absurd.
A good Council leader would be one who lives within the budget they have, getting their best results possible and being paid accordingly. Not slashing services and being paid well over the odds.
You assume there is an infinite supply of people able to put up with crap from Councillors and willing to lead councils. My view is that there is a finite supply of such people, and an even smaller supply of competent and the demand for such competent people is far greater than the actual supply.
And what evidence do you have for that proposition?
My view is that it is a pampered, unaffordable luxury to be paying county staff more than the Prime Minister of the country - and if you can afford to do that then there hasn't been enough austerity yet.
I would suggest thinking about what the job entails and then deciding that. A lot of the highest paid chief executives are actually running 2 or more councils.
Oh and remember the only reason why the PM's pay is what it is, is because Gordon Brown pulled a fast one in the days before the 2010 election and hadn't taken the full amount before then.
Yeah I personally think the Prime Minister is criminally underpaid. Should be at least hitting 500k. It is arguably the most important job in the country.
I would certainly raise the PM's pay to at least £162 000 which would put them in the top 1% of earners but at the same time the PM is still in a public service, public sector role not a private sector role creating wealth so I wouldn't go as far as paying them £500k which is even more than the US President gets paid
PM is a Top Job - none topper - and IMO the occupant should receive a hefty financial reward for doing it. Not sure about this current one though. Anything north of £75k looks excessive for Boris Johnson. He seems to be forever either electioneering, on holiday, off sick, or otherwise incommunicado and trying to sort out his private life. True or not, this is the perception of many shrewd observers. Perhaps it's harsh, I sense it might be, but perception really matters in politics - especially the perception of shrewd observers.
The lazy slob will get gazillions for his book when he is booted out.
Vox pops on the app. People more willing to install it if it were Apple or Google. Much less likely to do so atm. Will just go about their business without the app and wait for an Apple or Google version.
I think that's absolute bovine manure as many vox pops are and probably after a leading question.
For one thing Apple and Google aren't inventing their own versions. They're doing an API, each country still needs to do its own version.
The app when its launched will be an NHS branded app. We know what people in this country think of the NHS and I don't believe a non-NHS app would get more downloads. "Download the NHS app to protect the NHS and save lives" is a powerful message that will resonate.
They can brand it whatever they want, the calculation people have made is that Google and Apple already know their location all the time anyway. This is letting the government know, that's a step a lot of people just won't take, NHS branding or not. I expect we'll never get near the 80% or whatever is necessary.
Can I let you in on a secret?
The government can identify your location from your phone already anyway.
Yes, by cell tower triangulation. But that's in real time, inaccurate and needs the target to be moving at more than walking pace. It's not the same thing.
It pretty much is. If the government wants to track you then this app will not be how they do it. There's already tremendous infrastructure involved in tracking persons of interest - more than most people realise.
If you wish to go off the grid then what app you have on your phone won't matter.
I've been thinking, and I can't identify a single negative outcome from the government knowing where I am at any one specific moment in time.
That's because they haven't yet put you on the list of the guilty.
See China, where someone who writes a critical online comment on social media finds themselves banned from public transport. Orwell's writing was intended to be a warning to future governments, not an instruction manual.
Where does our Gov't suddenly get the surge of competence needed to put in place such a measure even if it wanted to from ?
If they're doing it incompetently then you should be even more worried you'll *incorrectly* find yourself "un-personed", and be utterly unable to do anything about it.
Vox pops on the app. People more willing to install it if it were Apple or Google. Much less likely to do so atm. Will just go about their business without the app and wait for an Apple or Google version.
I think that's absolute bovine manure as many vox pops are and probably after a leading question.
For one thing Apple and Google aren't inventing their own versions. They're doing an API, each country still needs to do its own version.
The app when its launched will be an NHS branded app. We know what people in this country think of the NHS and I don't believe a non-NHS app would get more downloads. "Download the NHS app to protect the NHS and save lives" is a powerful message that will resonate.
They can brand it whatever they want, the calculation people have made is that Google and Apple already know their location all the time anyway. This is letting the government know, that's a step a lot of people just won't take, NHS branding or not. I expect we'll never get near the 80% or whatever is necessary.
Can I let you in on a secret?
The government can identify your location from your phone already anyway.
Yes, by cell tower triangulation. But that's in real time, inaccurate and needs the target to be moving at more than walking pace. It's not the same thing.
It pretty much is. If the government wants to track you then this app will not be how they do it. There's already tremendous infrastructure involved in tracking persons of interest - more than most people realise.
If you wish to go off the grid then what app you have on your phone won't matter.
I've been thinking, and I can't identify a single negative outcome from the government knowing where I am at any one specific moment in time.
That's because they haven't yet put you on the list of the guilty.
See China, where someone who writes a critical online comment on social media finds themselves banned from public transport. Orwell's writing was intended to be a warning to future governments, not an instruction manual.
Meh. Seems unlikely.
Right now and for the foreseeable future, I'd rather they knew where everyone was than no-one.
The foreseeable future. You have answered your own question right there.
As Frank Kitson wrote, on warfare, the next conflict will be unforseeable.
Well, I tend to change my phone every two years or so and that's next likely within 12 months. I'm pretty relaxed about a privacy invasion I don't care about that will expire long before it could conceivably matter. I just won't reinstall the app.
FPT Last night I read a comment by TGOF666 re people putting their parents into care homes. I also saw some robust responses, but I did want to make my own response.
My mother got dementia not too long ago. She has since died. My father with our support decided she would definitely NOT go into care. We would look after her. I can only assume TGOF666 has not gone through this. Here are just a few examples of what can happen:
At 3 in the morning the washing up needs doing, while you are asleep, which includes the toaster.
Just wandering off any time of the day or night and not knowing where they are.
Start cooking on the hob and leaving it. Running taps and leaving them.
Attacking your husband (aged 90) with a walking stick because he is having an affair with the woman of the non existent other family living in the house.
Screaming at your son in front of his children 'why didn't you tell me my mother was a man' (she visualised my father as her mother). I was one of the few people who could sit down with my mother and explain what was going on, but this stumped me.
This requires 24 hour monitoring - when do you sleep?
Much to my surprise I was very impressed with the social care provided by social services and the Alzheimer society were magnificent. My mother ended up in a care home, which was also great and the staff magnificent - I don't know how they have the patience.
TGOF666 post was disgraceful.
Makes me wonder why you didn't put your kids up for adoption - they can be quite tiring too.
You are a complete bastard.
My point was - using a care home is a choice.
If you are content to take the benefits, then accept the risks.
I think the point being made (with regard to Alzheimer`s) is that using a care home is NOT a choice.
FPT Last night I read a comment by TGOF666 re people putting their parents into care homes. I also saw some robust responses, but I did want to make my own response.
My mother got dementia not too long ago. She has since died. My father with our support decided she would definitely NOT go into care. We would look after her. I can only assume TGOF666 has not gone through this. Here are just a few examples of what can happen:
At 3 in the morning the washing up needs doing, while you are asleep, which includes the toaster.
Just wandering off any time of the day or night and not knowing where they are.
Start cooking on the hob and leaving it. Running taps and leaving them.
Attacking your husband (aged 90) with a walking stick because he is having an affair with the woman of the non existent other family living in the house.
Screaming at your son in front of his children 'why didn't you tell me my mother was a man' (she visualised my father as her mother). I was one of the few people who could sit down with my mother and explain what was going on, but this stumped me.
This requires 24 hour monitoring - when do you sleep?
Much to my surprise I was very impressed with the social care provided by social services and the Alzheimer society were magnificent. My mother ended up in a care home, which was also great and the staff magnificent - I don't know how they have the patience.
TGOF666 post was disgraceful.
No-one who hasn't gone through something like this, or seen it first hand, has much an idea what it's like. And, the irrational behaviour is spasmodic and unpredictable.
The family, as kjh"s, start off with the very best of intentions, but the situation becomes impossible.
Thank you for that OKC. I had no idea about the early stages. It was a shock. One day we had several neighbours out with one incident. I spent much of the day with my Mum in a neighbours house trying to coax her back.
I'm not sure why but she never confused me with anyone else. My Dad was both another imaginary man who lived in the house and my mothers mother (who bizarrely my mother never knew as she died when she was a child).
On another occasion when my Dad was ill in bed, my mother was distressed because I took my Dads mail to this stranger and was worried how the stranger was going to get home. It was all just bizarre.
There were some funny moments. One day she said to my father (and the imaginary man) you can't both go out wearing the same pullover.
My Dad was in tears with it all just emotionally and physically drained.
FPT Last night I read a comment by TGOF666 re people putting their parents into care homes. I also saw some robust responses, but I did want to make my own response.
My mother got dementia not too long ago. She has since died. My father with our support decided she would definitely NOT go into care. We would look after her. I can only assume TGOF666 has not gone through this. Here are just a few examples of what can happen:
At 3 in the morning the washing up needs doing, while you are asleep, which includes the toaster.
Just wandering off any time of the day or night and not knowing where they are.
Start cooking on the hob and leaving it. Running taps and leaving them.
Attacking your husband (aged 90) with a walking stick because he is having an affair with the woman of the non existent other family living in the house.
Screaming at your son in front of his children 'why didn't you tell me my mother was a man' (she visualised my father as her mother). I was one of the few people who could sit down with my mother and explain what was going on, but this stumped me.
This requires 24 hour monitoring - when do you sleep?
Much to my surprise I was very impressed with the social care provided by social services and the Alzheimer society were magnificent. My mother ended up in a care home, which was also great and the staff magnificent - I don't know how they have the patience.
TGOF666 post was disgraceful.
Makes me wonder why you didn't put your kids up for adoption - they can be quite tiring too.
While I don't wish Alzheimers on your parents I actually do hope you discover the hell that kjh had to go through.
A lot of people try to look after parents with dementia, it really is a completely impossible and thankless task (as the person forgets all about you) and giving up when you finally are convinced that you have no choice is heartbreaking
I suggest that TGOF666 finds some "lazy" people with parents who have dementia and shows them how it's done. Since it is so easy, apparently.
We were going to make cuts - don't forget that the Labour manifesto in 2010 would have spent slightly less than the coalition did.
As I have been pointing out the problem wasn't cutting spending but what was cut and how.
When the Tory PM writes to his Tory council leader saying look here, why are you cutting front line services when we have made all this money available to you, the council leader details no you haven't, and number 10 responds yes we have that's the austerity problem in a single example.
It's not enough to say "we spent more on the NHS". What did you spend it on in the NHS? More money spent but savage cuts to provision shows money being syphoned off to more traditional Tory causes like consultants and lawyers and pointless layers of management.
The fact was that the Government didn't notice they had both increased the demands on the council and yet decreased the money available. As a simplified example to show the actual issue:-
Previously: Government Adult Social care £10m Council expenditure £10m Total available £20m
After reforms: Council Expenditure £15m Total available: £15m
Osbourne and Cameron's Government sat there and said we've given you £5m more a year but ignored the fact they are increased Council required Expenditure by £10m.
Are Councils required to pay themselves more than the Prime Minister gets paid?
Ever heard of market powers? Once one council starts paying over the odds to poach a leader from another council it becomes inevitable...
Guess what happened in the market for competent Council leaders.
If you consider that very few people switch from the public to the private sector, the Government should set national pay bands for councils and force top salaries down.
I thought Conservatives believed in free market capitalism? I’m confused.
Absolutely. We believe in capitalism.
There is no free market there. People taking taxes by force of the law and giving it in largesse to themselves while whining they haven't got enough money and cutting services is not free market capitalism.
If it was a free market company that was slashing its services while paying over the odds to its Chief Executives a competitor that was leaner would arise and people would take their consumption and expenditure to that one. That can't happen with taxes though. Appeals to some 'market' are absurd.
A good Council leader would be one who lives within the budget they have, getting their best results possible and being paid accordingly. Not slashing services and being paid well over the odds.
You assume there is an infinite supply of people able to put up with crap from Councillors and willing to lead councils. My view is that there is a finite supply of such people, and an even smaller supply of competent and the demand for such competent people is far greater than the actual supply.
And what evidence do you have for that proposition?
My view is that it is a pampered, unaffordable luxury to be paying county staff more than the Prime Minister of the country - and if you can afford to do that then there hasn't been enough austerity yet.
I would suggest thinking about what the job entails and then deciding that. A lot of the highest paid chief executives are actually running 2 or more councils.
Oh and remember the only reason why the PM's pay is what it is, is because Gordon Brown pulled a fast one in the days before the 2010 election and hadn't taken the full amount before then.
Yeah I personally think the Prime Minister is criminally underpaid. Should be at least hitting 500k. It is arguably the most important job in the country.
I would certainly raise the PM's pay to at least £162 000 which would put them in the top 1% of earners but at the same time the PM is still in a public service, public sector role not a private sector role creating wealth so I wouldn't go as far as paying them £500k which is even more than the US President gets paid
PM is a Top Job - none topper - and IMO the occupant should receive a hefty financial reward for doing it. Not sure about this current one though. Anything north of £75k looks excessive for Boris Johnson. He seems to be forever either electioneering, on holiday, off sick, or otherwise incommunicado and trying to sort out his private life. True or not, this is the perception of many shrewd observers. Perhaps it's harsh, I sense it might be, but perception really matters in politics - especially the perception of shrewd observers.
"Shrewd"observers like £250,000 Laura K?
I'd say the PM deserves his £150,000 salary way more than the BBC's political editor deserves her 67% higher one, judging by their relative performances over the past few weeks...
During the election Kuenssberg's twitter feed often resembled an arm of CCHQ so I will not be leaping to her defence.
FPT Last night I read a comment by TGOF666 re people putting their parents into care homes. I also saw some robust responses, but I did want to make my own response.
My mother got dementia not too long ago. She has since died. My father with our support decided she would definitely NOT go into care. We would look after her. I can only assume TGOF666 has not gone through this. Here are just a few examples of what can happen:
At 3 in the morning the washing up needs doing, while you are asleep, which includes the toaster.
Just wandering off any time of the day or night and not knowing where they are.
Start cooking on the hob and leaving it. Running taps and leaving them.
Attacking your husband (aged 90) with a walking stick because he is having an affair with the woman of the non existent other family living in the house.
Screaming at your son in front of his children 'why didn't you tell me my mother was a man' (she visualised my father as her mother). I was one of the few people who could sit down with my mother and explain what was going on, but this stumped me.
This requires 24 hour monitoring - when do you sleep?
Much to my surprise I was very impressed with the social care provided by social services and the Alzheimer society were magnificent. My mother ended up in a care home, which was also great and the staff magnificent - I don't know how they have the patience.
TGOF666 post was disgraceful.
Makes me wonder why you didn't put your kids up for adoption - they can be quite tiring too.
You are a complete bastard.
My point was - using a care home is a choice.
If you are content to take the benefits, then accept the risks.
I think the point being made (with regard to Alzheimer`s) is that using a care home is NOT a choice.
BigRich posted an interesting comment about why Sweden has probably done the right thing, and nearly all of the replies were to do with a grammar dispute.
Actually big rich asked a point about gramnar iirc
BigRich posted an interesting comment about why Sweden has probably done the right thing, and nearly all of the replies were to do with a grammar dispute.
Sometimes people do not seem willing to engage in sciientific discussion on this site.The graph yesterday showing that the R figure was below 1 before the lockdown and that the reduction coincided with the hand washing advice I thought was really striking. Yet alI I got was abuse for discussing it and no one seemed interested in it. If science does not agree with someones opinion then it seems it is not worthy.
If R figure was below 1 before lockdown, I agree this would be significant news. Can it be true though? I`m struggling with it to be honest. Any more evidence?
Sweden Post 1 Sweden's PHE equivalent have estimated their R_t throughout.
*what's their methodology for estimating this? what data does it use? *can the same methodology be applied to UK's equivalent data?
FPT Last night I read a comment by TGOF666 re people putting their parents into care homes. I also saw some robust responses, but I did want to make my own response.
My mother got dementia not too long ago. She has since died. My father with our support decided she would definitely NOT go into care. We would look after her. I can only assume TGOF666 has not gone through this. Here are just a few examples of what can happen:
At 3 in the morning the washing up needs doing, while you are asleep, which includes the toaster.
Just wandering off any time of the day or night and not knowing where they are.
Start cooking on the hob and leaving it. Running taps and leaving them.
Attacking your husband (aged 90) with a walking stick because he is having an affair with the woman of the non existent other family living in the house.
Screaming at your son in front of his children 'why didn't you tell me my mother was a man' (she visualised my father as her mother). I was one of the few people who could sit down with my mother and explain what was going on, but this stumped me.
This requires 24 hour monitoring - when do you sleep?
Much to my surprise I was very impressed with the social care provided by social services and the Alzheimer society were magnificent. My mother ended up in a care home, which was also great and the staff magnificent - I don't know how they have the patience.
TGOF666 post was disgraceful.
Makes me wonder why you didn't put your kids up for adoption - they can be quite tiring too.
While I don't wish Alzheimers on your parents I actually do hope you discover the hell that kjh had to go through.
A lot of people try to look after parents with dementia, it really is a completely impossible and thankless task (as the person forgets all about you) and giving up when you finally are convinced that you have no choice is heartbreaking
I suggest that TGOF666 finds some "lazy" people with parents who have dementia and shows them how it's done. Since it is so easy, apparently.
I didn't mention lazy.
Complaining about what happens in a care home is like complaining about what happens in a school - other options are always available.
BigRich posted an interesting comment about why Sweden has probably done the right thing, and nearly all of the replies were to do with a grammar dispute.
Sometimes people do not seem willing to engage in sciientific discussion on this site.The graph yesterday showing that the R figure was below 1 before the lockdown and that the reduction coincided with the hand washing advice I thought was really striking. Yet alI I got was abuse for discussing it and no one seemed interested in it. If science does not agree with someones opinion then it seems it is not worthy.
The method of calculation of R in that graph is, almost certainly, not valid.
No error bars on the R values is a warning sign that this is not valid, as well.
Very spiky as well, which looks very strange.
Using a median incubation period of 5 days and time to fatality median/interquartile ranges from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7095212/ , and the hospital deaths data from public health England, with some five-day smoothing and pulling out interquartile ranges over those five days) I got something that looked like this (bearing in mind that I'm not at all confident about the methodology):
Putting on dates of significant interventions, I got this:
1 - Handwashing advice given 2 - Premier Leaguse suspended and much other sport, elections deferred 3 - PM advises everyone against non-essential travel, avoiding pubs/restaurants/clubs, wfh if possible. Vulnerable people advised to self-isolate. 4 - Pubs, cafes, restaurants ordered to close immediately; nightclubs, theatres, gyms, cinemas, leisure entres told to close as soon as possible; last day of schools for most pupils. Furlough rules announced by Sunak. 5 - Announcement of lockdown with immediate effect
To be fair, the handwashing advice does seem to have been helpful to a degree...
Vox pops on the app. People more willing to install it if it were Apple or Google. Much less likely to do so atm. Will just go about their business without the app and wait for an Apple or Google version.
I think that's absolute bovine manure as many vox pops are and probably after a leading question.
For one thing Apple and Google aren't inventing their own versions. They're doing an API, each country still needs to do its own version.
The app when its launched will be an NHS branded app. We know what people in this country think of the NHS and I don't believe a non-NHS app would get more downloads. "Download the NHS app to protect the NHS and save lives" is a powerful message that will resonate.
They can brand it whatever they want, the calculation people have made is that Google and Apple already know their location all the time anyway. This is letting the government know, that's a step a lot of people just won't take, NHS branding or not. I expect we'll never get near the 80% or whatever is necessary.
Can I let you in on a secret?
The government can identify your location from your phone already anyway.
Yes, by cell tower triangulation. But that's in real time, inaccurate and needs the target to be moving at more than walking pace. It's not the same thing.
It pretty much is. If the government wants to track you then this app will not be how they do it. There's already tremendous infrastructure involved in tracking persons of interest - more than most people realise.
If you wish to go off the grid then what app you have on your phone won't matter.
I've been thinking, and I can't identify a single negative outcome from the government knowing where I am at any one specific moment in time.
That's because they haven't yet put you on the list of the guilty.
See China, where someone who writes a critical online comment on social media finds themselves banned from public transport. Orwell's writing was intended to be a warning to future governments, not an instruction manual.
Meh. Seems unlikely.
Right now and for the foreseeable future, I'd rather they knew where everyone was than no-one.
The foreseeable future. You have answered your own question right there.
As Frank Kitson wrote, on warfare, the next conflict will be unforseeable.
Well, I tend to change my phone every two years or so and that's next likely within 12 months. I'm pretty relaxed about a privacy invasion I don't care about that will expire long before it could conceivably matter. I just won't reinstall the app.
Uh, once they have tracked your habits, purchasing, movements, etc it is a trivial job to find you again.
I've been thinking, and I can't identify a single negative outcome from the government knowing where I am at any one specific moment in time.
What about when some 10 quid/hour contractor presses the wrong button and your location data gets swapped for that of a regular at the Finsbury Park mosque who has a timeshare in Raqqa.
Not bad. But then what?
If MI6 started actively tracking me, they'd be bitterly disappointed. And I [presumably wouldn't even know they were there.
I guess I might notice that passport control starting taking longer?
Huzzah.. Tesco is getting up to the mark. No deliveries still but i got a click and collect with no problem.They are charging 50p where iirc they used not to but hey thats ok. I cannot risk going into the store..
FPT Last night I read a comment by TGOF666 re people putting their parents into care homes. I also saw some robust responses, but I did want to make my own response.
My mother got dementia not too long ago. She has since died. My father with our support decided she would definitely NOT go into care. We would look after her. I can only assume TGOF666 has not gone through this. Here are just a few examples of what can happen:
At 3 in the morning the washing up needs doing, while you are asleep, which includes the toaster.
Just wandering off any time of the day or night and not knowing where they are.
Start cooking on the hob and leaving it. Running taps and leaving them.
Attacking your husband (aged 90) with a walking stick because he is having an affair with the woman of the non existent other family living in the house.
Screaming at your son in front of his children 'why didn't you tell me my mother was a man' (she visualised my father as her mother). I was one of the few people who could sit down with my mother and explain what was going on, but this stumped me.
This requires 24 hour monitoring - when do you sleep?
Much to my surprise I was very impressed with the social care provided by social services and the Alzheimer society were magnificent. My mother ended up in a care home, which was also great and the staff magnificent - I don't know how they have the patience.
TGOF666 post was disgraceful.
Makes me wonder why you didn't put your kids up for adoption - they can be quite tiring too.
You are a complete bastard.
His comment is crass and uncaring in the extreme
I recognise your description of your experence of dementia and it closely follows those of our family with my father in law
The emotions and stress involved are beyond compare and in our case was acted out in our home with our three teenage children at the time
It was 2 years before we could even talk of the pain and to this day it hurts, and this was in the 90s
We were going to make cuts - don't forget that the Labour manifesto in 2010 would have spent slightly less than the coalition did.
As I have been pointing out the problem wasn't cutting spending but what was cut and how.
When the Tory PM writes to his Tory council leader saying look here, why are you cutting front line services when we have made all this money available to you, the council leader details no you haven't, and number 10 responds yes we have that's the austerity problem in a single example.
It's not enough to say "we spent more on the NHS". What did you spend it on in the NHS? More money spent but savage cuts to provision shows money being syphoned off to more traditional Tory causes like consultants and lawyers and pointless layers of management.
The fact was that the Government didn't notice they had both increased the demands on the council and yet decreased the money available. As a simplified example to show the actual issue:-
Previously: Government Adult Social care £10m Council expenditure £10m Total available £20m
After reforms: Council Expenditure £15m Total available: £15m
Osbourne and Cameron's Government sat there and said we've given you £5m more a year but ignored the fact they are increased Council required Expenditure by £10m.
Are Councils required to pay themselves more than the Prime Minister gets paid?
Ever heard of market powers? Once one council starts paying over the odds to poach a leader from another council it becomes inevitable...
Guess what happened in the market for competent Council leaders.
If you consider that very few people switch from the public to the private sector, the Government should set national pay bands for councils and force top salaries down.
I thought Conservatives believed in free market capitalism? I’m confused.
Absolutely. We believe in capitalism.
There is no free market there. People taking taxes by force of the law and giving it in largesse to themselves while whining they haven't got enough money and cutting services is not free market capitalism.
If it was a free market company that was slashing its services while paying over the odds to its Chief Executives a competitor that was leaner would arise and people would take their consumption and expenditure to that one. That can't happen with taxes though. Appeals to some 'market' are absurd.
A good Council leader would be one who lives within the budget they have, getting their best results possible and being paid accordingly. Not slashing services and being paid well over the odds.
You assume there is an infinite supply of people able to put up with crap from Councillors and willing to lead councils. My view is that there is a finite supply of such people, and an even smaller supply of competent and the demand for such competent people is far greater than the actual supply.
And what evidence do you have for that proposition?
My view is that it is a pampered, unaffordable luxury to be paying county staff more than the Prime Minister of the country - and if you can afford to do that then there hasn't been enough austerity yet.
I would suggest thinking about what the job entails and then deciding that. A lot of the highest paid chief executives are actually running 2 or more councils.
Oh and remember the only reason why the PM's pay is what it is, is because Gordon Brown pulled a fast one in the days before the 2010 election and hadn't taken the full amount before then.
Yeah I personally think the Prime Minister is criminally underpaid. Should be at least hitting 500k. It is arguably the most important job in the country.
I would certainly raise the PM's pay to at least £162 000 which would put them in the top 1% of earners but at the same time the PM is still in a public service, public sector role not a private sector role creating wealth so I wouldn't go as far as paying them £500k which is even more than the US President gets paid
PM is a Top Job - none topper - and IMO the occupant should receive a hefty financial reward for doing it. Not sure about this current one though. Anything north of £75k looks excessive for Boris Johnson. He seems to be forever either electioneering, on holiday, off sick, or otherwise incommunicado and trying to sort out his private life. True or not, this is the perception of many shrewd observers. Perhaps it's harsh, I sense it might be, but perception really matters in politics - especially the perception of shrewd observers.
"Shrewd"observers like £250,000 Laura K?
I'd say the PM deserves his £150,000 salary way more than the BBC's political editor deserves her 67% higher one, judging by their relative performances over the past few weeks...
During the election Kuenssberg's twitter feed often resembled an arm of CCHQ so I will not be leaping to her defence.
Unlike you to jump on the (mainly right-ist, government adoring) bashing journalists bandwagon.
FPT Last night I read a comment by TGOF666 re people putting their parents into care homes. I also saw some robust responses, but I did want to make my own response.
My mother got dementia not too long ago. She has since died. My father with our support decided she would definitely NOT go into care. We would look after her. I can only assume TGOF666 has not gone through this. Here are just a few examples of what can happen:
At 3 in the morning the washing up needs doing, while you are asleep, which includes the toaster.
Just wandering off any time of the day or night and not knowing where they are.
Start cooking on the hob and leaving it. Running taps and leaving them.
Attacking your husband (aged 90) with a walking stick because he is having an affair with the woman of the non existent other family living in the house.
Screaming at your son in front of his children 'why didn't you tell me my mother was a man' (she visualised my father as her mother). I was one of the few people who could sit down with my mother and explain what was going on, but this stumped me.
This requires 24 hour monitoring - when do you sleep?
Much to my surprise I was very impressed with the social care provided by social services and the Alzheimer society were magnificent. My mother ended up in a care home, which was also great and the staff magnificent - I don't know how they have the patience.
TGOF666 post was disgraceful.
Makes me wonder why you didn't put your kids up for adoption - they can be quite tiring too.
You are a complete bastard.
My point was - using a care home is a choice.
If you are content to take the benefits, then accept the risks.
I think the point being made (with regard to Alzheimer`s) is that using a care home is NOT a choice.
Only in the rich Westernised world since ~ 1950.
Be grateful that a choice exists.
Prior to that it would have been mental asylums. Poor people didn't live long enough to get Alzheimer's.
Sweden Post 2 The Imperial team estimate R_t based on a range of things, but it is immediately telling that:
Sweden's R_t at the start of the pandemic is already almost 2 units lower than UK's
Sweden
UK
There is another discrepancy - but I think that relates to our lockdown being essentially milder than many other countries - in Sweden, banning public events is observed to have a fairly big impact. Ours is wrapped in with the lockdown.
Just eyeballing all this raises enough questions for a research career in the field, tbh
Going back to that first point in bold - what's the ICL team justification for this?
Current Italy deaths, 29000+ Current UK deaths, 28000+
He started off with pushing "It's no worse than the average flu". He's never said he was wrong. He spent weeks torturing data to make it no worse than the flu. Then once the amount of deaths got too bad he seamlessly transitioned to Rt and lockdown effect, which he has now spent weeks torturing data to make lockdown have no effect.
He seems to be oblivious to the fact that it took all the additional measures just to get COVID-19 down to "as bad as seasonal flu", rather than say 10 times worse.
Anyway the US seems to be hell bent on demonstrating just how bad it could be over the next couple of months. I suspect that come the autumn there won't be many people left decrying what has been done here.
Brady is right, but some companies have driven this. The government advice was to carry on working (from home where possible). The government is aware of the perplexing problem that it has in getting the economy going again.
What companies? Some sectors where closed down and that has had a cascading impact on the rest of the economy. I'm really not aware of a single company not impacted in some way.
Sunik's fear will be the fact that companies are discovering they can manage just fine without their furloughed staff. Some firms seem to have noticed that as Personal Today had an article last week pointing out that you can use Furlough money to pay redundancy payments.
Sunak's fear is that many thousands of smaller businesses simply won;t re-open.
The tax base is being destroyed at the same time as debt is soaring.
Indeed. Prematurely lifting the lockdown will ensure those smaller businesses won't reopen or will reopen, find they have no customers and shutter permanently.
Ideally lifting the lockdown should coincide with when the public is confident, willing and eager to go out.
contarian's logic is fundamentally flawed, because the choice wasn't between economic problems with the lockdown vs sweetness and light without it.
It was a choice between economic problems with the lockdown (and to be clear, I don't underplay it) all the associated costs and economic armageddon combined with health service failure without it.
The lockdown is inordinately expensive, but affordable at a push. Not having it would have resulted in ruin.
I you actually read my posts you would see that I have never argued that our economy would not take a bad hit whatever the circumstances. Of course it would.
The thrust of my argument is that the government's policy has made the hit far, far worse than it needed to be economically, and the argument that it has 'saved lives' is at least questionable and possibly completely bogus.
Except you have provided zero evidence for why the hit is "far, far, worse than it needed to be economically".
Why is the government paying businesses primary cost (wages) via virtually interest-free borrowing an economic hit?
I am amazed you asked that question but OK. That debt will have to be repaid at some juncture. If it isn;t then some will need to be rolled over, possibly at much higher borrowing costs. Almost certainly not at lower ones. Depending on the maturities the government goes for, the roll overs could start quite soon.
The debt will have to be serviced by a private sector that has been smashed to pieces. Corona was always going to have a big effect I grant you that. But I don;t think that anybody could argue the government has made it much worse than a much lighter, shorter lockdown would have.
Indeed Sweden shows us this is true. I understand its economy has shrunk at a much slower rate than its Scandy peers. Against which it has endured more deaths now (though this too is arguable) but it is in a much stronger position to save them in the future.
The government borrows typically at 10, 30 or 50 year intervals for rollover and is currently borrowing at about 0.1% interest. Why would the rollovers start "quite soon" then? Why wouldn't they start in 10 plus years and if so why not take the big picture view on what is good for the economy?
Sweden is running a furlough scheme just like we are. In fact Sweden's furlough scheme is 90% of wages.
The debt would have to be serviced by an economy that has been smashed to pieces if we did what you want. The government is looking into the future not tomorrow and today.
Fine as long as we can service our debt, inflation expectations are kept in check and while we still print our own money. Of course. But that stands whether the government is BoJo or Ed Milliband or Jeremy Corbyn or SKS. 75% of those are and have been criticised strongly (perhaps by your good self) for wanting to borrow large amounts of money.
Because the key words are so long as we can service it and keep inflation expectations in check.
We can do that if we are doing this while inflation is very low [it is currently below target] and for a one-off emergency. We can't do it for ongoing expenditure.
Thing is, the Labour Party could legitimately site, say, homelessness as a one off emergency. Or the state of social housing. Or...or.... OK so a pandemic might be pretty objectively an unusual event but so is the thousands dying of poverty in the UK. Or whatever Labour decides is an emergency - and who's to say they're not right in so doing?
The voters are the only people who can say they're not right ultimately.
Thousands in this country, more even, may be in relative poverty but that will always exist. Many in this country can end up in very difficult circumstances that need addressing.
But real poverty like you might see in Sao Paulo or countless other towns and cities across the world is something people born in this country are lucky enough they will never really have to face.
It seems unlikely the government can convince people they're not going to be tracked for non-covid purposes so they need to legalize drugs until the crisis is over.
The Gardai in Ireland have made a whole bunch of drug-related arrests at the checkpoints they set up to dissuade travel due to the Coronavirus travel restrictions. I've no doubt they'll want to run checkpoints all the time now.
BigRich posted an interesting comment about why Sweden has probably done the right thing, and nearly all of the replies were to do with a grammar dispute.
Sometimes people do not seem willing to engage in sciientific discussion on this site.The graph yesterday showing that the R figure was below 1 before the lockdown and that the reduction coincided with the hand washing advice I thought was really striking. Yet alI I got was abuse for discussing it and no one seemed interested in it. If science does not agree with someones opinion then it seems it is not worthy.
The method of calculation of R in that graph is, almost certainly, not valid.
No error bars on the R values is a warning sign that this is not valid, as well.
Very spiky as well, which looks very strange.
Using a median incubation period of 5 days and time to fatality median/interquartile ranges from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7095212/ , and the hospital deaths data from public health England, with some five-day smoothing and pulling out interquartile ranges over those five days) I got something that looked like this (bearing in mind that I'm not at all confident about the methodology):
Putting on dates of significant interventions, I got this:
1 - Handwashing advice given 2 - Premier Leaguse suspended and much other sport, elections deferred 3 - PM advises everyone against non-essential travel, avoiding pubs/restaurants/clubs, wfh if possible. Vulnerable people advised to self-isolate. 4 - Pubs, cafes, restaurants ordered to close immediately; nightclubs, theatres, gyms, cinemas, leisure entres told to close as soon as possible; last day of schools for most pupils. Furlough rules announced by Sunak. 5 - Announcement of lockdown with immediate effect
To be fair, the handwashing advice does seem to have been helpful to a degree...
FPT Last night I read a comment by TGOF666 re people putting their parents into care homes. I also saw some robust responses, but I did want to make my own response.
My mother got dementia not too long ago. She has since died. My father with our support decided she would definitely NOT go into care. We would look after her. I can only assume TGOF666 has not gone through this. Here are just a few examples of what can happen:
At 3 in the morning the washing up needs doing, while you are asleep, which includes the toaster.
Just wandering off any time of the day or night and not knowing where they are.
Start cooking on the hob and leaving it. Running taps and leaving them.
Attacking your husband (aged 90) with a walking stick because he is having an affair with the woman of the non existent other family living in the house.
Screaming at your son in front of his children 'why didn't you tell me my mother was a man' (she visualised my father as her mother). I was one of the few people who could sit down with my mother and explain what was going on, but this stumped me.
This requires 24 hour monitoring - when do you sleep?
Much to my surprise I was very impressed with the social care provided by social services and the Alzheimer society were magnificent. My mother ended up in a care home, which was also great and the staff magnificent - I don't know how they have the patience.
TGOF666 post was disgraceful.
Makes me wonder why you didn't put your kids up for adoption - they can be quite tiring too.
While I don't wish Alzheimers on your parents I actually do hope you discover the hell that kjh had to go through.
A lot of people try to look after parents with dementia, it really is a completely impossible and thankless task (as the person forgets all about you) and giving up when you finally are convinced that you have no choice is heartbreaking
I suggest that TGOF666 finds some "lazy" people with parents who have dementia and shows them how it's done. Since it is so easy, apparently.
I didn't mention lazy.
Complaining about what happens in a care home is like complaining about what happens in a school - other options are always available.
a) I have not complained about what happens in care homes. On the contrary I was very impressed all around.
b) What other option? You clearly have not a clue.
Vox pops on the app. People more willing to install it if it were Apple or Google. Much less likely to do so atm. Will just go about their business without the app and wait for an Apple or Google version.
I think that's absolute bovine manure as many vox pops are and probably after a leading question.
For one thing Apple and Google aren't inventing their own versions. They're doing an API, each country still needs to do its own version.
The app when its launched will be an NHS branded app. We know what people in this country think of the NHS and I don't believe a non-NHS app would get more downloads. "Download the NHS app to protect the NHS and save lives" is a powerful message that will resonate.
They can brand it whatever they want, the calculation people have made is that Google and Apple already know their location all the time anyway. This is letting the government know, that's a step a lot of people just won't take, NHS branding or not. I expect we'll never get near the 80% or whatever is necessary.
Can I let you in on a secret?
The government can identify your location from your phone already anyway.
Yes, by cell tower triangulation. But that's in real time, inaccurate and needs the target to be moving at more than walking pace. It's not the same thing.
It pretty much is. If the government wants to track you then this app will not be how they do it. There's already tremendous infrastructure involved in tracking persons of interest - more than most people realise.
If you wish to go off the grid then what app you have on your phone won't matter.
I've been thinking, and I can't identify a single negative outcome from the government knowing where I am at any one specific moment in time.
That's because they haven't yet put you on the list of the guilty.
See China, where someone who writes a critical online comment on social media finds themselves banned from public transport. Orwell's writing was intended to be a warning to future governments, not an instruction manual.
Meh. Seems unlikely.
Right now and for the foreseeable future, I'd rather they knew where everyone was than no-one.
The foreseeable future. You have answered your own question right there.
As Frank Kitson wrote, on warfare, the next conflict will be unforseeable.
Well, I tend to change my phone every two years or so and that's next likely within 12 months. I'm pretty relaxed about a privacy invasion I don't care about that will expire long before it could conceivably matter. I just won't reinstall the app.
Uh, once they have tracked your habits, purchasing, movements, etc it is a trivial job to find you again.
I'm not sure there's an obvious way to track my purchasing from just tracking my phone, and my movements for the rest of 2020 will most likely look nothing like my movements for 2021.
FPT Last night I read a comment by TGOF666 re people putting their parents into care homes. I also saw some robust responses, but I did want to make my own response.
My mother got dementia not too long ago. She has since died. My father with our support decided she would definitely NOT go into care. We would look after her. I can only assume TGOF666 has not gone through this. Here are just a few examples of what can happen:
At 3 in the morning the washing up needs doing, while you are asleep, which includes the toaster.
Just wandering off any time of the day or night and not knowing where they are.
Start cooking on the hob and leaving it. Running taps and leaving them.
Attacking your husband (aged 90) with a walking stick because he is having an affair with the woman of the non existent other family living in the house.
Screaming at your son in front of his children 'why didn't you tell me my mother was a man' (she visualised my father as her mother). I was one of the few people who could sit down with my mother and explain what was going on, but this stumped me.
This requires 24 hour monitoring - when do you sleep?
Much to my surprise I was very impressed with the social care provided by social services and the Alzheimer society were magnificent. My mother ended up in a care home, which was also great and the staff magnificent - I don't know how they have the patience.
TGOF666 post was disgraceful.
Makes me wonder why you didn't put your kids up for adoption - they can be quite tiring too.
You are a complete bastard.
His comment is crass and uncaring in the extreme
I recognise your description of your experence of dementia and it closely follows those of our family with my father in law
The emotions and stress involved are beyond compare and in our case was acted out in our home with our three teenage children at the time
It was 2 years before we could even talk of the pain and to this day it hurts, and this was in the 90s
Shame on TGOHF666.
An apology would be good
I find complaining about the level of care in care homes crass in the extreme. The ultimate in first world entitled whining.
BigRich posted an interesting comment about why Sweden has probably done the right thing, and nearly all of the replies were to do with a grammar dispute.
Sometimes people do not seem willing to engage in sciientific discussion on this site.The graph yesterday showing that the R figure was below 1 before the lockdown and that the reduction coincided with the hand washing advice I thought was really striking. Yet alI I got was abuse for discussing it and no one seemed interested in it. If science does not agree with someones opinion then it seems it is not worthy.
The method of calculation of R in that graph is, almost certainly, not valid.
No error bars on the R values is a warning sign that this is not valid, as well.
Very spiky as well, which looks very strange.
Using a median incubation period of 5 days and time to fatality median/interquartile ranges from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7095212/ , and the hospital deaths data from public health England, with some five-day smoothing and pulling out interquartile ranges over those five days) I got something that looked like this (bearing in mind that I'm not at all confident about the methodology):
Putting on dates of significant interventions, I got this:
1 - Handwashing advice given 2 - Premier Leaguse suspended and much other sport, elections deferred 3 - PM advises everyone against non-essential travel, avoiding pubs/restaurants/clubs, wfh if possible. Vulnerable people advised to self-isolate. 4 - Pubs, cafes, restaurants ordered to close immediately; nightclubs, theatres, gyms, cinemas, leisure entres told to close as soon as possible; last day of schools for most pupils. Furlough rules announced by Sunak. 5 - Announcement of lockdown with immediate effect
To be fair, the handwashing advice does seem to have been helpful to a degree...
Around the handwashing advice is when I saw people starting to work from home as well. I took my daughter to school by car and parked on a residential street near the school. Normally I had not problem parking but I started having trouble finding a space and as I came back in the following days I realised none fo the parked cars were moving. Residents were staying at home and not traveling to work.
The voters are the only people who can say they're not right ultimately.
Thousands in this country, more even, may be in relative poverty but that will always exist. Many in this country can end up in very difficult circumstances that need addressing.
But real poverty like you might see in Sao Paulo or countless other towns and cities across the world is something people born in this country are lucky enough they will never really have to face.
No indeed. But the point is that there are plenty of issues that could be cited (not sited as I put in my first post!!) as being critical to saving lives and the government therefore needs to spend money on.
And it will be difficult to say, in future, oh that's the wrong type of emergency. It will be particularly difficult to say it if you have defended or hand waved away the government's current fiscal outlay on this particular emergency.
And you are right about the voters. But I contend that the Overton window on spending has been pushed considerably these past few weeks.
This Alastair Haimes makes two contradictory claims.
1. If you work back from an 8th April peak through an average 23 days from infection to death you get to 15th(?) March as time of maximum infection. This before lockdown and therefore lockdown had no useful effect [yesterday's claim] 2. Any excess deaths after 8th April must therefore be due to lockdown and not the disease itself [today's claim]
Actually what today's ONS figures show is that peak death happened sometime after 17th April. Working back 23 days takes us to peak infections some time after 22nd April. Lockdown started 23rd.
A correction on this, partly because the figures don't have the granularity for a definitive peak death date and partly because ONS weeks go midweek to midweek. Peak death is between 10th and 24th April. Implied peak infection is 17th to 30th April, with highest probability in the middle of that period, ie around April 24th
FPT Last night I read a comment by TGOF666 re people putting their parents into care homes. I also saw some robust responses, but I did want to make my own response.
My mother got dementia not too long ago. She has since died. My father with our support decided she would definitely NOT go into care. We would look after her. I can only assume TGOF666 has not gone through this. Here are just a few examples of what can happen:
At 3 in the morning the washing up needs doing, while you are asleep, which includes the toaster.
Just wandering off any time of the day or night and not knowing where they are.
Start cooking on the hob and leaving it. Running taps and leaving them.
Attacking your husband (aged 90) with a walking stick because he is having an affair with the woman of the non existent other family living in the house.
Screaming at your son in front of his children 'why didn't you tell me my mother was a man' (she visualised my father as her mother). I was one of the few people who could sit down with my mother and explain what was going on, but this stumped me.
This requires 24 hour monitoring - when do you sleep?
Much to my surprise I was very impressed with the social care provided by social services and the Alzheimer society were magnificent. My mother ended up in a care home, which was also great and the staff magnificent - I don't know how they have the patience.
TGOF666 post was disgraceful.
Makes me wonder why you didn't put your kids up for adoption - they can be quite tiring too.
While I don't wish Alzheimers on your parents I actually do hope you discover the hell that kjh had to go through.
A lot of people try to look after parents with dementia, it really is a completely impossible and thankless task (as the person forgets all about you) and giving up when you finally are convinced that you have no choice is heartbreaking
I suggest that TGOF666 finds some "lazy" people with parents who have dementia and shows them how it's done. Since it is so easy, apparently.
I didn't mention lazy.
Complaining about what happens in a care home is like complaining about what happens in a school - other options are always available.
I've rarely seen someone when in a hole get out a JCB to keep digging.
It's a shame vanilla unlike other forums doesn't have an ignore the worthless waste of pixels option.
FPT Last night I read a comment by TGOF666 re people putting their parents into care homes. I also saw some robust responses, but I did want to make my own response.
My mother got dementia not too long ago. She has since died. My father with our support decided she would definitely NOT go into care. We would look after her. I can only assume TGOF666 has not gone through this. Here are just a few examples of what can happen:
At 3 in the morning the washing up needs doing, while you are asleep, which includes the toaster.
Just wandering off any time of the day or night and not knowing where they are.
Start cooking on the hob and leaving it. Running taps and leaving them.
Attacking your husband (aged 90) with a walking stick because he is having an affair with the woman of the non existent other family living in the house.
Screaming at your son in front of his children 'why didn't you tell me my mother was a man' (she visualised my father as her mother). I was one of the few people who could sit down with my mother and explain what was going on, but this stumped me.
This requires 24 hour monitoring - when do you sleep?
Much to my surprise I was very impressed with the social care provided by social services and the Alzheimer society were magnificent. My mother ended up in a care home, which was also great and the staff magnificent - I don't know how they have the patience.
TGOF666 post was disgraceful.
I was so angry I lashed out, first time I have ever lost it and called a fellow poster a "disgusting little shit" but in this case not was well deserved
Sweden Post 3 Inverse problems, particularly those involving exponentials are hard. Properly hard. Any number of patterns of R_t could end up giving nominally similar death rates. This is noisy and imprecise data and the mathematics involved does not help.
But I do not think it is out of the question that: *initial hand washing and social distancing advice had a measurable effect on the reproduction rate *as did asking the pubs to shut/limit opening
We need to have a clearer idea of what are risky and what are less risky behaviours and that needs to feed into how lockdown is released.
I've been thinking, and I can't identify a single negative outcome from the government knowing where I am at any one specific moment in time.
What about when some 10 quid/hour contractor presses the wrong button and your location data gets swapped for that of a regular at the Finsbury Park mosque who has a timeshare in Raqqa.
Yes. Had an email from Google about my monthly travel/location history that managed to place me in Tokyo for 15 minutes during a month when I hadn't left Britannia.
The time before, and immediately after had me correctly located, near enough, so one of the major problems is being able to prove that the data is shit when some official is treating it as gospel and making decisions on the basis of it.
BigRich posted an interesting comment about why Sweden has probably done the right thing, and nearly all of the replies were to do with a grammar dispute.
Sometimes people do not seem willing to engage in sciientific discussion on this site.The graph yesterday showing that the R figure was below 1 before the lockdown and that the reduction coincided with the hand washing advice I thought was really striking. Yet alI I got was abuse for discussing it and no one seemed interested in it. If science does not agree with someones opinion then it seems it is not worthy.
The method of calculation of R in that graph is, almost certainly, not valid.
No error bars on the R values is a warning sign that this is not valid, as well.
Very spiky as well, which looks very strange.
Using a median incubation period of 5 days and time to fatality median/interquartile ranges from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7095212/ , and the hospital deaths data from public health England, with some five-day smoothing and pulling out interquartile ranges over those five days) I got something that looked like this (bearing in mind that I'm not at all confident about the methodology):
Putting on dates of significant interventions, I got this:
1 - Handwashing advice given 2 - Premier Leaguse suspended and much other sport, elections deferred 3 - PM advises everyone against non-essential travel, avoiding pubs/restaurants/clubs, wfh if possible. Vulnerable people advised to self-isolate. 4 - Pubs, cafes, restaurants ordered to close immediately; nightclubs, theatres, gyms, cinemas, leisure entres told to close as soon as possible; last day of schools for most pupils. Furlough rules announced by Sunak. 5 - Announcement of lockdown with immediate effect
To be fair, the handwashing advice does seem to have been helpful to a degree...
The handwashing advice seems massively significant to me. I guess the question becomes this: was lockdown (Event 5 in your graph (or perhaps 4?)) necessary to ensure that the NHS was not overwhelmed (given that was the reason given for the lockdown in the first place).
Comments
See China, where someone who writes a critical online comment on social media finds themselves banned from public transport. Orwell's writing was intended to be a warning to future governments, not an instruction manual.
No error bars on the R values is a warning sign that this is not valid, as well.
There is, of course, a serious housing shortage. Reinventing liveable town centres is a possible solution (and would benefit the businesses that remain).
But for others (and I can think of at least two in my own experience), it has been lifesaving, and they will probably be able to keep going, even with the expected restrictions post lockdown. In a year's time they could be prospering again.
Funny that.
Again, I'm not worried about me, it's the millions of people who will literally just forget to uninstall it. We should not be handing this kind of data to the government so lightly. Maybe you trust them to act fairly, on balance I think I do as well, but it's setting an absolutely awful precedent.
A legally watertight sunset provision is essential.
Most clubs have already disappeared over the last 20 years and been replaced by late night bars, the world moves on. Business are always impacted by their environment and have to adapt.
Support during the pandemic and in the period immediately after is absolutely right but we shouldnt be trying to maintain a Feb2020 status quo for businesses beyond the next few months.
As was evident at the time, just take a quick look through The Guardian's "privacy and use of your data" policies if you want to know what people do with your personal information. We're all happy when adverts for
mail order brides, er, Charles Tyrwhitt shirts pop up on our web pages because we understand that's how life works.The government, however, has powers that the Apple Store simply doesn't have and that is what worries me.
We can do that if we are doing this while inflation is very low [it is currently below target] and for a one-off emergency. We can't do it for ongoing expenditure.
Deaths are not constant year by year, there is a few thousand fluctuation week by week when you compare 2015 with 2016, 2017, 2018 etc. So these bar charts saying that there are x (precise) number of excess deaths are guesses at best.
Having said that some form of limited easing of lockdown must come soon, there's very little case for continuing as stringently as we are given the clear and sustained fall in deaths and cases.
Anyway I'll probably download the App, the problem is that others might not, and so critical mass won't be achieved.
The family, as kjh"s, start off with the very best of intentions, but the situation becomes impossible.
What's most remarkable is that people violate their own privacy so enthusiastically that you don't even need to be a spook to track a hell of a lot on info on individuals, just look at publicly-visible stuff. Not downloading this app, but posting selfies on Facebook or Twitter, which many people do, would be a curious approach to protecting privacy.
Edit - I think I misunderstood the post
If they've genuinely had the GCHQ hackers use an IOS 0-day to make this app work, they're about to run into a whole world of hurt. Apple *really* stands up to crap like this.
One recent example:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50890846
With no evidence as to why that date was chosen other than it created the graph he wanted. Other evidence seems to be ~5 days to show symptoms and 10 days then to death which would push back crossover by more than a week.
1% of 900M is 9M.
0.1% is 0.9M, or 900K, less than the £1M you claim is 0.0011%
I can now only see the top of your spade
For those who don't know - the premise is that a genius builds an expert system, for the government, to discern *intent* from mass surveillance data. This has consequences.
A great series by the way....
The government has made a series of missteps with this crisis. It ignored advice from Europe on starting the lockdown earlier, it didn't and comically still hasnt banned flights from overseas, it ignored advice from Germany about testing, it stupidly gave up on test, trace, quarantine when it was still a manageable prospect and now we're going down the same path of ignoring the advice on the app. Maybe, just maybe, our experts aren't as smart as they think they are.
Maybe the treasury should just run everything, it seems a more competent department than most.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/live/bbcparliament
What about when some 10 quid/hour contractor presses the wrong button and your location data gets swapped for that of a regular at the Finsbury Park mosque who has a timeshare in Raqqa.
PS: I liked your response though
Right now and for the foreseeable future, I'd rather they knew where everyone was than no-one.
I'd say the PM deserves his £150,000 salary way more than the BBC's political editor deserves her 67% higher one, judging by their relative performances over the past few weeks...
If you are content to take the benefits, then accept the risks.
1. If you work back from an 8th April peak through an average 23 days from infection to death you get to 15th(?) March as time of maximum infection. This before lockdown and therefore lockdown had no useful effect [yesterday's claim]
2. Any excess deaths after 8th April must therefore be due to lockdown and not the disease itself [today's claim]
Actually what today's ONS figures show is that peak death happened sometime after 17th April. Working back 23 days takes us to peak infections some time after 22nd April. Lockdown started 23rd.
Why we give the "Rt dropped below 1 before lockdown" no credence in two tweets
https://twitter.com/AlistairHaimes/status/1243310893892538373
https://twitter.com/AlistairHaimes/status/1243314754728480768
Current Italy deaths, 29000+
Current UK deaths, 28000+
He started off with pushing "It's no worse than the average flu". He's never said he was wrong. He spent weeks torturing data to make it no worse than the flu. Then once the amount of deaths got too bad he seamlessly transitioned to Rt and lockdown effect, which he has now spent weeks torturing data to make lockdown have no effect.
As Frank Kitson wrote, on warfare, the next conflict will be unforseeable.
A lot of people try to look after parents with dementia, it really is a completely impossible and thankless task (as the person forgets all about you) and giving up when you finally are convinced that you have no choice is heartbreaking
I'm not sure why but she never confused me with anyone else. My Dad was both another imaginary man who lived in the house and my mothers mother (who bizarrely my mother never knew as she died when she was a child).
On another occasion when my Dad was ill in bed, my mother was distressed because I took my Dads mail to this stranger and was worried how the stranger was going to get home. It was all just bizarre.
There were some funny moments. One day she said to my father (and the imaginary man) you can't both go out wearing the same pullover.
My Dad was in tears with it all just emotionally and physically drained.
Be grateful that a choice exists.
Sweden's PHE equivalent have estimated their R_t throughout.
*what's their methodology for estimating this? what data does it use?
*can the same methodology be applied to UK's equivalent data?
Complaining about what happens in a care home is like complaining about what happens in a school - other options are always available.
Using a median incubation period of 5 days and time to fatality median/interquartile ranges from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7095212/ , and the hospital deaths data from public health England, with some five-day smoothing and pulling out interquartile ranges over those five days) I got something that looked like this (bearing in mind that I'm not at all confident about the methodology):
Putting on dates of significant interventions, I got this:
1 - Handwashing advice given
2 - Premier Leaguse suspended and much other sport, elections deferred
3 - PM advises everyone against non-essential travel, avoiding pubs/restaurants/clubs, wfh if possible. Vulnerable people advised to self-isolate.
4 - Pubs, cafes, restaurants ordered to close immediately; nightclubs, theatres, gyms, cinemas, leisure entres told to close as soon as possible; last day of schools for most pupils. Furlough rules announced by Sunak.
5 - Announcement of lockdown with immediate effect
To be fair, the handwashing advice does seem to have been helpful to a degree...
If MI6 started actively tracking me, they'd be bitterly disappointed. And I [presumably wouldn't even know they were there.
I guess I might notice that passport control starting taking longer?
I recognise your description of your experence of dementia and it closely follows those of our family with my father in law
The emotions and stress involved are beyond compare and in our case was acted out in our home with our three teenage children at the time
It was 2 years before we could even talk of the pain and to this day it hurts, and this was in the 90s
Shame on TGOHF666.
An apology would be good
The Imperial team estimate R_t based on a range of things, but it is immediately telling that:
Sweden's R_t at the start of the pandemic is already almost 2 units lower than UK's
Sweden
UK
There is another discrepancy - but I think that relates to our lockdown being essentially milder than many other countries - in Sweden, banning public events is observed to have a fairly big impact. Ours is wrapped in with the lockdown.
Just eyeballing all this raises enough questions for a research career in the field, tbh
Going back to that first point in bold - what's the ICL team justification for this?
Anyway the US seems to be hell bent on demonstrating just how bad it could be over the next couple of months. I suspect that come the autumn there won't be many people left decrying what has been done here.
Thousands in this country, more even, may be in relative poverty but that will always exist. Many in this country can end up in very difficult circumstances that need addressing.
But real poverty like you might see in Sao Paulo or countless other towns and cities across the world is something people born in this country are lucky enough they will never really have to face.
b) What other option? You clearly have not a clue.
Use them, or don't.
And it will be difficult to say, in future, oh that's the wrong type of emergency. It will be particularly difficult to say it if you have defended or hand waved away the government's current fiscal outlay on this particular emergency.
And you are right about the voters. But I contend that the Overton window on spending has been pushed considerably these past few weeks.
It's a shame vanilla unlike other forums doesn't have an ignore the worthless waste of pixels option.
Inverse problems, particularly those involving exponentials are hard. Properly hard. Any number of patterns of R_t could end up giving nominally similar death rates. This is noisy and imprecise data and the mathematics involved does not help.
But I do not think it is out of the question that:
*initial hand washing and social distancing advice had a measurable effect on the reproduction rate
*as did asking the pubs to shut/limit opening
We need to have a clearer idea of what are risky and what are less risky behaviours and that needs to feed into how lockdown is released.
The time before, and immediately after had me correctly located, near enough, so one of the major problems is being able to prove that the data is shit when some official is treating it as gospel and making decisions on the basis of it.