I honestly feel that in the last 3 months he has gone from arrogant, stupid and obnoxious to plain old batshit insane. It's just like the frog in the pan, its crept up on us slowly and we have not all noticed.
It really isn't anything new. Obama is a secret muslim Kenyan? Ted Cruz's dad killed Kennedy? He's always been a conspira-nut.
I think he works on the theory that by dominating every news cycle, with whatever random thought comes into his head, he will get re-elected. I shouldn't think he really cares about the conspiracies, they're just another distraction to rant about.
Unfortunately, it's quite possible that it's a winning strategy. Probably not, but I wouldn't bet on it.
This hospital, 50 yards away from where I grew up, laid empty for years when it could be being used for social care. In the early eighties, when I was at infant school, we used to take flowers to the old people that were in there. Now it has been sold to housing developers
In about 1997 (I think) I was told that I had a new string to my bow in my job at Basildon Hospital and as a result, I would be given a mobile phone, for which I had to go to St Georges. The guy who was responsible for the staff phones was in the most cluttered office I have ever seen. How he found anything beyond me, but he appeared to know exactly what was in each pile of paper.
The thing that continues to bug me is our ambivalence on face masks. Pratt Hancock is partly to blame and it has BUGGER ALL to do with science.
Yes yes the scientific evidence is 'weak' blah blah. That's drivel. All that means is there have never been, nor will there ever be, double blind randomised tests on face masks for CV-19.
It's a complete no brainer that you should wear a good mask, especially in confined spaces. They help prevent the spread.
The driver behind the Government's ambivalence is twofold.
1. Racism. We don't like these funnily little slit-eyed people in their silly little face masks. Think that's outrageous? It's what Jonathan Van-Tam, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer implied on 22nd April when speaking about the Japanese propensity for wearing them.
2. Insufficient supply. The real driver. We don't have enough of them to keep the NHS safe. Hence we now hear talk of 'face coverings' and are given lessons on how to make your own. If the Government had begun ordering FFP2 and FFP3 masks when I did - January 23rd - the whole country would be covered by now.
I notice from the footage showing Europe "opening up", there were people handing out free masks at train stations etc. I presume we aren't doing that here.
Shops in Baden Wurtemburg are handing them out free on entry.
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
They are if the government provides the funds.
They can also pay the remaining 20% for those who restart work
Nope, not happening. Firms will pay people to work or not at all.
I honestly feel that in the last 3 months he has gone from arrogant, stupid and obnoxious to plain old batshit insane. It's just like the frog in the pan, its crept up on us slowly and we have not all noticed.
It really isn't anything new. Obama is a secret muslim Kenyan? Ted Cruz's dad killed Kennedy? He's always been a conspira-nut.
See that's what he wants you to think. Its the method in the madness.
Protect the NHS. And there is the issue, EVERYTHING was about stopping the NHS acute care being overwhelmed and by doing so reducing the body count. That appears to have left holes elsewhere in response, in how care homes were addressed.
The decision was partially science but it was also partially political, because the NHS has sainted status. The NHS is a massive institution with a large budget as any sizeable public health service will be but the idea that it is all heroes is balls. There are bound to have been poor decisions there, just as the politicians, the white lab coats and the civil servants in Public Health made mistakes.
Certainly questions about how this strategy seemed to to overwhelmingly focus on acute care in what appears to have been the exclusion of other areas are fair. In many ways the provision of massive additional capacity has been an achievement but I'd wonder where it, and indeed testing would be, if it wasn't for military logisticians and 25 year old squaddies.
Strangely I haven't seen figures for deaths of military personnel working on all this. I hear about transport drivers, i hear about NHS staff and so on. Why is that? Have none died or does it just not make a good story.
Apart from the RAF they tend to be younger, fitter and thinner than the civvie population and therefore less likely to succumb to C19.
I recall from some article or other on the Falklands war that the Welsh Guards fared worst out of all the British units due to lack of fitness and too much blubber. Things have probably improved in 38 years I imagine.
1WG came straight off public duties to go to the Falklands. I wouldn't say blubber, but I would say they hadn't tabbed straight in from Brecon.
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
They are if the government provides the funds.
They can also pay the remaining 20% for those who restart work
Nope, not happening. Firms will pay people to work or not at all.
That is what is happening now. I think the proposal is to change the scheme so that you can pay someone to work part-time and the government will top that up to the full-time salary. Makes sense if demand is lower, doesn't it?
We are dealing with a once in a hundred year pandemic.
The Government managed to persuade people to accept the largest reduction in freedoms in the history of the country and the people have 99.9999% complied with it.
They have instigated an astonishing and generousFurlough Scheme to keep peoples livelihood's going, probably the most generous in the world.
The NHS has dealt comfortably with the pandemic.(No one gave it a chance in ealry March)
They have provided detailed advice and guidance throughout the lockdown. It was easily accessible and clearly written.
Their major error has been the carehome issue, they got carried away with discharging people from hospital when they should have been isolated.
Now, they are making a tiny change to the lockdown to give people a tiny bit more freedom and have provided a plan on the way forward and people are claiming they don't understand what seems simple to me. In terms of returning to work for those on Furlough I have just had an email from a marble supplier telling me that following Boris's chat they are re-opening tomorrow. They have said they have spent the last six weeks changing their factory and putting into place the following procedures.
All employees have a temperature check upon arrival each morning. Strict 2 metre distancing on the factory floor and at workstations Staggered breaks Hand sanitiser stations Face masks to be worn at all times Visitors to the factory/showroom are strictly by pre appointment only
I wonder how they managed to do this seeing as the only Government advice is so muddled and confusing.
But this is politics. Governments get punished for presiding over tough times. Gordon Brown brought the developed world together after the GFC and was instrumental in mitigating the damage. Fat lot of good it did him.
You know full well that's not what Brown is blamed for. Gordon Brown screwed up the economy before the crash and paid the price when the GFC exposed what he had already done.
If he hadn't been so hubristic as to think he had "eliminated boom and bust" he wouldn't have left the nation so exposed to see the deficit blow up because it was already high pre-crash.
I'm not engaging with "Tory Story" propaganda today.
Its not propaganda its a fact. Actually two facts.
Fact #1: Brown hubristically claimed he'd abolished boom and bust. Fact #2: Brown ran a major counter-cyclical budget deficit during the boom.
They're both facts and you know them both. That you don't like those facts doesn't change them.
Fact #3 : The Tories fiscal stance was even looser. Fact #4 : The Tories left public services in a heap.
But this is boring. You are not objective. I am. I'll prove it -
You know how people - even Conservatives - say that Brown was not to blame for the Global Financial Crisis?
Well, he was. To an extent he was. The City became bloated and dysfunctional on his watch as CoE - which he allowed since he needed the tax revenue - and this bloated and dysfunctional City played a junior (to Wall St) but nevertheless influential role in formenting the crash.
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
They are if the government provides the funds.
They can also pay the remaining 20% for those who restart work
Nope, not happening. Firms will pay people to work or not at all.
That is what is happening now. I think the proposal is to change the scheme so that you can pay someone to work part-time and the government will top that up to the full-time salary. Makes sense if demand is lower, doesn't it?
I honestly feel that in the last 3 months he has gone from arrogant, stupid and obnoxious to plain old batshit insane. It's just like the frog in the pan, its crept up on us slowly and we have not all noticed.
It really isn't anything new. Obama is a secret muslim Kenyan? Ted Cruz's dad killed Kennedy? He's always been a conspira-nut.
I think he works on the theory that by dominating every news cycle, with whatever random thought comes into his head, he will get re-elected. I shouldn't think he really cares about the conspiracies, they're just another distraction to rant about.
Unfortunately, it's quite possible that it's a winning strategy. Probably not, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Mmm. There are 2 ways to dominate a news cycle. One is by attacking ones opponents weaknesses and trumpeting your own successes. And then there is by issuing borderline deranged tweets and throwing a tantrum at reasonable questions. In 2016 Trump was the master of the former.
This hospital, 50 yards away from where I grew up, laid empty for years when it could be being used for social care. In the early eighties, when I was at infant school, we used to take flowers to the old people that were in there. Now it has been sold to housing developers
In about 1997 (I think) I was told that I had a new string to my bow in my job at Basildon Hospital and as a result, I would be given a mobile phone, for which I had to go to St Georges. The guy who was responsible for the staff phones was in the most cluttered office I have ever seen. How he found anything beyond me, but he appeared to know exactly what was in each pile of paper.
Harold Wood hospital, where I was born, has also been knocked down for the same reason
So no need to wonder why there is no space to look after our old people, and why every hospital and doctors seems so overcrowded - three big local hospitals have been demolished and houses built on them. Short sighted, money driven policy from the 90s Tories and Blair it seems (although Rush Green has a 140 bed care home as well as the new houses)
We are dealing with a once in a hundred year pandemic.
The Government managed to persuade people to accept the largest reduction in freedoms in the history of the country and the people have 99.9999% complied with it.
They have instigated an astonishing and generousFurlough Scheme to keep peoples livelihood's going, probably the most generous in the world.
The NHS has dealt comfortably with the pandemic.(No one gave it a chance in ealry March)
They have provided detailed advice and guidance throughout the lockdown. It was easily accessible and clearly written.
Their major error has been the carehome issue, they got carried away with discharging people from hospital when they should have been isolated.
Now, they are making a tiny change to the lockdown to give people a tiny bit more freedom and have provided a plan on the way forward and people are claiming they don't understand what seems simple to me. In terms of returning to work for those on Furlough I have just had an email from a marble supplier telling me that following Boris's chat they are re-opening tomorrow. They have said they have spent the last six weeks changing their factory and putting into place the following procedures.
All employees have a temperature check upon arrival each morning. Strict 2 metre distancing on the factory floor and at workstations Staggered breaks Hand sanitiser stations Face masks to be worn at all times Visitors to the factory/showroom are strictly by pre appointment only
I wonder how they managed to do this seeing as the only Government advice is so muddled and confusing.
But this is politics. Governments get punished for presiding over tough times. Gordon Brown brought the developed world together after the GFC and was instrumental in mitigating the damage. Fat lot of good it did him.
You know full well that's not what Brown is blamed for. Gordon Brown screwed up the economy before the crash and paid the price when the GFC exposed what he had already done.
If he hadn't been so hubristic as to think he had "eliminated boom and bust" he wouldn't have left the nation so exposed to see the deficit blow up because it was already high pre-crash.
I'm not engaging with "Tory Story" propaganda today.
Its not propaganda its a fact. Actually two facts.
Fact #1: Brown hubristically claimed he'd abolished boom and bust. Fact #2: Brown ran a major counter-cyclical budget deficit during the boom.
They're both facts and you know them both. That you don't like those facts doesn't change them.
Abolishing boom and bust was indeed said by Brown, though he later claimed he meant Tory boom and bust. And I think one of the recent Conservative Chancellors had also said something along those lines. However, who said what is irrelevant because it does not effect anything at all.
Second is the question of whether fiscal policy could have been tighter (mending the roof and all that). Let's say it could. Let's say Brown was wrong there. The trouble is, even this deficit was low by international standards and by historical comparison with previous British deficits under Conservative Chancellors.
So even if you are right, neither had the slightest impact on the global financial crisis or our ability to withstand or recover from it. So even if you are right, you are wrong.
Nope - claiming to have abolished boom and bust (of any kind) was simply hubris.
He was running a deficit when there were serious concerns about the economy over heating, due to a mad boom.
This meant that the deficit became massive when the boom ended and the tax receipts from the bank et al vanished.
Below 2 per cent of GDP. Nothing to frighten the horses. It did not even frighten George Osborne given he was pledged to follow Labour plans until the GFC hit.
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Some will, some won't.
If you're an employer who has very valued employees who can only find part time work to do with your employees now but expects full time work to return later then it would make sense to pay your employees to work part time while furloughing them part time.
If you're an employer that doesn't value their employees and/or is incapable of raising cash due to lack of trade then why keep staff on furlough?
Also, the rate at which employers will contribute to the cost of furloughed workers will not be announced until June.
We are dealing with a once in a hundred year pandemic.
The Government managed to persuade people to accept the largest reduction in freedoms in the history of the country and the people have 99.9999% complied with it.
They have instigated an astonishing and generousFurlough Scheme to keep peoples livelihood's going, probably the most generous in the world.
The NHS has dealt comfortably with the pandemic.(No one gave it a chance in ealry March)
They have provided detailed advice and guidance throughout the lockdown. It was easily accessible and clearly written.
Their major error has been the carehome issue, they got carried away with discharging people from hospital when they should have been isolated.
Now, they are making a tiny change to the lockdown to give people a tiny bit more freedom and have provided a plan on the way forward and people are claiming they don't understand what seems simple to me. In terms of returning to work for those on Furlough I have just had an email from a marble supplier telling me that following Boris's chat they are re-opening tomorrow. They have said they have spent the last six weeks changing their factory and putting into place the following procedures.
All employees have a temperature check upon arrival each morning. Strict 2 metre distancing on the factory floor and at workstations Staggered breaks Hand sanitiser stations Face masks to be worn at all times Visitors to the factory/showroom are strictly by pre appointment only
I wonder how they managed to do this seeing as the only Government advice is so muddled and confusing.
But this is politics. Governments get punished for presiding over tough times. Gordon Brown brought the developed world together after the GFC and was instrumental in mitigating the damage. Fat lot of good it did him.
You know full well that's not what Brown is blamed for. Gordon Brown screwed up the economy before the crash and paid the price when the GFC exposed what he had already done.
If he hadn't been so hubristic as to think he had "eliminated boom and bust" he wouldn't have left the nation so exposed to see the deficit blow up because it was already high pre-crash.
I'm not engaging with "Tory Story" propaganda today.
Its not propaganda its a fact. Actually two facts.
Fact #1: Brown hubristically claimed he'd abolished boom and bust. Fact #2: Brown ran a major counter-cyclical budget deficit during the boom.
They're both facts and you know them both. That you don't like those facts doesn't change them.
Abolishing boom and bust was indeed said by Brown, though he later claimed he meant Tory boom and bust. And I think one of the recent Conservative Chancellors had also said something along those lines. However, who said what is irrelevant because it does not effect anything at all.
Second is the question of whether fiscal policy could have been tighter (mending the roof and all that). Let's say it could. Let's say Brown was wrong there. The trouble is, even this deficit was low by international standards and by historical comparison with previous British deficits under Conservative Chancellors.
So even if you are right, neither had the slightest impact on the global financial crisis or our ability to withstand or recover from it. So even if you are right, you are wrong.
Brown spent too much. PT is right and he is right. During an unprecedented boom with fiscal receipts at a high he rand a deficit for absolutely no need at all and spent unsustainably. When the GFC came, this simply made it more difficult for the UK but take out the GFC and his actions were unsustainable.
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
They are if the government provides the funds.
They can also pay the remaining 20% for those who restart work
Nope, not happening. Firms will pay people to work or not at all.
They will be paying people to work, around 20%+ of normal wages as shops and the hospitality sector open in June and July
Listening to Nicola Sturgeon I have a feeling that the virus is much more prevelant in Scotland than it is in many parts of England. Where I am in Hampshire hospitals here are returning to normal. Operating theatres have opened, normal operations are being carried out, there are hardly any Covid-19 admissions, yet in Scotland yesterday there was a 165 increase in the number in Hospital with suspected Covid-19
It's almost like they're different countries at different stages of the pandemic.
You would also think they may read the info and see it has far lower death rate than England but is a few weeks behind, rather than just talking out their jacksie.
I know you are desperate to promote the myth that Scotland is weeks behind, but the figures confirm otherwise. The peak in England was 8th April and 14th April in Scotland.
The problem for Scotland, is that unlike England, the deaths pretty much hit a plateau around that peak and the reduction since has been small.
The risible level of testing (1,239 on 11/5) is not helping.
Little Scotlanders will continue to support, but others will be looking at lack of business support, failing education, inability to deal with this crisis and will start to question.
We are dealing with a once in a hundred year pandemic.
The Government managed to persuade people to accept the largest reduction in freedoms in the history of the country and the people have 99.9999% complied with it.
They have instigated an astonishing and generousFurlough Scheme to keep peoples livelihood's going, probably the most generous in the world.
The NHS has dealt comfortably with the pandemic.(No one gave it a chance in ealry March)
They have provided detailed advice and guidance throughout the lockdown. It was easily accessible and clearly written.
Their major error has been the carehome issue, they got carried away with discharging people from hospital when they should have been isolated.
Now, they are making a tiny change to the lockdown to give people a tiny bit more freedom and have provided a plan on the way forward and people are claiming they don't understand what seems simple to me. In terms of returning to work for those on Furlough I have just had an email from a marble supplier telling me that following Boris's chat they are re-opening tomorrow. They have said they have spent the last six weeks changing their factory and putting into place the following procedures.
All employees have a temperature check upon arrival each morning. Strict 2 metre distancing on the factory floor and at workstations Staggered breaks Hand sanitiser stations Face masks to be worn at all times Visitors to the factory/showroom are strictly by pre appointment only
I wonder how they managed to do this seeing as the only Government advice is so muddled and confusing.
But this is politics. Governments get punished for presiding over tough times. Gordon Brown brought the developed world together after the GFC and was instrumental in mitigating the damage. Fat lot of good it did him.
You know full well that's not what Brown is blamed for. Gordon Brown screwed up the economy before the crash and paid the price when the GFC exposed what he had already done.
If he hadn't been so hubristic as to think he had "eliminated boom and bust" he wouldn't have left the nation so exposed to see the deficit blow up because it was already high pre-crash.
I'm not engaging with "Tory Story" propaganda today.
Its not propaganda its a fact. Actually two facts.
Fact #1: Brown hubristically claimed he'd abolished boom and bust. Fact #2: Brown ran a major counter-cyclical budget deficit during the boom.
They're both facts and you know them both. That you don't like those facts doesn't change them.
Abolishing boom and bust was indeed said by Brown, though he later claimed he meant Tory boom and bust. And I think one of the recent Conservative Chancellors had also said something along those lines. However, who said what is irrelevant because it does not effect anything at all.
Second is the question of whether fiscal policy could have been tighter (mending the roof and all that). Let's say it could. Let's say Brown was wrong there. The trouble is, even this deficit was low by international standards and by historical comparison with previous British deficits under Conservative Chancellors.
So even if you are right, neither had the slightest impact on the global financial crisis or our ability to withstand or recover from it. So even if you are right, you are wrong.
Brown spent too much. PT is right and he is right. During an unprecedented boom with fiscal receipts at a high he rand a deficit for absolutely no need at all and spent unsustainably. When the GFC came, this simply made it more difficult for the UK but take out the GFC and his actions were unsustainable.
"They are also being asked to wait for others to get off before boarding and to be prepared to queue or use a different entrance or exit at stations."
Have they ever been on the Tube? That's going to last all of about 5s.
The fact that people are allowed to cram on the tube in a manner that would be illegal if they were cattle is a constant bafflement to me. "No standing" should be the new rule
It's a good rule. For those on the train. But with even vaguely higher usage those people waiting for a train will have to go somewhere. They often shut the gates outside or the escalators inside stations to regulate flow even in normal times at eg Oxford Circus, or Paddington, resulting in huge crowds jammed together at those places.
Not sure how they deal with those unless they have a huge rope with knots at 2m intervals stretching down towards Marble Arch.
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
They are if the government provides the funds.
They can also pay the remaining 20% for those who restart work
Nope, not happening. Firms will pay people to work or not at all.
My company is not taking a penny from the government and is paying 100% of furloughed workers wages.
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I don't see why Hancock should be the whipping boy for any collective failure by Cabinet.
Surely the buck stops with Boris. Why does Boris always seem to be given a free pass?
The employees will come off furlough as their employers go bust due to cash flow issues.
Listening to the HOC support is unanimous from across the house and even Caroline Lucas
It applies across the UK and is the best scheme in the world
Getting people off this is going to be like lifting the lockdown, Going to be very difficult and there will be plenty of losers. There isn't an easy answer.
We are witnessing a conservative Prime Minister and Chancellor moving into the centre left space left by labour's surrender to Corbynism and reminiscent of the SNP in Scotland when they effectively made labour redundant
Strange days indeed
We're witnessing a pragmatist in the Treasury who also appears to be competent. In sharp contrast with much of the rest of the cabinet.
Going to have to make some hard decisions in a couple of months' time, though.
Sunak is likeable and doing well but we really won't be able to judge his competence until we see how he gets on with trying to balance the books once this subsides.
This hospital, 50 yards away from where I grew up, laid empty for years when it could be being used for social care. In the early eighties, when I was at infant school, we used to take flowers to the old people that were in there. Now it has been sold to housing developers
In about 1997 (I think) I was told that I had a new string to my bow in my job at Basildon Hospital and as a result, I would be given a mobile phone, for which I had to go to St Georges. The guy who was responsible for the staff phones was in the most cluttered office I have ever seen. How he found anything beyond me, but he appeared to know exactly what was in each pile of paper.
Harold Wood hospital, where I was born, has also been knocked down for the same reason
So no need to wonder why there is no space to look after our old people, and why every hospital and doctors seems so overcrowded - three big local hospitals have been demolished and houses built on them. Short sighted, money driven policy from the 90s Tories and Blair it seems (although Rush Green has a 140 bed care home as well as the new houses)
This one hospital was buil (on the site of one of the old ones) to replace the four that closed (the three mentioned plus Oldchurch). I wonder if it was included as a "new hospital" built by New Labour when people boast of how many they built, without mentioning the four that closed which make it a net deficit of three?
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
They are if the government provides the funds.
They can also pay the remaining 20% for those who restart work
Nope, not happening. Firms will pay people to work or not at all.
My company is not taking a penny from the government and is paying 100% of furloughed workers wages.
A lot of companies are paying the 20% difference.
Commendable, may I ask what business sector you're in?
Sunak's announcement makes a wealth tax now almost certai, I would have thought.
The disincentives to working and economic activity are so large, the government simply will not be able to get anywhere near its current spending levels with revenue from what remains of the economy. Not even in same ballpark. Not even in the same county.
Johnson will never cut a public sector he clearly worships, and so the only answer is to take wealth from the middle classes.
Yes. Housing wealth is £6 trillion. Some of that will have to be liberated.
What you mean of course is stolen. But this is a government that has completely ridden roughshod over rights we have had for centuries, so they might well do it.
It's not theft. The people rely on the government to be their insurer and banker of last resort when a black swan event occurs. Governments do not have money except that raised from people. Ergo the government cannot pay, people must pay. Such are the facts of life. Borrowing and/or printing money can defer the bill but not tear it up.
This hospital, 50 yards away from where I grew up, laid empty for years when it could be being used for social care. In the early eighties, when I was at infant school, we used to take flowers to the old people that were in there. Now it has been sold to housing developers
In about 1997 (I think) I was told that I had a new string to my bow in my job at Basildon Hospital and as a result, I would be given a mobile phone, for which I had to go to St Georges. The guy who was responsible for the staff phones was in the most cluttered office I have ever seen. How he found anything beyond me, but he appeared to know exactly what was in each pile of paper.
Harold Wood hospital, where I was born, has also been knocked down for the same reason
So no need to wonder why there is no space to look after our old people, and why every hospital and doctors seems so overcrowded - three big local hospitals have been demolished and houses built on them. Short sighted, money driven policy from the 90s Tories and Blair it seems (although Rush Green has a 140 bed care home as well as the new houses)
Orsett Hospital, just N of Grays was similarly treated, and St Andrews, Billericay, although by then St Andrewx was just the Regional Burns Unit and a couple of Care of the Elderly wards. TBH, it was a nuisance if the Burns Unit needed expertise other than in Burns, and expensive and busy staff had to be ferried over from Basildon.
Listening to Nicola Sturgeon I have a feeling that the virus is much more prevelant in Scotland than it is in many parts of England. Where I am in Hampshire hospitals here are returning to normal. Operating theatres have opened, normal operations are being carried out, there are hardly any Covid-19 admissions, yet in Scotland yesterday there was a 165 increase in the number in Hospital with suspected Covid-19
It's almost like they're different countries at different stages of the pandemic.
You would also think they may read the info and see it has far lower death rate than England but is a few weeks behind, rather than just talking out their jacksie.
I know you are desperate to promote the myth that Scotland is weeks behind, but the figures confirm otherwise. The peak in England was 8th April and 14th April in Scotland.
The problem for Scotland, is that unlike England, the deaths pretty much hit a plateau around that peak and the reduction since has been small.
The risible level of testing (1,239 on 11/5) is not helping.
Little Scotlanders will continue to support, but others will be looking at lack of business support, failing education, inability to deal with this crisis and will start to question.
Hoorray, another 'SNP honeymoon soon to be over' joins the PB throng. The more the merrier I say.
The Tories have given a £133m contract to produce Covid testing kits to healthcare firm Randox, without putting it out to competition. Randox pays Tory MP Owen Paterson £100k a year as a "consultant". Paterson refused to respond when asked if he'd lobbied govt on Randox's behalf
We are dealing with a once in a hundred year pandemic.
The Government managed to persuade people to accept the largest reduction in freedoms in the history of the country and the people have 99.9999% complied with it.
They have instigated an astonishing and generousFurlough Scheme to keep peoples livelihood's going, probably the most generous in the world.
The NHS has dealt comfortably with the pandemic.(No one gave it a chance in ealry March)
They have provided detailed advice and guidance throughout the lockdown. It was easily accessible and clearly written.
Their major error has been the carehome issue, they got carried away with discharging people from hospital when they should have been isolated.
Now, they are making a tiny change to the lockdown to give people a tiny bit more freedom and have provided a plan on the way forward and people are claiming they don't understand what seems simple to me. In terms of returning to work for those on Furlough I have just had an email from a marble supplier telling me that following Boris's chat they are re-opening tomorrow. They have said they have spent the last six weeks changing their factory and putting into place the following procedures.
All employees have a temperature check upon arrival each morning. Strict 2 metre distancing on the factory floor and at workstations Staggered breaks Hand sanitiser stations Face masks to be worn at all times Visitors to the factory/showroom are strictly by pre appointment only
I wonder how they managed to do this seeing as the only Government advice is so muddled and confusing.
But this is politics. Governments get punished for presiding over tough times. Gordon Brown brought the developed world together after the GFC and was instrumental in mitigating the damage. Fat lot of good it did him.
You know full well that's not what Brown is blamed for. Gordon Brown screwed up the economy before the crash and paid the price when the GFC exposed what he had already done.
If he hadn't been so hubristic as to think he had "eliminated boom and bust" he wouldn't have left the nation so exposed to see the deficit blow up because it was already high pre-crash.
I'm not engaging with "Tory Story" propaganda today.
Its not propaganda its a fact. Actually two facts.
Fact #1: Brown hubristically claimed he'd abolished boom and bust. Fact #2: Brown ran a major counter-cyclical budget deficit during the boom.
They're both facts and you know them both. That you don't like those facts doesn't change them.
Abolishing boom and bust was indeed said by Brown, though he later claimed he meant Tory boom and bust. And I think one of the recent Conservative Chancellors had also said something along those lines. However, who said what is irrelevant because it does not effect anything at all.
Second is the question of whether fiscal policy could have been tighter (mending the roof and all that). Let's say it could. Let's say Brown was wrong there. The trouble is, even this deficit was low by international standards and by historical comparison with previous British deficits under Conservative Chancellors.
So even if you are right, neither had the slightest impact on the global financial crisis or our ability to withstand or recover from it. So even if you are right, you are wrong.
Brown spent too much. PT is right and he is right. During an unprecedented boom with fiscal receipts at a high he rand a deficit for absolutely no need at all and spent unsustainably. When the GFC came, this simply made it more difficult for the UK but take out the GFC and his actions were unsustainable.
Thanks.
We don't often agree so glad we do here.
I understand that Lab types dislike what can be argued to be the Cons' underinvestment over their terms in office but that doesn't make any spending = good spending.
That seems to be more common these days. Autopsy results, perhaps?
From peak to 7th May
y = 935.55 x e(-0.049x) {R^2 fit = 0.9862)
Halving time = ln(2) / 0.049 Halving time = 14.14 days R_t assuming mean serial interval of 7.5 days = e^(-0.049* 7.5) R_t = 0.69.
ooo, I do love it when you use exponents.
Can you back-calculate R over the duration of the outbreak using this?
No, you need to solve partial differential equations (Or use specialist software) for that one I think, doing it from the peak allows an excel best fit line to suffice.
The Tories have given a £133m contract to produce Covid testing kits to healthcare firm Randox, without putting it out to competition. Randox pays Tory MP Owen Paterson £100k a year as a "consultant". Paterson refused to respond when asked if he'd lobbied govt on Randox's behalf
We discussed this yesterday. Apparently, they were the only company to come forward.
So they are going to do a million tests a day in Wuham. Do you think they might think they have a problem again & their bullshit figures about a handful of cases is actually significantly more?
I honestly feel that in the last 3 months he has gone from arrogant, stupid and obnoxious to plain old batshit insane. It's just like the frog in the pan, its crept up on us slowly and we have not all noticed.
It really isn't anything new. Obama is a secret muslim Kenyan? Ted Cruz's dad killed Kennedy? He's always been a conspira-nut.
I think he works on the theory that by dominating every news cycle, with whatever random thought comes into his head, he will get re-elected. I shouldn't think he really cares about the conspiracies, they're just another distraction to rant about.
Unfortunately, it's quite possible that it's a winning strategy. Probably not, but I wouldn't bet on it.
That is what worries me about Obamagate.
What has Joe Scarborough done wrong to be described as Psycho Joe?
That seems to be more common these days. Autopsy results, perhaps?
From peak to 7th May
y = 935.55 x e(-0.049x) {R^2 fit = 0.9862)
Halving time = ln(2) / 0.049 Halving time = 14.14 days R_t assuming mean serial interval of 7.5 days = e^(-0.049* 7.5) R_t = 0.69.
ooo, I do love it when you use exponents.
Can you back-calculate R over the duration of the outbreak using this?
No, you need to solve partial differential equations (Or use specialist software) for that one I think, doing it from the peak allows an excel best fit line to suffice.
That seems to be more common these days. Autopsy results, perhaps?
From peak to 7th May
y = 935.55 x e(-0.049x) {R^2 fit = 0.9862)
Halving time = ln(2) / 0.049 Halving time = 14.14 days R_t assuming mean serial interval of 7.5 days = e^(-0.049* 7.5) R_t = 0.69.
ooo, I do love it when you use exponents.
Can you back-calculate R over the duration of the outbreak using this?
No, you need to solve partial differential equations (Or use specialist software) for that one I think, doing it from the peak allows an excel best fit line to suffice.
You should take your Excel wizardry to another level and learn how to do partial derivatives. It can be done!
There's also the issue that R very likely has been changing prior to lockdown too. It looks to be reasonably contant over the lockdown though, every time I've done this exercise it's spat out a halving time of 14 days or so.
Listening to Nicola Sturgeon I have a feeling that the virus is much more prevelant in Scotland than it is in many parts of England. Where I am in Hampshire hospitals here are returning to normal. Operating theatres have opened, normal operations are being carried out, there are hardly any Covid-19 admissions, yet in Scotland yesterday there was a 165 increase in the number in Hospital with suspected Covid-19
It's almost like they're different countries at different stages of the pandemic.
You would also think they may read the info and see it has far lower death rate than England but is a few weeks behind, rather than just talking out their jacksie.
I know you are desperate to promote the myth that Scotland is weeks behind, but the figures confirm otherwise. The peak in England was 8th April and 14th April in Scotland.
The problem for Scotland, is that unlike England, the deaths pretty much hit a plateau around that peak and the reduction since has been small.
The risible level of testing (1,239 on 11/5) is not helping.
Little Scotlanders will continue to support, but others will be looking at lack of business support, failing education, inability to deal with this crisis and will start to question.
Does that testing figure include UK stations in Scotland, please? Quite a lot of people who cite testing/day for Scotland forget that. Also that until recently the UK Gmt didn't even send the info up north till it had sorted out a foulup over confidentiality regulations.
Listening to Nicola Sturgeon I have a feeling that the virus is much more prevelant in Scotland than it is in many parts of England. Where I am in Hampshire hospitals here are returning to normal. Operating theatres have opened, normal operations are being carried out, there are hardly any Covid-19 admissions, yet in Scotland yesterday there was a 165 increase in the number in Hospital with suspected Covid-19
It's almost like they're different countries at different stages of the pandemic.
Yo u would also think they may read the info and see it has far lower death rate than England but is a few weeks behind, rather than just talking out their jacksie.
I know you are desperate to promote the myth that Scotland is weeks behind, but the figures confirm otherwise. The peak in England was 8th April and 14th April in Scotland.
The problem for Scotland, is that unlike England, the deaths pretty much hit a plateau around that peak and the reduction since has been small.
The risible level of testing (1,239 on 11/5) is not helping.
Little Scotlanders will continue to support, but others will be looking at lack of business support, failing education, inability to deal with this crisis and will start to question.
Hoorray, another 'SNP honeymoon soon to be over' joins the PB throng. The more the merrier I say.
The SNP honeymoon will only end when either:
* Scotland goes independent and the SNP can't blame Westminster for their mistakes.
Or
* An alternative Scottish party with a better proposition for Scotland comes forward.
Or
* The SNP self destructs from the inside.
I don't see any of them happening any time soon. Not good or healthy for Scottish politics.
I know i shouldn't be shocked anymore, but the President of the United States is tweeting and promoting a conspiracy theory that a cable TV host killed one of his then congressional interns in the 1990s.....
Extraordinary.
I honestly feel that in the last 3 months he has gone from arrogant, stupid and obnoxious to plain old batshit insane. It's just like the frog in the pan, its crept up on us slowly and we have not all noticed.
Corona virus seems to have driven him over the edge. It destroyed his stock market boom, it showed the consequences of his vandalism of Federal services, it highlighted how reckless his attacks on the modest progress of Obamacare were and it has already killed more Americans than the Vietnam war.
Just thinking out loud: Maybe Biden being so old and not with it might be an advantage in toppling Trump. Dispite the vociferous Tumpette fan base, they were not the reason he won, there were two main reasons why Trump won. The first is that not enough Democrats leaners in crucial states were prepared to go and support Clinton. The second is that the "Always Republican" vote held up very well. Despite Pussygate and all the other things Trump said that went against traditional American and Christian values, most Republican voters saw Trump as the lesser of two evils in 2016. Now these Republican stalwarts have seen just how bad Trump really is, there must be many who are weighing up not supporting Trump and so letting Biden in. Because Biden is so clearly not going to run again in 24, and he's unlikely to have the energy to push anything radical through, it will be easier for Republicans to stay away, than if Warren or Buttigeig (say) were the Dem nominee.
I should have also mentioned that care home workers are dying at twice the rate of NHS workers. It is a scandal. Some of the people doing the most valuable work, poorly paid and little valued are being denied the PPE they need and are dying because of this. They are also a vector for retransmission into the wider community.
The whole purpose of lockdown was to protect the vulnerable. If we can’t even do that, really what is the point of it all?
If anything positive comes out of this it may be that people think twice about sending Mum off to a care home where greedy owners and (some) negligent staff are paid to see her through her dying days
What on Earth are you talking about?
I'm talking about more elderly people being cared for at home rather than being abandoned
Interesting approach - blame the families.
I seem to remember someone with similar viewpoints disappeared off this site last week.
As we said then dealing with dementia is something that requires trained people who are detached from the family - otherwise it's beyond painful.
Unfortunately TGOHF is still with us - his view was that families put relatives into care homes because they smell a bit and interfere with their holiday plans.
To be fair, there are some horrible people out there. Who would do exactly that.
There are also many, many people living in a sleep deprived hell, caring for someone who is literally fighting them.
If such people do exist I doubt there are many of them and they don't sound like the type of people who would willingly give up £5000 a month of their inheritance to pay for it. In any event the holiday issue is easily resolved with the use of respite care.
My parents had my Gran (mums mum) living with them after Grandad died. Mum was adamant she didn't want Gran in a home. After about 18 months as Gran's dementia worsened things became so difficult that Dad put his foot down and told mum "this is beyond what you can do, and is killing you". My sister and I were on the point of going to tell them the same thing. Gran ended up in what seems to be an excellent home, mum was visiting regularly until CV19 hit. There are definitely families who have callously dumped parents in homes, but also there are plenty of families who can't really cope and have had to put relatives into care homes.
And more empirical evidence that Hitchens is clueless..
Pandemic, Shutdown and Consumer Spending: Lessons from Scandinavian Policy Responses to COVID-19 https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.04630
This is the man who decided that "stochastic modelling" meant "guesswork" by looking up stochastic in his dictionary and insisting on using an entry marked as obsolete in 1932 (or something). When gently corrected by actual working scientists - who pointed out that it was a term of art with a very well understood definition within the field - doubled down on his own personal interpretation.
Listening to Nicola Sturgeon I have a feeling that the virus is much more prevelant in Scotland than it is in many parts of England. Where I am in Hampshire hospitals here are returning to normal. Operating theatres have opened, normal operations are being carried out, there are hardly any Covid-19 admissions, yet in Scotland yesterday there was a 165 increase in the number in Hospital with suspected Covid-19
It's almost like they're different countries at different stages of the pandemic.
Yo u would also think they may read the info and see it has far lower death rate than England but is a few weeks behind, rather than just talking out their jacksie.
I know you are desperate to promote the myth that Scotland is weeks behind, but the figures confirm otherwise. The peak in England was 8th April and 14th April in Scotland.
The problem for Scotland, is that unlike England, the deaths pretty much hit a plateau around that peak and the reduction since has been small.
The risible level of testing (1,239 on 11/5) is not helping.
Little Scotlanders will continue to support, but others will be looking at lack of business support, failing education, inability to deal with this crisis and will start to question.
Hoorray, another 'SNP honeymoon soon to be over' joins the PB throng. The more the merrier I say.
The SNP honeymoon will only end when either:
* Scotland goes independent and the SNP can't blame Westminster for their mistakes.
Or
* An alternative Scottish party with a better proposition for Scotland comes forward.
Or
* The SNP self destructs from the inside.
I don't see any of them happening any time soon. Not good or healthy for Scottish politics.
The SNP civil war of Salmondite hard cybernats led by Joanna Cherry and Sturgeon and her ditherers has already begun
That seems to be more common these days. Autopsy results, perhaps?
From peak to 7th May
y = 935.55 x e(-0.049x) {R^2 fit = 0.9862)
Halving time = ln(2) / 0.049 Halving time = 14.14 days R_t assuming mean serial interval of 7.5 days = e^(-0.049* 7.5) R_t = 0.69.
ooo, I do love it when you use exponents.
Can you back-calculate R over the duration of the outbreak using this?
No, you need to solve partial differential equations (Or use specialist software) for that one I think, doing it from the peak allows an excel best fit line to suffice.
You should take your Excel wizardry to another level and learn how to do partial derivatives. It can be done!
Of course it can be done, but anybody who knows enough maths to understand PDs and to programm them should also know enough to realise that Excel is horse %&§$ for anything more that entering small amounts of data and adding it up.
I know i shouldn't be shocked anymore, but the President of the United States is tweeting and promoting a conspiracy theory that a cable TV host killed one of his then congressional interns in the 1990s.....
Extraordinary.
I honestly feel that in the last 3 months he has gone from arrogant, stupid and obnoxious to plain old batshit insane. It's just like the frog in the pan, its crept up on us slowly and we have not all noticed.
Corona virus seems to have driven him over the edge. It destroyed his stock market boom, it showed the consequences of his vandalism of Federal services, it highlighted how reckless his attacks on the modest progress of Obamacare were and it has already killed more Americans than the Vietnam war.
Just thinking out loud: Maybe Biden being so old and not with it might be an advantage in toppling Trump. Dispite the vociferous Tumpette fan base, they were not the reason he won, there were two main reasons why Trump won. The first is that not enough Democrats leaners in crucial states were prepared to go and support Clinton. The second is that the "Always Republican" vote held up very well. Despite Pussygate and all the other things Trump said that went against traditional American and Christian values, most Republican voters saw Trump as the lesser of two evils in 2016. Now these Republican stalwarts have seen just how bad Trump really is, there must be many who are weighing up not supporting Trump and so letting Biden in. Because Biden is so clearly not going to run again in 24, and he's unlikely to have the energy to push anything radical through, it will be easier for Republicans to stay away, than if Warren or Buttigeig (say) were the Dem nominee.
Reasonable analysis. I wonder what will happen 7/8th Nov when it is clear that both the popular vote and the Electoral College have gone against him.
Oh, just seen the first post in this thread. So that's why he calls Scarbough Psycho Joe!
And more empirical evidence that Hitchens is clueless..
Pandemic, Shutdown and Consumer Spending: Lessons from Scandinavian Policy Responses to COVID-19 https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.04630
This is the man who decided that "stochastic modelling" meant "guesswork" by looking up stochastic in his dictionary and insisting on using an entry marked as obsolete in 1932 (or something). When gently corrected by actual working scientists - who pointed out that it was a term of art with a very well understood definition within the field - doubled down on his own personal interpretation.
The man has gone off the deep end.
Bit like the people who pop up from time to time claiming that all economists are psychopaths because they ignore human emotion......
That seems to be more common these days. Autopsy results, perhaps?
From peak to 7th May
y = 935.55 x e(-0.049x) {R^2 fit = 0.9862)
Halving time = ln(2) / 0.049 Halving time = 14.14 days R_t assuming mean serial interval of 7.5 days = e^(-0.049* 7.5) R_t = 0.69.
ooo, I do love it when you use exponents.
Can you back-calculate R over the duration of the outbreak using this?
No, you need to solve partial differential equations (Or use specialist software) for that one I think, doing it from the peak allows an excel best fit line to suffice.
You should take your Excel wizardry to another level and learn how to do partial derivatives. It can be done!
Of course it can be done, but anybody who knows enough maths to understand PDs and to programm them should also know enough to realise that Excel is horse %&§$ for anything more that entering small amounts of data and adding it up.
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
OK
Not by any means saying that UK has A*s, but we've only answered questions 1-3 so far. This is not over by a long chalk would you agree on that?
I should have also mentioned that care home workers are dying at twice the rate of NHS workers. It is a scandal. Some of the people doing the most valuable work, poorly paid and little valued are being denied the PPE they need and are dying because of this. They are also a vector for retransmission into the wider community.
The whole purpose of lockdown was to protect the vulnerable. If we can’t even do that, really what is the point of it all?
If anything positive comes out of this it may be that people think twice about sending Mum off to a care home where greedy owners and (some) negligent staff are paid to see her through her dying days
What on Earth are you talking about?
I'm talking about more elderly people being cared for at home rather than being abandoned
Interesting approach - blame the families.
I seem to remember someone with similar viewpoints disappeared off this site last week.
As we said then dealing with dementia is something that requires trained people who are detached from the family - otherwise it's beyond painful.
Unfortunately TGOHF is still with us - his view was that families put relatives into care homes because they smell a bit and interfere with their holiday plans.
To be fair, there are some horrible people out there. Who would do exactly that.
There are also many, many people living in a sleep deprived hell, caring for someone who is literally fighting them.
If such people do exist I doubt there are many of them and they don't sound like the type of people who would willingly give up £5000 a month of their inheritance to pay for it. In any event the holiday issue is easily resolved with the use of respite care.
My parents had my Gran (mums mum) living with them after Grandad died. Mum was adamant she didn't want Gran in a home. After about 18 months as Gran's dementia worsened things became so difficult that Dad put his foot down and told mum "this is beyond what you can do, and is killing you". My sister and I were on the point of going to tell them the same thing. Gran ended up in what seems to be an excellent home, mum was visiting regularly until CV19 hit. There are definitely families who have callously dumped parents in homes, but also there are plenty of families who can't really cope and have had to put relatives into care homes.
Both scenario were familiar to me OUAT. 'Children' commenting how much better Mum (usually) was in a home. Many people with dementia need experienced care and a daughter (usually), however caring and well-intentioned just hasn't got the experience. Can be fatal for them.
That seems to be more common these days. Autopsy results, perhaps?
From peak to 7th May
y = 935.55 x e(-0.049x) {R^2 fit = 0.9862)
Halving time = ln(2) / 0.049 Halving time = 14.14 days R_t assuming mean serial interval of 7.5 days = e^(-0.049* 7.5) R_t = 0.69.
ooo, I do love it when you use exponents.
Can you back-calculate R over the duration of the outbreak using this?
No, you need to solve partial differential equations (Or use specialist software) for that one I think, doing it from the peak allows an excel best fit line to suffice.
You should take your Excel wizardry to another level and learn how to do partial derivatives. It can be done!
Of course it can be done, but anybody who knows enough maths to understand PDs and to programm them should also know enough to realise that Excel is horse %&§$ for anything more that entering small amounts of data and adding it up.
You've never tried to solve complex partial differential equations in excel? You are missing out, sir.
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
Listening to Nicola Sturgeon I have a feeling that the virus is much more prevelant in Scotland than it is in many parts of England. Where I am in Hampshire hospitals here are returning to normal. Operating theatres have opened, normal operations are being carried out, there are hardly any Covid-19 admissions, yet in Scotland yesterday there was a 165 increase in the number in Hospital with suspected Covid-19
It's almost like they're different countries at different stages of the pandemic.
You would also think they may read the info and see it has far lower death rate than England but is a few weeks behind, rather than just talking out their jacksie.
I know you are desperate to promote the myth that Scotland is weeks behind, but the figures confirm otherwise. The peak in England was 8th April and 14th April in Scotland.
The problem for Scotland, is that unlike England, the deaths pretty much hit a plateau around that peak and the reduction since has been small.
The risible level of testing (1,239 on 11/5) is not helping.
Little Scotlanders will continue to support, but others will be looking at lack of business support, failing education, inability to deal with this crisis and will start to question.
Does that testing figure include UK stations in Scotland, please? Quite a lot of people who cite testing/day for Scotland forget that. Also that until recently the UK Gmt didn't even send the info up north till it had sorted out a foulup over confidentiality regulations.
You're posting on a site where folk were stridently insisting that testing in Scotland was less than half the actual number, and who then went all quiet when this was pointed out. I don't think they're interested in details like this.
To demonstrate this mindset:
'The risible level of testing (1,239 on 11/5) is not helping.'
versus
'On 11 May there were:
2,539 tests carried out by NHS Scotland in hospitals, care homes or the community
In addition, there were 1,544 drive through and mobile tests carried out by the Regional Testing Centres in Scotland'
We are dealing with a once in a hundred year pandemic.
The Government managed to persuade people to accept the largest reduction in freedoms in the history of the country and the people have 99.9999% complied with it.
They have instigated an astonishing and generousFurlough Scheme to keep peoples livelihood's going, probably the most generous in the world.
The NHS has dealt comfortably with the pandemic.(No one gave it a chance in ealry March)
They have provided detailed advice and guidance throughout the lockdown. It was easily accessible and clearly written.
Their major error has been the carehome issue, they got carried away with discharging people from hospital when they should have been isolated.
Now, they are making a tiny change to the lockdown to give people a tiny bit more freedom and have provided a plan on the way forward and people are claiming they don't understand what seems simple to me. In terms of returning to work for those on Furlough I have just had an email from a marble supplier telling me that following Boris's chat they are re-opening tomorrow. They have said they have spent the last six weeks changing their factory and putting into place the following procedures.
All employees have a temperature check upon arrival each morning. Strict 2 metre distancing on the factory floor and at workstations Staggered breaks Hand sanitiser stations Face masks to be worn at all times Visitors to the factory/showroom are strictly by pre appointment only
I wonder how they managed to do this seeing as the only Government advice is so muddled and confusing.
But this is politics. Governments get punished for presiding over tough times. Gordon Brown brought the developed world together after the GFC and was instrumental in mitigating the damage. Fat lot of good it did him.
You know full well that's not what Brown is blamed for. Gordon Brown screwed up the economy before the crash and paid the price when the GFC exposed what he had already done.
If he hadn't been so hubristic as to think he had "eliminated boom and bust" he wouldn't have left the nation so exposed to see the deficit blow up because it was already high pre-crash.
I'm not engaging with "Tory Story" propaganda today.
Its not propaganda its a fact. Actually two facts.
Fact #1: Brown hubristically claimed he'd abolished boom and bust. Fact #2: Brown ran a major counter-cyclical budget deficit during the boom.
They're both facts and you know them both. That you don't like those facts doesn't change them.
Abolishing boom and bust was indeed said by Brown, though he later claimed he meant Tory boom and bust. And I think one of the recent Conservative Chancellors had also said something along those lines. However, who said what is irrelevant because it does not effect anything at all.
Second is the question of whether fiscal policy could have been tighter (mending the roof and all that). Let's say it could. Let's say Brown was wrong there. The trouble is, even this deficit was low by international standards and by historical comparison with previous British deficits under Conservative Chancellors.
So even if you are right, neither had the slightest impact on the global financial crisis or our ability to withstand or recover from it. So even if you are right, you are wrong.
Brown spent too much. PT is right and he is right. During an unprecedented boom with fiscal receipts at a high he rand a deficit for absolutely no need at all and spent unsustainably. When the GFC came, this simply made it more difficult for the UK but take out the GFC and his actions were unsustainable.
Thanks.
We don't often agree so glad we do here.
I understand that Lab types dislike what can be argued to be the Cons' underinvestment over their terms in office but that doesn't make any spending = good spending.
Good or bad spending is a separate matter, and is why we have elections. Different parties have different priorities. You can argue that Labour spent money on all the wrong things but it had sod all to do with the GFC.
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
How would you rate the public's performance ?
Washing Hands ? Using transport for non essential ? Meeting up with friends and relatives against advice ? Attending banned religious gatherings ? Spousal battery ? Being old ?
If we had all been better at the above wouldn't the infection level be lower ?
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
How would you rate the public's performance ?
Washing Hands ? Using transport for non essential ? Meeting up with friends and relatives against advice ? Attending banned religious gatherings ? Spousal battery ? Being old ?
If we had all been better at the above wouldn't the infection level be lower ?
I'd rate the public at an A for their performance.
Listening to Nicola Sturgeon I have a feeling that the virus is much more prevelant in Scotland than it is in many parts of England. Where I am in Hampshire hospitals here are returning to normal. Operating theatres have opened, normal operations are being carried out, there are hardly any Covid-19 admissions, yet in Scotland yesterday there was a 165 increase in the number in Hospital with suspected Covid-19
It's almost like they're different countries at different stages of the pandemic.
You would also think they may read the info and see it has far lower death rate than England but is a few weeks behind, rather than just talking out their jacksie.
I know you are desperate to promote the myth that Scotland is weeks behind, but the figures confirm otherwise. The peak in England was 8th April and 14th April in Scotland.
The problem for Scotland, is that unlike England, the deaths pretty much hit a plateau around that peak and the reduction since has been small.
The risible level of testing (1,239 on 11/5) is not helping.
Little Scotlanders will continue to support, but others will be looking at lack of business support, failing education, inability to deal with this crisis and will start to question.
Does that testing figure include UK stations in Scotland, please? Quite a lot of people who cite testing/day for Scotland forget that. Also that until recently the UK Gmt didn't even send the info up north till it had sorted out a foulup over confidentiality regulations.
You're posting on a site where folk were stridently insisting that testing in Scotland was less than half the actual number, and who then went all quiet when this was pointed out. I don't think they're interested in details like this.
To demonstrate this mindset:
'The risible level of testing (1,239 on 11/5) is not helping.'
versus
'On 11 May there were:
2,539 tests carried out by NHS Scotland in hospitals, care homes or the community
In addition, there were 1,544 drive through and mobile tests carried out by the Regional Testing Centres in Scotland'
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
How would you rate the public's performance ?
Washing Hands ? Using transport for non essential ? Meeting up with friends and relatives against advice ? Attending banned religious gatherings ? Spousal battery ? Being old ?
If we had all been better at the above wouldn't the infection level be lower ?
I'd rate the public at an A for their performance.
Trouble is you can get an A with 70%
We need A**** even a few % non-compliance can screw us over
Some signs of a return to more normal NHS. I have now been given a date for a long treatment starting in June. This treatment will be somewhat debilitating so, I have a plan. We can now travel within reason and exercise, and run with a friend at 2M distance. So I intend to complete all my favourite fell runs over the next few weeks, these runs are miles from anyone and not the usual hot spots. I will run with a friend for safety, and enter treatment as fit and strong as possible.
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
Such a business appears to have discovered that 30% of its staff are unnecessary. I'm not sure quite how common that is.
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
True except Employers will be asked to cough up a part of the cost from August. Of course, Sunak is not yet telling us what the rate of that part will be. That comes in June.
A cynic would say this is the government looking to distance the cause of this massive problem (their long lockdown policy) from the effect (economic collapse), and hoping the voters don't connect the two too closely.
Employers who cannot or will not share the ongoing cost of furlough from August will also share the blame.
Nothing represents the media having a bad crisis more than assuring us the furlough scheme would drop to 60% after June up until minutes before Sunak spoke. They couldn't even get something as fundemanetal as that correct.
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
Such a business appears to have discovered that 30% of its staff are unnecessary. I'm not sure quite how common that is.
You believe it's uncommon, I suspect it is very, very common.
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
Agreed. There will be plenty of employers who would rather keep employees on furlough with taxpayer (the future one!) paying most of the bill, in the hope that the economy picks up and they will be able to immediately call up their "reserve". This is a lot better than having to rehire and retrain a load of people at short notice which would be expensive and inefficient. A lot will depend on who trusts the "bounce back" theory.
There is a huge amount to criticise the government on their generally hopeless response to this crisis. I think so far though, Sunak should be congratulated on his package of support for business, and by extension their employees.
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
You're a harsher marker than me, but you're closer to the mark than all the pompom wavers.
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
Such a business appears to have discovered that 30% of its staff are unnecessary. I'm not sure quite how common that is.
You believe it's uncommon, I suspect it is very, very common.
Yes one thing this crisis has done is allow the more productive staff to get noticed. One of the reasons my company is rotating the furlough is basically to see who they miss the most. In related news I'm back to work on June the 1st, part of me is dreading it already. This has been a nice escape from working life, but at the same time it's a relief to know that my services are necessary to the company.
Some signs of a return to more normal NHS. I have now been given a date for a long treatment starting in June. This treatment will be somewhat debilitating so, I have a plan. We can now travel within reason and exercise, and run with a friend at 2M distance. So I intend to complete all my favourite fell runs over the next few weeks, these runs are miles from anyone and not the usual hot spots. I will run with a friend for safety, and enter treatment as fit and strong as possible.
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
OK
Not by any means saying that UK has A*s, but we've only answered questions 1-3 so far. This is not over by a long chalk would you agree on that?
We’ve answered most of the questions. Take just one: masks (a bugbear of mine, but a useful measure of their general incompetence).
Britain was the last big country - the very last - to ask for mask wearing on public transport. Why? Even the Americans - who began, like us, wrongly saying masks don’t work - realised their mistake some time ago, and changed advice.
It’s just shit. A big serving of shit in an entire menu of shite.
Incidentally I think this perception of our covid-response is now percolating through to the public. The government’s polling resembles a cartoon character running off a cliff. For a while, after the disaster, the legs keep whirring and gravity is ignored.
But when reality hits - Whoosh.
I wonder if Boris will make it through a full term. The backlash is going to be intense.
They are still more engaged with spinning than with policy.
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
Such a business appears to have discovered that 30% of its staff are unnecessary. I'm not sure quite how common that is.
You believe it's uncommon, I suspect it is very, very common.
No - I said I don't know how common it is.
I would *guess* that many companies could shed 10-15% of staff without doing much more than mildly increasing the work load on the rest of the workforce.
30% is LocalAuthorityRunByLoonies level - like the outfit is Spain that took decades to notice than one of their employees never actually turned up for work.
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
OK
Not by any means saying that UK has A*s, but we've only answered questions 1-3 so far. This is not over by a long chalk would you agree on that?
We’ve tanswered most of the questions. Take just one: masks (a bugbear of mine, but a useful measure of their general incompetence).
Britain was the last big country - the very last - to ask for mask wearing on public transport. Why? Even the Americans - who began, like us, wrongly saying masks don’t work - realised their mistake some time ago, and changed advice.
It’s just shit. A big serving of shit in an entire menu of shite.
Incidentally I think this perception of our covid-response is now percolating through to the public. The government’s polling resembles a cartoon character running off a cliff. For a while, after the disaster, the legs keep whirring and gravity is ignored.
But when reality hits - Whoosh.
I wonder if Boris will make it through a full term. The backlash is going to be intense.
Nah most people aren't obsessive hypochondriac internet cranks over this.
Take mask wearing on public transport - who's even been going on public transport in the past month or so? What proportion of the nation?
Vast majority of people don't use public transport in the first place and even for those that do most people are now locked down. So vast, vast majority of people won't have been on public transport in the past month with or without any masks.
Comments
The backdated deaths actually have a marginal overall effect on a calculation of halving time/R
Fact #4 : The Tories left public services in a heap.
But this is boring. You are not objective. I am. I'll prove it -
You know how people - even Conservatives - say that Brown was not to blame for the Global Financial Crisis?
Well, he was. To an extent he was. The City became bloated and dysfunctional on his watch as CoE - which he allowed since he needed the tax revenue - and this bloated and dysfunctional City played a junior (to Wall St) but nevertheless influential role in formenting the crash.
And then there is by issuing borderline deranged tweets and throwing a tantrum at reasonable questions.
In 2016 Trump was the master of the former.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Wood_Hospital
https://ezitis.myzen.co.uk/haroldwood.html
As has Rush Green
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_Green_Hospital
https://ezitis.myzen.co.uk/rushgreen.html
So no need to wonder why there is no space to look after our old people, and why every hospital and doctors seems so overcrowded - three big local hospitals have been demolished and houses built on them. Short sighted, money driven policy from the 90s Tories and Blair it seems (although Rush Green has a 140 bed care home as well as the new houses)
Which is kinda the key bit of the whole thing.
The problem for Scotland, is that unlike England, the deaths pretty much hit a plateau around that peak and the reduction since has been small.
The risible level of testing (1,239 on 11/5) is not helping.
Little Scotlanders will continue to support, but others will be looking at lack of business support, failing education, inability to deal with this crisis and will start to question.
We don't often agree so glad we do here.
https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/1260062416332709889?s=19
y = 935.55 x e(-0.049x) {R^2 fit = 0.9862)
Halving time = ln(2) / 0.049
Halving time = 14.14 days
R_t assuming mean serial interval of 7.5 days = e^(-0.049* 7.5)
R_t = 0.69.
Not sure how they deal with those unless they have a huge rope with knots at 2m intervals stretching down towards Marble Arch.
A lot of companies are paying the 20% difference.
Surely the buck stops with Boris. Why does Boris always seem to be given a free pass?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen's_Hospital#History
Can you back-calculate R over the duration of the outbreak using this?
https://twitter.com/npi_research/status/1260168017259966464
Usual caveats about weekends and last few days. 101 deaths from more than 7 days ago.
Randox pays Tory MP Owen Paterson £100k a year as a "consultant".
Paterson refused to respond when asked if he'd lobbied govt on Randox's behalf
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1260167707741368320?s=20
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1260171664865796097?s=20
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1260177007490600960?s=20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6nLfCbAzgo
Thanks Pulpstar
The numbers involved seem a touch improbable, to put it mildly. It's like the total testing levels of the rest of the world, concentrated on one city.
* Scotland goes independent and the SNP can't blame Westminster for their mistakes.
Or
* An alternative Scottish party with a better proposition for Scotland comes forward.
Or
* The SNP self destructs from the inside.
I don't see any of them happening any time soon. Not good or healthy for Scottish politics.
They are going to use "NAT" testing. Anybody know what that is, how it compares to PCR?
Not to go all tin foil hat, but this central order to do it, i think we perhaps should wonder what is going on there.
Gran ended up in what seems to be an excellent home, mum was visiting regularly until CV19 hit.
There are definitely families who have callously dumped parents in homes, but also there are plenty of families who can't really cope and have had to put relatives into care homes.
The man has gone off the deep end.
Dare I say that we seem to be on the right track now? Were could feasible see a number in the 100s in the next week or so...
Oh, just seen the first post in this thread. So that's why he calls Scarbough Psycho Joe!
https://twitter.com/cricketwyvern/status/1260200240445034496?s=19
.
https://www.udemy.com/course/learn-python-and-the-basics-of-programming-with-donald-trump/
Not by any means saying that UK has A*s, but we've only answered questions 1-3 so far. This is not over by a long chalk would you agree on that?
Can be fatal for them.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
To demonstrate this mindset:
'The risible level of testing (1,239 on 11/5) is not helping.'
versus
'On 11 May there were:
2,539 tests carried out by NHS Scotland in hospitals, care homes or the community
In addition, there were 1,544 drive through and mobile tests carried out by the Regional Testing Centres in Scotland'
https://tinyurl.com/yagk44uc
Washing Hands ?
Using transport for non essential ?
Meeting up with friends and relatives against advice ?
Attending banned religious gatherings ?
Spousal battery ?
Being old ?
If we had all been better at the above wouldn't the infection level be lower ?
We need A**** even a few % non-compliance can screw us over
We can now travel within reason and exercise, and run with a friend at 2M distance. So I intend to complete all my favourite fell runs over the next few weeks, these runs are miles from anyone and not the usual hot spots.
I will run with a friend for safety, and enter treatment as fit and strong as possible.
https://twitter.com/cricketwyvern/status/1260202371214389248?s=19
A cynic would say this is the government looking to distance the cause of this massive problem (their long lockdown policy) from the effect (economic collapse), and hoping the voters don't connect the two too closely.
Employers who cannot or will not share the ongoing cost of furlough from August will also share the blame.
October/November is gonna be brutal.
There is a huge amount to criticise the government on their generally hopeless response to this crisis. I think so far though, Sunak should be congratulated on his package of support for business, and by extension their employees.
https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1259572964447653892
If not, I'd rate Boris' maths U.
We'll know soon enough anyway.
I would *guess* that many companies could shed 10-15% of staff without doing much more than mildly increasing the work load on the rest of the workforce.
30% is LocalAuthorityRunByLoonies level - like the outfit is Spain that took decades to notice than one of their employees never actually turned up for work.
Take mask wearing on public transport - who's even been going on public transport in the past month or so? What proportion of the nation?
Vast majority of people don't use public transport in the first place and even for those that do most people are now locked down. So vast, vast majority of people won't have been on public transport in the past month with or without any masks.