This is a perfect example of what was wrong with Britain in the early 70s. Trade Unions dictating to the govt and the Courts and threatening to bring the country to its knees.
The "Pentonville Five" were locked up for breaking the law.
Of course I am serious, I mean really, yes I am!
The Labour Party went from supporting this kind of action, to importing hundreds of thousands of people to undercut the wages of the people on marches like this.
I remember this stuff from the 70s. The Labour Party was full of the then equivalent of Corbynites (anti-semitism would not matter back then) and the "Loony Left". It was unworkable. You could get nothing done because of strike disruption and when you did get it done, it was overpriced and under-spec and usually shoddily made.
Modern Labour may have gone too far, but that does not excuse the near Marxist Labour from back then.
Before my time, and I take your point that overarching Trade Unions can be more of an overall hindrance than a help, but my feeling, that you seem to sympathise with, is that Modern Labour threw the baby out with the bathwater. The majority of people on the march were probably not Loony left, Corbynite anti semites but working class people who wanted job security, same as most poorly paid people today....
The 70s was something of a disaster for unions and business alike, and such confrontations benefitted neither.
Union unrest had two sides - often awful, non-consultative and non-consensual management, and often tribal, non-discriminating and wilfully obstructive workers. The common denominator was class, and a key reason why countries like Germany were able to forge much better industrial relations.
Union power became too great, but arguably since then, against the long-term interests of the overall economy, as Piketty argues, and in Anglo-Saxon countries particularly, it's become too weak.
The fact that New Labour was not even prepared to consider German-style structures like workers on boards, and that, even more tellingly, Theresa May's government pretended to, before them throwing out, does suggest, as isam says, that we've gone much too far the other way.
Zero Hours Contracts should be outlawed
That's absolutely ridiculous! There's a definite time and a place for them.
Exclusive zero hour contracts were abusive and outlawed years ago.
I got my break in my current career on a zero hours contract - local uni needed a programmer to rewrite their tools/develop new ones as needed, I was between PhD submission and viva (PhD in different field, but I'd picked up the coding/modelling skills they required), reluctant to go too far having just met my (now) wife and had a consultancy contract on an EU research project and some freelance writing work. It was ideal for me, the uni actually were very good and guaranteed me (not in writing, but they stuck to it) minimum 21 hours per week and after 9 months or so, with funding I helped to secure, it led to a conventional full-time position. I'm no longer at the same university, but 7 years into a job at another university where I wouldn't have even got to interview without that experience (I'd have likely been in my PhD field still, which would be no disaster, but I much prefer what I do now).
So, it worked for me and, without being zero hours, they'd never have been able to provide the work - they essentially didn't have any money, the university would not have allowed them to advertise a fixed hours post without them having a pot of money to cover it because of the liabilities that would have entailed. In principle, I tend to be against zero hours contracts in most places they were used but, for me, they were a very positive thing (I accept that I was atypical, pay was in the £30k FTE range and I had other income from the contracting work, no dependents, no mortgage etc).
There is a place for zero hours, but they're also potentially abusive. I'm not sure what the solution is or whether there necessarily is one.
Given a lot of employment rights accrue after 2 years perhaps something like the right to switch to contracted hours once you have worked at least 2500 hours over the previous 2 year period perhaps?
That wouldnt stop casual and speculative new jobs being created but would reduce it as a permanent exploitative option for companies.
This is a perfect example of what was wrong with Britain in the early 70s. Trade Unions dictating to the govt and the Courts and threatening to bring the country to its knees.
The "Pentonville Five" were locked up for breaking the law.
Of course I am serious, I mean really, yes I am!
The Labour Party went from supporting this kind of action, to importing hundreds of thousands of people to undercut the wages of the people on marches like this.
I remember this stuff from the 70s. The Labour Party was full of the then equivalent of Corbynites (anti-semitism would not matter back then) and the "Loony Left". It was unworkable. You could get nothing done because of strike disruption and when you did get it done, it was overpriced and under-spec and usually shoddily made.
Modern Labour may have gone too far, but that does not excuse the near Marxist Labour from back then.
Before my time, and I take your point that overarching Trade Unions can be more of an overall hindrance than a help, but my feeling, that you seem to sympathise with, is that Modern Labour threw the baby out with the bathwater. The majority of people on the march were probably not Loony left, Corbynite anti semites but working class people who wanted job security, same as most poorly paid people today....
The 70s was something of a disaster for unions and business alike, and such confrontations benefitted neither.
Union unrest had two sides - often awful, non-consultative and non-consensual management, and often tribal, non-discriminating and wilfully obstructive workers. The common denominator was class, and a key reason why countries like Germany were able to forge much better industrial relations.
Union power became too great, but arguably since then, against the long-term interests of the overall economy, as Piketty argues, and in Anglo-Saxon countries particularly, it's become too weak.
The fact that New Labour was not even prepared to consider German-style structures like workers on boards, and that, even more tellingly, Theresa May's government pretended to, before them throwing out, does suggest, as isam says, that we've gone much too far the other way.
It was also about the toxic accumulation,ulation of strife in existing companies.
The new car factories in the UK which were built in the 80s seem to be much happier places all around.
You read up on some of the union vs BL strikes and wonder what the union had in mind. If the cars their members make when they can be bothered have horrendous build quality and you had a long wait as strikes crippled production, then closure of the factory / business and with it your job was always likely.
The idea that the government would keep siding with them over management to make shit cars in a shit way was at best a pipe dream.
As a young teen, even I could see the flaw in the logic of "... do what we say or we will force this company out of business to protect the jobs of its employees"
This was what turned many against the unions. The essential nihilism of such a position.
Recently, I was trying to explain the Miners Strike to some young, quite left wing people. I literally could not get them to believe the Scargill demands - they had to look them up on their phones...
I guess we cannot presume that all Bernie's supporters will back Biden come November. Bernie's former Co-Chair, Nina Turner, described the choice between Trump and Biden as 'You have a bowl of sh1t in front of you, and all you've got to do is eat half of it instead of the whole thing.'
I guess we cannot presume that all Bernie's supporters will back Biden come November. Bernie's former Co-Chair, Nina Turner, described the choice between Trump and Biden as 'You have a bowl of sh1t in front of you, and all you've got to do is eat half of it instead of the whole thing.'
Voting for neither would be equivalent to eating 3/4 of it, so you're still better off eating 1/2 of it.
I was most definitely not agreeing with Ms Turner.
@noneoftheabove the nearest “Leon” to me is in Manchester...
Nando's might sit in between McDonalds and Leon in terms of healthy options and thats everywhere.
You seen the calorie counts? My gods it's delicious but wow!
Calorie counting is pretty silly if you ask me (not targeting this specifically at you). A calorie isn't a calorie - fuel isn't just fuel. Ask anyone who's ever put petrol in a diesel engine. And how much more complex than a combustion engine is your body? If you're going to subject what you eat to such intense scrutiny, make it about something that matters to your health.
This is a typically stupid comment from you @Luckyguy1983
Let me guess - you never had to worry much about your weight.
What do you think matters more to an obese person's health than their weight?
How do you suggest someone who is overweight addresses that?
It isn't a stupid comment. I was a chubby child, and I'm now a non-overweight adult. Though that should read a non-overweight 'shaped' adult, because I don't weigh myself. I believe that being overweight stems from eating wrongly, not eating 'too much'. So simply forcing yourself to eat less (of a poor diet) whilst it will eventually lead to the body eating its fat reserves, is not going to result in a good health outcome.
My advice to someone who is overweight would be firstly to stop punishing themselves for being a 'greedy pig' with no 'self control', because I don't think that is true, and doesn't help. We were meant to enjoy food. In terms of more specific advice, I'd gravitate toward intermittent fasting combined with a ketogenic diet focused around nutrient-dense foods. Effectively I'd keep eating within a window of 12 midday to 6pm, with exceptions for important occasions. Ketogenic diet is largely based around limiting intake of carbs, especially empty carbs, and the degree of overweightness and speed of results would dictate the amount of carbs incorporated. Lots of eggs, lots of oily fish, good meat, vegetables and fruit. Lots of healthy fats. Combine this with an exercise regime, not based on 'how many calories you can burn' - which is like taking your car out to put miles on the clock, but based on building muscle and increasing endurance and stamina.
Well done on you shedding weight.
Here's an exclusive preview of my forthcoming best-selling diet book:
"Exercise more. Eat less."
The problem is that this seeming truism, isn't the whole story. The body is incredibly complex. I've seen some extremely interesting studies, such as feeding volunteers hugely excess (k)calories for a long period. If it was simply excess calories leads to weight gain, then all would have ballooned. They didn't. Most only gained a few extra pounds. Its the same with very low calorie diets - the body resists the diet and shuts down resting energy use. Peoples approach to food is important. My wife only eats when hungry, when she's not she has no interest in food. I, on the other hand, can eat at any time. Notably if my wife is tired, she's not hungry. No late night munchies or curries for her. Its also unhelpful for those who find it incredibly easy to not put on weight to assume that they are doing something right by conscious choice, and those that are overweight are 'weak', or eating a poor diet. Its complicated still further by fitness - you can be cardiovasularly fit, and overweight. It would be better to be fit and not overweight, but its not easy. I have run over 20 half marathons and two marathons, yet was never able to reach my goal of under 12 stone (I'm Boris height). At my fittest, I was still a plodder (2h 14 min best half time) but with a resting pulse of 52 bpm. I don't eat sweets particularly and have recently given up chocolate, and limiting cake to once a week. My weakness for certain is bread (and its usually high quality, wholegrain bread at that). All my family have this issue - we all tend to be rounder than ideal. Yet my father is now 81 and my mum 76, and in perfect health. I really want to emulate them...
Very interestingly, a 'don't be such a greedy pig - eat less, exercise more and eat more veg' diet was given a mass experiment in WW2. Verdicts on the health of this diet are mixed, but there's some evidence that it actually puts on weight. There was a programme with Giles Coren and Sue Perkins where they ate a WW2 diet for a period (I think a week?) and both put on weight. I think it was probably a switch over to carbs (from fats and proteins) that was largely responsible.
It is worth noting that a considerable portion of the population was undernourished in the pre war world. Cheap food hadn't appeared yet, in the modern sense.
Part of the design of the WWII ration (as far as they could with the knowledge of the day) was to *increase* the food groups they *thought were good* - to build up the poorer classes.
This was based on the experience from WWI - where non trivial numbers of conscripts had to be rejected as unfit due to poor physical condition.
Yes, it should definitely be remembered that all was not rosy in the garden before WW2. However, the paucity of cheese, butter, mik, eggs, under rationing really shocks me. And undoubtedly led to issues - the most visible being dental.
Yup - Chamberlin had a whole program of stuff he wanted to do, including universal health insurance. Then re-armament kicked up a notch... re-armament started in 1932, and by 1936/7 was of the "spend all money you can on expanding the arms industry"
I don't know anything about food supplies in WW2, but it does surprise me a bit how dairy had to be rationed so strictly. I would have supposed that was mostly domestically produced at the time. Getting into WW2 was catastrophic (if the right thing to do). Getting into WW1 was just catastrophic.
Probably shortage of grain (for animal feed) and difficulty with importing animal feed. The grain shortage certainly led to a reduction in whisky production in WW2 (and of course the draff byproducts which would have fed lots of cattle).
Edit: In general I don't think anyone needed to starve during WW2 in the UK - but would have had to fill up with wholemeal bread and spuds and other veg. Outwith favoured groups such as servicemen, the problem seems to have been fats and meat to make the bulk palatable, never mind have an excess to get fat on. Very different from the diets od today discussed here.
Perhaps. It's possibly a bit naive of me but I would have thought most cows grazed, supplemented by hay in those days.
Agree that this has hit home more than any event in my lifetime.
Covid is strange because it is a deadly virus but it isn't a deadly virus for most people so the overall reaction is understandable and also, as we are seeing from da yoof on tour, ignorable. Certainly the measures taken, lockdown, etc are once in a lifetime events. But walking around it doesn't feel as though we are in mortal danger. Whether rightly or wrongly.
For me IIRC just before Gulf 1 there was a time when it was thought that Iran and Iraq would come together to fight the infidel, thus occasioning a literal clash of civilisations. A cultural war, but a hot one, not just one conducted in the Graun Opinion section.
Covid 19 is the biggest event of my lifetime. We aren't even halfway through and it is transforming the world.
Inter alia, it will mark the decisive moment when supreme power passed from the West to the East.
For a (pre Covid) counter argument, you should read Bruno Macaes. His 2018 book charts how China is setting out to reshape the global world order, and his 2019 book argues that, far from being about to decline, the US has the chance to lead the world into a new era.
I guess we cannot presume that all Bernie's supporters will back Biden come November. Bernie's former Co-Chair, Nina Turner, described the choice between Trump and Biden as 'You have a bowl of sh1t in front of you, and all you've got to do is eat half of it instead of the whole thing.'
Which continues to remind us of how we got landed with Bozo.
I'd say the top level mission statement for the left should be that we work towards eradicating, within the constraints of democratic consent and personal liberty, inequalities of class, race, gender and sexuality.
These will usually go in tandem imo but sometimes there will be clashes. A measure to reduce class inequality, for example, might widen gender inequality.
So you need a hierarchy for when these clashes happen. Which is the more important? Race trumps class? The opposite? What about gender? What about LBGT?
And this is difficult. Class is probably the most important in terms of the size of the problem but the other things are about personal identity and therefore are more visceral and the inequalities thereof in a sense more egregious.
One thing is certain - if you get either the priorities wrong or the messaging wrong you end up with some quite bizarre alliances against you. Obvious example, Brexit, a project of the reactionary right delivered with the help of blue collar workers and the underclass.
There's a tendency on some elements of the far left towards class essentialism- to believe that this is the only hierarchy that really matters, and the only one we should focus on (bizarrely some on PB think that this same segment of the left is "uber woke", which to me is a fundamental failure of political taxonomy)
I'm sympathetic to why people would feel this way- for example, a lot of racial inequality is driven by the desire to create an economic underclass- but I really think this view fails on both moral and tactical grounds. On moral grounds because ignoring, say, homophobia because it doesn't have a class overlay is clearly a dereliction of moral duty (as is pretending that racial issues are 100% class-based).
On tactical grounds because I believe there are very powerful forces arrayed in protection of existing class hierarchies and I'm sure they could easily adapt to no longer being able to divide people this way. For example, with Bernie Sanders we saw those to his right gleefully adopt faux-wokeness as their choice of weapon in protection of the status quo, saying surely people would prefer a black female candidate.
Agree that this has hit home more than any event in my lifetime.
Covid is strange because it is a deadly virus but it isn't a deadly virus for most people so the overall reaction is understandable and also, as we are seeing from da yoof on tour, ignorable. Certainly the measures taken, lockdown, etc are once in a lifetime events. But walking around it doesn't feel as though we are in mortal danger. Whether rightly or wrongly.
For me IIRC just before Gulf 1 there was a time when it was thought that Iran and Iraq would come together to fight the infidel, thus occasioning a literal clash of civilisations. A cultural war, but a hot one, not just one conducted in the Graun Opinion section.
Covid 19 is the biggest event of my lifetime. We aren't even halfway through and it is transforming the world.
Inter alia, it will mark the decisive moment when supreme power passed from the West to the East.
Or push moves to isolate China if India can be brought into the Western sphere
Agree that this has hit home more than any event in my lifetime.
Covid is strange because it is a deadly virus but it isn't a deadly virus for most people so the overall reaction is understandable and also, as we are seeing from da yoof on tour, ignorable. Certainly the measures taken, lockdown, etc are once in a lifetime events. But walking around it doesn't feel as though we are in mortal danger. Whether rightly or wrongly.
For me IIRC just before Gulf 1 there was a time when it was thought that Iran and Iraq would come together to fight the infidel, thus occasioning a literal clash of civilisations. A cultural war, but a hot one, not just one conducted in the Graun Opinion section.
Covid 19 is the biggest event of my lifetime. We aren't even halfway through and it is transforming the world.
Inter alia, it will mark the decisive moment when supreme power passed from the West to the East.
Not quite, but I suspect it will be the reference pointed use in the same way that the US is regarded to have replaced the UK as the leading power between 1939 and 1945 when in reality it was probably some time in the 1920's / 30's..
FT: "Swedish companies reap benefits of country’s Covid-19 approach" Better than expected numbers suggests no-lockdown strategy helped business
and
Telegraph: "Spain's experience shows that Sweden's Covid approach could have been right all along" At the end of this we may well conclude that countries which attempted total suppression of the virus killed their economies for zero gain
And they didn't close their schools so they haven't got a cohort of badly educated, socially-traumatised kids.
Sweden now has 564 deaths per million and will likely soon overtake Italy on 581 as it has more new cases. Only Belgium, us and Spain will have more deaths per head then in the world than Sweden does
@noneoftheabove the nearest “Leon” to me is in Manchester...
Nando's might sit in between McDonalds and Leon in terms of healthy options and thats everywhere.
You seen the calorie counts? My gods it's delicious but wow!
Calorie counting is pretty silly if you ask me (not targeting this specifically at you). A calorie isn't a calorie - fuel isn't just fuel. Ask anyone who's ever put petrol in a diesel engine. And how much more complex than a combustion engine is your body? If you're going to subject what you eat to such intense scrutiny, make it about something that matters to your health.
This is a typically stupid comment from you @Luckyguy1983
Let me guess - you never had to worry much about your weight.
What do you think matters more to an obese person's health than their weight?
How do you suggest someone who is overweight addresses that?
It isn't a stupid comment. I was a chubby child, and I'm now a non-overweight adult. Though that should read a non-overweight 'shaped' adult, because I don't weigh myself. I believe that being overweight stems from eating wrongly, not eating 'too much'. So simply forcing yourself to eat less (of a poor diet) whilst it will eventually lead to the body eating its fat reserves, is not going to result in a good health outcome.
My advice to someone who is overweight would be firstly to stop punishing themselves for being a 'greedy pig' with no 'self control', because I don't think that is true, and doesn't help. We were meant to enjoy food. In terms of more specific advice, I'd gravitate toward intermittent fasting combined with a ketogenic diet focused around nutrient-dense foods. Effectively I'd keep eating within a window of 12 midday to 6pm, with exceptions for important occasions. Ketogenic diet is largely based around limiting intake of carbs, especially empty carbs, and the degree of overweightness and speed of results would dictate the amount of carbs incorporated. Lots of eggs, lots of oily fish, good meat, vegetables and fruit. Lots of healthy fats. Combine this with an exercise regime, not based on 'how many calories you can burn' - which is like taking your car out to put miles on the clock, but based on building muscle and increasing endurance and stamina.
Well done on you shedding weight.
Here's an exclusive preview of my forthcoming best-selling diet book:
"Exercise more. Eat less."
The problem is that this seeming truism, isn't the whole story. The body is incredibly complex. I've seen some extremely interesting studies, such as feeding volunteers hugely excess (k)calories for a long period. If it was simply excess calories leads to weight gain, then all would have ballooned. They didn't. Most only gained a few extra pounds. Its the same with very low calorie diets - the body resists the diet and shuts down resting energy use. Peoples approach to food is important. My wife only eats when hungry, when she's not she has no interest in food. I, on the other hand, can eat at any time. Notably if my wife is tired, she's not hungry. No late night munchies or curries for her. Its also unhelpful for those who find it incredibly easy to not put on weight to assume that they are doing something right by conscious choice, and those that are overweight are 'weak', or eating a poor diet. Its complicated still further by fitness - you can be cardiovasularly fit, and overweight. It would be better to be fit and not overweight, but its not easy. I have run over 20 half marathons and two marathons, yet was never able to reach my goal of under 12 stone (I'm Boris height). At my fittest, I was still a plodder (2h 14 min best half time) but with a resting pulse of 52 bpm. I don't eat sweets particularly and have recently given up chocolate, and limiting cake to once a week. My weakness for certain is bread (and its usually high quality, wholegrain bread at that). All my family have this issue - we all tend to be rounder than ideal. Yet my father is now 81 and my mum 76, and in perfect health. I really want to emulate them...
Very interestingly, a 'don't be such a greedy pig - eat less, exercise more and eat more veg' diet was given a mass experiment in WW2. Verdicts on the health of this diet are mixed, but there's some evidence that it actually puts on weight. There was a programme with Giles Coren and Sue Perkins where they ate a WW2 diet for a period (I think a week?) and both put on weight. I think it was probably a switch over to carbs (from fats and proteins) that was largely responsible.
It is worth noting that a considerable portion of the population was undernourished in the pre war world. Cheap food hadn't appeared yet, in the modern sense.
Part of the design of the WWII ration (as far as they could with the knowledge of the day) was to *increase* the food groups they *thought were good* - to build up the poorer classes.
This was based on the experience from WWI - where non trivial numbers of conscripts had to be rejected as unfit due to poor physical condition.
Yes, it should definitely be remembered that all was not rosy in the garden before WW2. However, the paucity of cheese, butter, mik, eggs, under rationing really shocks me. And undoubtedly led to issues - the most visible being dental.
Yup - Chamberlin had a whole program of stuff he wanted to do, including universal health insurance. Then re-armament kicked up a notch... re-armament started in 1932, and by 1936/7 was of the "spend all money you can on expanding the arms industry"
I don't know anything about food supplies in WW2, but it does surprise me a bit how dairy had to be rationed so strictly. I would have supposed that was mostly domestically produced at the time. Getting into WW2 was catastrophic (if the right thing to do). Getting into WW1 was just catastrophic.
Probably shortage of grain (for animal feed) and difficulty with importing animal feed. The grain shortage certainly led to a reduction in whisky production in WW2 (and of course the draff byproducts which would have fed lots of cattle).
Edit: In general I don't think anyone needed to starve during WW2 in the UK - but would have had to fill up with wholemeal bread and spuds and other veg. Outwith favoured groups such as servicemen, the problem seems to have been fats and meat to make the bulk palatable, never mind have an excess to get fat on. Very different from the diets od today discussed here.
Perhaps. It's possibly a bit naive of me but I would have thought most cows grazed, supplemented by hay in those days.
A lot of dairy products came from NZ of course.
The WW2 diet was very healthy really. It seems carb heavy to modern tastes but everyone did more exercise in those days, cycling to manual jobs, housework without machinery etc. We were a lot more physically active.
If you look at old TV programmes people look very thin to modern eyes until about 1990. Junk food and less activity accounts for a lot.
This is a perfect example of what was wrong with Britain in the early 70s. Trade Unions dictating to the govt and the Courts and threatening to bring the country to its knees.
The "Pentonville Five" were locked up for breaking the law.
Of course I am serious, I mean really, yes I am!
The Labour Party went from supporting this kind of action, to importing hundreds of thousands of people to undercut the wages of the people on marches like this.
I remember this stuff from the 70s. The Labour Party was full of the then equivalent of Corbynites (anti-semitism would not matter back then) and the "Loony Left". It was unworkable. You could get nothing done because of strike disruption and when you did get it done, it was overpriced and under-spec and usually shoddily made.
Modern Labour may have gone too far, but that does not excuse the near Marxist Labour from back then.
Before my time, and I take your point that overarching Trade Unions can be more of an overall hindrance than a help, but my feeling, that you seem to sympathise with, is that Modern Labour threw the baby out with the bathwater. The majority of people on the march were probably not Loony left, Corbynite anti semites but working class people who wanted job security, same as most poorly paid people today....
The 70s was something of a disaster for unions and business alike, and such confrontations benefitted neither.
Union unrest had two sides - often awful, non-consultative and non-consensual management, and often tribal, non-discriminating and wilfully obstructive workers. The common denominator was class, and a key reason why countries like Germany were able to forge much better industrial relations.
Union power became too great, but arguably since then, against the long-term interests of the overall economy, as Piketty argues, and in Anglo-Saxon countries particularly, it's become too weak.
The fact that New Labour was not even prepared to consider German-style structures like workers on boards, and that, even more tellingly, Theresa May's government pretended to, before them throwing out, does suggest, as isam says, that we've gone much too far the other way.
It was also about the toxic accumulation,ulation of strife in existing companies.
The new car factories in the UK which were built in the 80s seem to be much happier places all around.
You read up on some of the union vs BL strikes and wonder what the union had in mind. If the cars their members make when they can be bothered have horrendous build quality and you had a long wait as strikes crippled production, then closure of the factory / business and with it your job was always likely.
The idea that the government would keep siding with them over management to make shit cars in a shit way was at best a pipe dream.
As a young teen, even I could see the flaw in the logic of "... do what we say or we will force this company out of business to protect the jobs of its employees"
It was what drove me out of the Labour Party and towards the Liberals.
Agree that this has hit home more than any event in my lifetime.
Covid is strange because it is a deadly virus but it isn't a deadly virus for most people so the overall reaction is understandable and also, as we are seeing from da yoof on tour, ignorable. Certainly the measures taken, lockdown, etc are once in a lifetime events. But walking around it doesn't feel as though we are in mortal danger. Whether rightly or wrongly.
For me IIRC just before Gulf 1 there was a time when it was thought that Iran and Iraq would come together to fight the infidel, thus occasioning a literal clash of civilisations. A cultural war, but a hot one, not just one conducted in the Graun Opinion section.
Covid 19 is the biggest event of my lifetime. We aren't even halfway through and it is transforming the world.
Inter alia, it will mark the decisive moment when supreme power passed from the West to the East.
For a (pre Covid) counter argument, you should read Bruno Macaes. His 2018 book charts how China is setting out to reshape the global world order, and his 2019 book argues that, far from being about to decline, the US has the chance to lead the world into a new era.
Hmm.
Everything tells me the East (in general, not just China) is overtaking.
In some important areas this is happening right now, and literally.
eg America has finally lost its long-held supremacy in chip manufacturing. This is from Friday's FT:
"A stunning slip in Intel’s manufacturing development reverberated through Wall Street on Friday, as the chip industry contemplated a decisive shift in leadership in the world’s most advanced manufacturing technology.
"Following a rare lapse in moving to the previous generation of chipmaking technology, the latest slip marked a clear end to Intel’s long-running lead in global chip manufacturing, while handing Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC a significant edge.
@noneoftheabove the nearest “Leon” to me is in Manchester...
Nando's might sit in between McDonalds and Leon in terms of healthy options and thats everywhere.
You seen the calorie counts? My gods it's delicious but wow!
Calorie counting is pretty silly if you ask me (not targeting this specifically at you). A calorie isn't a calorie - fuel isn't just fuel. Ask anyone who's ever put petrol in a diesel engine. And how much more complex than a combustion engine is your body? If you're going to subject what you eat to such intense scrutiny, make it about something that matters to your health.
This is a typically stupid comment from you @Luckyguy1983
Let me guess - you never had to worry much about your weight.
What do you think matters more to an obese person's health than their weight?
How do you suggest someone who is overweight addresses that?
It isn't a stupid comment. I was a chubby child, and I'm now a non-overweight adult. Though that should read a non-overweight 'shaped' adult, because I don't weigh myself. I believe that being overweight stems from eating wrongly, not eating 'too much'. So simply forcing yourself to eat less (of a poor diet) whilst it will eventually lead to the body eating its fat reserves, is not going to result in a good health outcome.
My advice to someone who is overweight would be firstly to stop punishing themselves for being a 'greedy pig' with no 'self control', because I don't think that is true, and doesn't help. We were meant to enjoy food. In terms of more specific advice, I'd gravitate toward intermittent fasting combined with a ketogenic diet focused around nutrient-dense foods. Effectively I'd keep eating within a window of 12 midday to 6pm, with exceptions for important occasions. Ketogenic diet is largely based around limiting intake of carbs, especially empty carbs, and the degree of overweightness and speed of results would dictate the amount of carbs incorporated. Lots of eggs, lots of oily fish, good meat, vegetables and fruit. Lots of healthy fats. Combine this with an exercise regime, not based on 'how many calories you can burn' - which is like taking your car out to put miles on the clock, but based on building muscle and increasing endurance and stamina.
Well done on you shedding weight.
Here's an exclusive preview of my forthcoming best-selling diet book:
"Exercise more. Eat less."
The problem is that this seeming truism, isn't the whole story. The body is incredibly complex. I've seen some extremely interesting studies, such as feeding volunteers hugely excess (k)calories for a long period. If it was simply excess calories leads to weight gain, then all would have ballooned. They didn't. Most only gained a few extra pounds. Its the same with very low calorie diets - the body resists the diet and shuts down resting energy use. Peoples approach to food is important. My wife only eats when hungry, when she's not she has no interest in food. I, on the other hand, can eat at any time. Notably if my wife is tired, she's not hungry. No late night munchies or curries for her. Its also unhelpful for those who find it incredibly easy to not put on weight to assume that they are doing something right by conscious choice, and those that are overweight are 'weak', or eating a poor diet. Its complicated still further by fitness - you can be cardiovasularly fit, and overweight. It would be better to be fit and not overweight, but its not easy. I have run over 20 half marathons and two marathons, yet was never able to reach my goal of under 12 stone (I'm Boris height). At my fittest, I was still a plodder (2h 14 min best half time) but with a resting pulse of 52 bpm. I don't eat sweets particularly and have recently given up chocolate, and limiting cake to once a week. My weakness for certain is bread (and its usually high quality, wholegrain bread at that). All my family have this issue - we all tend to be rounder than ideal. Yet my father is now 81 and my mum 76, and in perfect health. I really want to emulate them...
Very interestingly, a 'don't be such a greedy pig - eat less, exercise more and eat more veg' diet was given a mass experiment in WW2. Verdicts on the health of this diet are mixed, but there's some evidence that it actually puts on weight. There was a programme with Giles Coren and Sue Perkins where they ate a WW2 diet for a period (I think a week?) and both put on weight. I think it was probably a switch over to carbs (from fats and proteins) that was largely responsible.
It is worth noting that a considerable portion of the population was undernourished in the pre war world. Cheap food hadn't appeared yet, in the modern sense.
Part of the design of the WWII ration (as far as they could with the knowledge of the day) was to *increase* the food groups they *thought were good* - to build up the poorer classes.
This was based on the experience from WWI - where non trivial numbers of conscripts had to be rejected as unfit due to poor physical condition.
Yes, it should definitely be remembered that all was not rosy in the garden before WW2. However, the paucity of cheese, butter, mik, eggs, under rationing really shocks me. And undoubtedly led to issues - the most visible being dental.
Yup - Chamberlin had a whole program of stuff he wanted to do, including universal health insurance. Then re-armament kicked up a notch... re-armament started in 1932, and by 1936/7 was of the "spend all money you can on expanding the arms industry"
I don't know anything about food supplies in WW2, but it does surprise me a bit how dairy had to be rationed so strictly. I would have supposed that was mostly domestically produced at the time. Getting into WW2 was catastrophic (if the right thing to do). Getting into WW1 was just catastrophic.
Probably shortage of grain (for animal feed) and difficulty with importing animal feed. The grain shortage certainly led to a reduction in whisky production in WW2 (and of course the draff byproducts which would have fed lots of cattle).
Edit: In general I don't think anyone needed to starve during WW2 in the UK - but would have had to fill up with wholemeal bread and spuds and other veg. Outwith favoured groups such as servicemen, the problem seems to have been fats and meat to make the bulk palatable, never mind have an excess to get fat on. Very different from the diets od today discussed here.
Perhaps. It's possibly a bit naive of me but I would have thought most cows grazed, supplemented by hay in those days.
A lot of dairy products came from NZ of course.
The WW2 diet was very healthy really. It seems carb heavy to modern tastes but everyone did more exercise in those days, cycling to manual jobs, housework without machinery etc. We were a lot more physically active.
If you look at old TV programmes people look very thin to modern eyes until about 1990. Junk food and less activity accounts for a lot.
Isn’t there an argument that the increasing longevity of our oldsters harks back to those days, and the equivalently austere diet of the 1950s, and that the recent first signs that life expectancy might have topped out are because the upcoming new generation of pensioners grew up at the same time as society turned toward sugar, fast food and the motor car?
The push from government to get people back to offices is absolutely doomed to failure. I can understand the desperation as the economic model especially for retail and town centre businesses is falling apart before our eyes.
Staff will return to offices, for some it may even be 5 days per week, but for many others the time spent in the offices will be a limited. I'm not aware of one senior director or CEO that I know who thinks the office will ever return to what it was. The office will be a place for creative interaction that can't yet be truly replicated virtually.
Employees are being asked how they see themselves working in future.Both internal company and external engagement with partners and customers is going mainly virtual. I know for ourselves, 90% of activity was carried out face to face with those we worked with. Every indication that post pandemic it will shift the other way. No-one sees themselves travelling hours for a meeting except in exceptional circumstances. No one is sad to be losing 5 days of the commute a week.
So the economic model and hospitality and service businesses will have to adapt and change location or their business model. City and town centres need radical rethinking and reshaping.
These are not forces that government can hold back like King Canute.
Time to think radical and build a society around a changing paradigm. The pandemic has advanced the home working or rather the work from anywhere revolution by 20 years in 5 months.
Great post - make more like this!
We *categorically* are not going back to status quo ante. WFH is win win - employees get a better work/life balance, employers sacrifice a little productivity for the large cost saving of not running large offices. The government is not going to manage to persuade people to go back especially when the main reason would be to get them off the hook subsidising train companies and getting us all to buy Pret every lunchtime.
Regarding meetings I've spent 18 years until this March on the road. Every week in every year had at least a day out in customer meetings or the like, some weeks had me crossing the country from one end to the other. I expect so much of these meetings to be virtual from now on. Maybe a face to face intro meeting and a periodic review but otherwise on a screen. And probably better for it.
Agree that this has hit home more than any event in my lifetime.
Covid is strange because it is a deadly virus but it isn't a deadly virus for most people so the overall reaction is understandable and also, as we are seeing from da yoof on tour, ignorable. Certainly the measures taken, lockdown, etc are once in a lifetime events. But walking around it doesn't feel as though we are in mortal danger. Whether rightly or wrongly.
For me IIRC just before Gulf 1 there was a time when it was thought that Iran and Iraq would come together to fight the infidel, thus occasioning a literal clash of civilisations. A cultural war, but a hot one, not just one conducted in the Graun Opinion section.
Covid 19 is the biggest event of my lifetime. We aren't even halfway through and it is transforming the world.
Inter alia, it will mark the decisive moment when supreme power passed from the West to the East.
For a (pre Covid) counter argument, you should read Bruno Macaes. His 2018 book charts how China is setting out to reshape the global world order, and his 2019 book argues that, far from being about to decline, the US has the chance to lead the world into a new era.
Hmm.
Everything tells me the East (in general, not just China) is overtaking.
In some important areas this is happening right now, and literally.
eg America has finally lost its long-held supremacy in chip manufacturing. This is from Friday's FT:
"A stunning slip in Intel’s manufacturing development reverberated through Wall Street on Friday, as the chip industry contemplated a decisive shift in leadership in the world’s most advanced manufacturing technology.
"Following a rare lapse in moving to the previous generation of chipmaking technology, the latest slip marked a clear end to Intel’s long-running lead in global chip manufacturing, while handing Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC a significant edge.
I was merely offering the chance to obtain further enlightenment from the book rather than the bottle. But it’s a free country, of course.
FT: "Swedish companies reap benefits of country’s Covid-19 approach" Better than expected numbers suggests no-lockdown strategy helped business
and
Telegraph: "Spain's experience shows that Sweden's Covid approach could have been right all along" At the end of this we may well conclude that countries which attempted total suppression of the virus killed their economies for zero gain
And they didn't close their schools so they haven't got a cohort of badly educated, socially-traumatised kids.
Sweden now has 564 deaths per million and will likely soon overtake Italy on 581 as it has more new cases. Only Belgium, us and Spain will have more deaths per head then in the world than Sweden does
@noneoftheabove the nearest “Leon” to me is in Manchester...
Nando's might sit in between McDonalds and Leon in terms of healthy options and thats everywhere.
You seen the calorie counts? My gods it's delicious but wow!
Calorie counting is pretty silly if you ask me (not targeting this specifically at you). A calorie isn't a calorie - fuel isn't just fuel. Ask anyone who's ever put petrol in a diesel engine. And how much more complex than a combustion engine is your body? If you're going to subject what you eat to such intense scrutiny, make it about something that matters to your health.
This is a typically stupid comment from you @Luckyguy1983
Let me guess - you never had to worry much about your weight.
What do you think matters more to an obese person's health than their weight?
How do you suggest someone who is overweight addresses that?
It isn't a stupid comment. I was a chubby child, and I'm now a non-overweight adult. Though that should read a non-overweight 'shaped' adult, because I don't weigh myself. I believe that being overweight stems from eating wrongly, not eating 'too much'. So simply forcing yourself to eat less (of a poor diet) whilst it will eventually lead to the body eating its fat reserves, is not going to result in a good health outcome.
My advice to someone who is overweight would be firstly to stop punishing themselves for being a 'greedy pig' with no 'self control', because I don't think that is true, and doesn't help. We were meant to enjoy food. In terms of more specific advice, I'd gravitate toward intermittent fasting combined with a ketogenic diet focused around nutrient-dense foods. Effectively I'd keep eating within a window of 12 midday to 6pm, with exceptions for important occasions. Ketogenic diet is largely based around limiting intake of carbs, especially empty carbs, and the degree of overweightness and speed of results would dictate the amount of carbs incorporated. Lots of eggs, lots of oily fish, good meat, vegetables and fruit. Lots of healthy fats. Combine this with an exercise regime, not based on 'how many calories you can burn' - which is like taking your car out to put miles on the clock, but based on building muscle and increasing endurance and stamina.
Well done on you shedding weight.
Here's an exclusive preview of my forthcoming best-selling diet book:
"Exercise more. Eat less."
The problem is that this seeming truism, isn't the whole story. The body is incredibly complex. I've seen some extremely interesting studies, such as feeding volunteers hugely excess (k)calories for a long period. If it was simply excess calories leads to weight gain, then all would have ballooned. They didn't. Most only gained a few extra pounds. Its the same with very low calorie diets - the body resists the diet and shuts down resting energy use. Peoples approach to food is important. My wife only eats when hungry, when she's not she has no interest in food. I, on the other hand, can eat at any time. Notably if my wife is tired, she's not hungry. No late night munchies or curries for her. Its also unhelpful for those who find it incredibly easy to not put on weight to assume that they are doing something right by conscious choice, and those that are overweight are 'weak', or eating a poor diet. Its complicated still further by fitness - you can be cardiovasularly fit, and overweight. It would be better to be fit and not overweight, but its not easy. I have run over 20 half marathons and two marathons, yet was never able to reach my goal of under 12 stone (I'm Boris height). At my fittest, I was still a plodder (2h 14 min best half time) but with a resting pulse of 52 bpm. I don't eat sweets particularly and have recently given up chocolate, and limiting cake to once a week. My weakness for certain is bread (and its usually high quality, wholegrain bread at that). All my family have this issue - we all tend to be rounder than ideal. Yet my father is now 81 and my mum 76, and in perfect health. I really want to emulate them...
Very interestingly, a 'don't be such a greedy pig - eat less, exercise more and eat more veg' diet was given a mass experiment in WW2. Verdicts on the health of this diet are mixed, but there's some evidence that it actually puts on weight. There was a programme with Giles Coren and Sue Perkins where they ate a WW2 diet for a period (I think a week?) and both put on weight. I think it was probably a switch over to carbs (from fats and proteins) that was largely responsible.
It is worth noting that a considerable portion of the population was undernourished in the pre war world. Cheap food hadn't appeared yet, in the modern sense.
Part of the design of the WWII ration (as far as they could with the knowledge of the day) was to *increase* the food groups they *thought were good* - to build up the poorer classes.
This was based on the experience from WWI - where non trivial numbers of conscripts had to be rejected as unfit due to poor physical condition.
Yes, it should definitely be remembered that all was not rosy in the garden before WW2. However, the paucity of cheese, butter, mik, eggs, under rationing really shocks me. And undoubtedly led to issues - the most visible being dental.
Yup - Chamberlin had a whole program of stuff he wanted to do, including universal health insurance. Then re-armament kicked up a notch... re-armament started in 1932, and by 1936/7 was of the "spend all money you can on expanding the arms industry"
I don't know anything about food supplies in WW2, but it does surprise me a bit how dairy had to be rationed so strictly. I would have supposed that was mostly domestically produced at the time. Getting into WW2 was catastrophic (if the right thing to do). Getting into WW1 was just catastrophic.
Probably shortage of grain (for animal feed) and difficulty with importing animal feed. The grain shortage certainly led to a reduction in whisky production in WW2 (and of course the draff byproducts which would have fed lots of cattle).
Edit: In general I don't think anyone needed to starve during WW2 in the UK - but would have had to fill up with wholemeal bread and spuds and other veg. Outwith favoured groups such as servicemen, the problem seems to have been fats and meat to make the bulk palatable, never mind have an excess to get fat on. Very different from the diets od today discussed here.
Perhaps. It's possibly a bit naive of me but I would have thought most cows grazed, supplemented by hay in those days.
INdeed. I'm obviously misremembering the fine details of the reasons for the stodgy wartime diet. There were all sorts of changes. But certainly a lot of butter and cheese had been imported from Europe and I imagine a lot of bacon too.
The push from government to get people back to offices is absolutely doomed to failure. I can understand the desperation as the economic model especially for retail and town centre businesses is falling apart before our eyes.
Staff will return to offices, for some it may even be 5 days per week, but for many others the time spent in the offices will be a limited. I'm not aware of one senior director or CEO that I know who thinks the office will ever return to what it was. The office will be a place for creative interaction that can't yet be truly replicated virtually.
Employees are being asked how they see themselves working in future.Both internal company and external engagement with partners and customers is going mainly virtual. I know for ourselves, 90% of activity was carried out face to face with those we worked with. Every indication that post pandemic it will shift the other way. No-one sees themselves travelling hours for a meeting except in exceptional circumstances. No one is sad to be losing 5 days of the commute a week.
So the economic model and hospitality and service businesses will have to adapt and change location or their business model. City and town centres need radical rethinking and reshaping.
These are not forces that government can hold back like King Canute.
Time to think radical and build a society around a changing paradigm. The pandemic has advanced the home working or rather the work from anywhere revolution by 20 years in 5 months.
Great post - make more like this!
We *categorically* are not going back to status quo ante. WFH is win win - employees get a better work/life balance, employers sacrifice a little productivity for the large cost saving of not running large offices. The government is not going to manage to persuade people to go back especially when the main reason would be to get them off the hook subsidising train companies and getting us all to buy Pret every lunchtime.
Regarding meetings I've spent 18 years until this March on the road. Every week in every year had at least a day out in customer meetings or the like, some weeks had me crossing the country from one end to the other. I expect so much of these meetings to be virtual from now on. Maybe a face to face intro meeting and a periodic review but otherwise on a screen. And probably better for it.
History suggests that, in the years immediately following the return to ‘normality’, things will return pretty much to how they were before, and people will look back and see that few of the “world has changed forever” predictions made at the peak of the crisis will have come to very much.
Later, future historians will look back and identify that many of the trends that played out over subsequent decades can be traced back to either initiation or reinforcement by the crisis we are living through.
@noneoftheabove the nearest “Leon” to me is in Manchester...
Nando's might sit in between McDonalds and Leon in terms of healthy options and thats everywhere.
You seen the calorie counts? My gods it's delicious but wow!
Calorie counting is pretty silly if you ask me (not targeting this specifically at you). A calorie isn't a calorie - fuel isn't just fuel. Ask anyone who's ever put petrol in a diesel engine. And how much more complex than a combustion engine is your body? If you're going to subject what you eat to such intense scrutiny, make it about something that matters to your health.
This is a typically stupid comment from you @Luckyguy1983
Let me guess - you never had to worry much about your weight.
What do you think matters more to an obese person's health than their weight?
How do you suggest someone who is overweight addresses that?
It isn't a stupid comment. I was a chubby child, and I'm now a non-overweight adult. Though that should read a non-overweight 'shaped' adult, because I don't weigh myself. I believe that being overweight stems from eating wrongly, not eating 'too much'. So simply forcing yourself to eat less (of a poor diet) whilst it will eventually lead to the body eating its fat reserves, is not going to result in a good health outcome.
My advice to someone who is overweight would be firstly to stop punishing themselves for being a 'greedy pig' with no 'self control', because I don't think that is true, and doesn't help. We were meant to enjoy food. In terms of more specific advice, I'd gravitate toward intermittent fasting combined with a ketogenic diet focused around nutrient-dense foods. Effectively I'd keep eating within a window of 12 midday to 6pm, with exceptions for important occasions. Ketogenic diet is largely based around limiting intake of carbs, especially empty carbs, and the degree of overweightness and speed of results would dictate the amount of carbs incorporated. Lots of eggs, lots of oily fish, good meat, vegetables and fruit. Lots of healthy fats. Combine this with an exercise regime, not based on 'how many calories you can burn' - which is like taking your car out to put miles on the clock, but based on building muscle and increasing endurance and stamina.
Well done on you shedding weight.
Here's an exclusive preview of my forthcoming best-selling diet book:
"Exercise more. Eat less."
The problem is that this seeming truism, isn't the whole story. The body is incredibly complex. I've seen some extremely interesting studies, such as feeding volunteers hugely excess (k)calories for a long period. If it was simply excess calories leads to weight gain, then all would have ballooned. They didn't. Most only gained a few extra pounds. Its the same with very low calorie diets - the body resists the diet and shuts down resting energy use. Peoples approach to food is important. My wife only eats when hungry, when she's not she has no interest in food. I, on the other hand, can eat at any time. Notably if my wife is tired, she's not hungry. No late night munchies or curries for her. Its also unhelpful for those who find it incredibly easy to not put on weight to assume that they are doing something right by conscious choice, and those that are overweight are 'weak', or eating a poor diet. Its complicated still further by fitness - you can be cardiovasularly fit, and overweight. It would be better to be fit and not overweight, but its not easy. I have run over 20 half marathons and two marathons, yet was never able to reach my goal of under 12 stone (I'm Boris height). At my fittest, I was still a plodder (2h 14 min best half time) but with a resting pulse of 52 bpm. I don't eat sweets particularly and have recently given up chocolate, and limiting cake to once a week. My weakness for certain is bread (and its usually high quality, wholegrain bread at that). All my family have this issue - we all tend to be rounder than ideal. Yet my father is now 81 and my mum 76, and in perfect health. I really want to emulate them...
Very interestingly, a 'don't be such a greedy pig - eat less, exercise more and eat more veg' diet was given a mass experiment in WW2. Verdicts on the health of this diet are mixed, but there's some evidence that it actually puts on weight. There was a programme with Giles Coren and Sue Perkins where they ate a WW2 diet for a period (I think a week?) and both put on weight. I think it was probably a switch over to carbs (from fats and proteins) that was largely responsible.
It is worth noting that a considerable portion of the population was undernourished in the pre war world. Cheap food hadn't appeared yet, in the modern sense.
Part of the design of the WWII ration (as far as they could with the knowledge of the day) was to *increase* the food groups they *thought were good* - to build up the poorer classes.
This was based on the experience from WWI - where non trivial numbers of conscripts had to be rejected as unfit due to poor physical condition.
Yes, it should definitely be remembered that all was not rosy in the garden before WW2. However, the paucity of cheese, butter, mik, eggs, under rationing really shocks me. And undoubtedly led to issues - the most visible being dental.
Yup - Chamberlin had a whole program of stuff he wanted to do, including universal health insurance. Then re-armament kicked up a notch... re-armament started in 1932, and by 1936/7 was of the "spend all money you can on expanding the arms industry"
I don't know anything about food supplies in WW2, but it does surprise me a bit how dairy had to be rationed so strictly. I would have supposed that was mostly domestically produced at the time. Getting into WW2 was catastrophic (if the right thing to do). Getting into WW1 was just catastrophic.
Probably shortage of grain (for animal feed) and difficulty with importing animal feed. The grain shortage certainly led to a reduction in whisky production in WW2 (and of course the draff byproducts which would have fed lots of cattle).
Edit: In general I don't think anyone needed to starve during WW2 in the UK - but would have had to fill up with wholemeal bread and spuds and other veg. Outwith favoured groups such as servicemen, the problem seems to have been fats and meat to make the bulk palatable, never mind have an excess to get fat on. Very different from the diets od today discussed here.
Perhaps. It's possibly a bit naive of me but I would have thought most cows grazed, supplemented by hay in those days.
A lot of dairy products came from NZ of course.
The WW2 diet was very healthy really. It seems carb heavy to modern tastes but everyone did more exercise in those days, cycling to manual jobs, housework without machinery etc. We were a lot more physically active.
If you look at old TV programmes people look very thin to modern eyes until about 1990. Junk food and less activity accounts for a lot.
Isn’t there an argument that the increasing longevity of our oldsters harks back to those days, and the equivalently austere diet of the 1950s, and that the recent first signs that life expectancy might have topped out are because the upcoming new generation of pensioners grew up at the same time as society turned toward sugar, fast food and the motor car?
life expectancy growth has stalled in UK and USA, even gone into declines in some patches. In much of the rest of the developed world increases continue. A junk food diet is part of the problem, but also drugs, alcoholism, family breakdown, low level employment etc. Life is pretty bleak for many of our poor, and it is cruel to remove their simple transitory pleasures without addressing the causes of their misery.
@noneoftheabove the nearest “Leon” to me is in Manchester...
Nando's might sit in between McDonalds and Leon in terms of healthy options and thats everywhere.
You seen the calorie counts? My gods it's delicious but wow!
Calorie counting is pretty silly if you ask me (not targeting this specifically at you). A calorie isn't a calorie - fuel isn't just fuel. Ask anyone who's ever put petrol in a diesel engine. And how much more complex than a combustion engine is your body? If you're going to subject what you eat to such intense scrutiny, make it about something that matters to your health.
This is a typically stupid comment from you @Luckyguy1983
Let me guess - you never had to worry much about your weight.
What do you think matters more to an obese person's health than their weight?
How do you suggest someone who is overweight addresses that?
It isn't a stupid comment. I was a chubby child, and I'm now a non-overweight adult. Though that should read a non-overweight 'shaped' adult, because I don't weigh myself. I believe that being overweight stems from eating wrongly, not eating 'too much'. So simply forcing yourself to eat less (of a poor diet) whilst it will eventually lead to the body eating its fat reserves, is not going to result in a good health outcome.
My advice to someone who is overweight would be firstly to stop punishing themselves for being a 'greedy pig' with no 'self control', because I don't think that is true, and doesn't help. We were meant to enjoy food. In terms of more specific advice, I'd gravitate toward intermittent fasting combined with a ketogenic diet focused around nutrient-dense foods. Effectively I'd keep eating within a window of 12 midday to 6pm, with exceptions for important occasions. Ketogenic diet is largely based around limiting intake of carbs, especially empty carbs, and the degree of overweightness and speed of results would dictate the amount of carbs incorporated. Lots of eggs, lots of oily fish, good meat, vegetables and fruit. Lots of healthy fats. Combine this with an exercise regime, not based on 'how many calories you can burn' - which is like taking your car out to put miles on the clock, but based on building muscle and increasing endurance and stamina.
Well done on you shedding weight.
Here's an exclusive preview of my forthcoming best-selling diet book:
"Exercise more. Eat less."
The problem is that this seeming truism, isn't the whole story. The body is incredibly complex. I've seen some extremely interesting studies, such as feeding volunteers hugely excess (k)calories for a long period. If it was simply excess calories leads to weight gain, then all would have ballooned. They didn't. Most only gained a few extra pounds. Its the same with very low calorie diets - the body resists the diet and shuts down resting energy use. Peoples approach to food is important. My wife only eats when hungry, when she's not she has no interest in food. I, on the other hand, can eat at any time. Notably if my wife is tired, she's not hungry. No late night munchies or curries for her. Its also unhelpful for those who find it incredibly easy to not put on weight to assume that they are doing something right by conscious choice, and those that are overweight are 'weak', or eating a poor diet. Its complicated still further by fitness - you can be cardiovasularly fit, and overweight. It would be better to be fit and not overweight, but its not easy. I have run over 20 half marathons and two marathons, yet was never able to reach my goal of under 12 stone (I'm Boris height). At my fittest, I was still a plodder (2h 14 min best half time) but with a resting pulse of 52 bpm. I don't eat sweets particularly and have recently given up chocolate, and limiting cake to once a week. My weakness for certain is bread (and its usually high quality, wholegrain bread at that). All my family have this issue - we all tend to be rounder than ideal. Yet my father is now 81 and my mum 76, and in perfect health. I really want to emulate them...
Very interestingly, a 'don't be such a greedy pig - eat less, exercise more and eat more veg' diet was given a mass experiment in WW2. Verdicts on the health of this diet are mixed, but there's some evidence that it actually puts on weight. There was a programme with Giles Coren and Sue Perkins where they ate a WW2 diet for a period (I think a week?) and both put on weight. I think it was probably a switch over to carbs (from fats and proteins) that was largely responsible.
It is worth noting that a considerable portion of the population was undernourished in the pre war world. Cheap food hadn't appeared yet, in the modern sense.
Part of the design of the WWII ration (as far as they could with the knowledge of the day) was to *increase* the food groups they *thought were good* - to build up the poorer classes.
This was based on the experience from WWI - where non trivial numbers of conscripts had to be rejected as unfit due to poor physical condition.
Yes, it should definitely be remembered that all was not rosy in the garden before WW2. However, the paucity of cheese, butter, mik, eggs, under rationing really shocks me. And undoubtedly led to issues - the most visible being dental.
Yup - Chamberlin had a whole program of stuff he wanted to do, including universal health insurance. Then re-armament kicked up a notch... re-armament started in 1932, and by 1936/7 was of the "spend all money you can on expanding the arms industry"
I don't know anything about food supplies in WW2, but it does surprise me a bit how dairy had to be rationed so strictly. I would have supposed that was mostly domestically produced at the time. Getting into WW2 was catastrophic (if the right thing to do). Getting into WW1 was just catastrophic.
Probably shortage of grain (for animal feed) and difficulty with importing animal feed. The grain shortage certainly led to a reduction in whisky production in WW2 (and of course the draff byproducts which would have fed lots of cattle).
Edit: In general I don't think anyone needed to starve during WW2 in the UK - but would have had to fill up with wholemeal bread and spuds and other veg. Outwith favoured groups such as servicemen, the problem seems to have been fats and meat to make the bulk palatable, never mind have an excess to get fat on. Very different from the diets od today discussed here.
Perhaps. It's possibly a bit naive of me but I would have thought most cows grazed, supplemented by hay in those days.
A lot of dairy products came from NZ of course.
The WW2 diet was very healthy really. It seems carb heavy to modern tastes but everyone did more exercise in those days, cycling to manual jobs, housework without machinery etc. We were a lot more physically active.
If you look at old TV programmes people look very thin to modern eyes until about 1990. Junk food and less activity accounts for a lot.
On the available evidence I have, I don't agree. There is nothing wrong with vegetables, but they don't provide minerals, vitamins etc. in a way that's as easy to absorb as via meat, which was rationed. Added to which, many of their vitamins are fat soluble, and fat was rationed. Eggs are a superfood, and one egg a week is nowhere near enough. Thinness isn't necessarily a measure of good health. If you look at (for example) the England football team of 1966, they are heroes of course, but a lot were in a pretty poor condition.
FT: "Swedish companies reap benefits of country’s Covid-19 approach" Better than expected numbers suggests no-lockdown strategy helped business
and
Telegraph: "Spain's experience shows that Sweden's Covid approach could have been right all along" At the end of this we may well conclude that countries which attempted total suppression of the virus killed their economies for zero gain
And they didn't close their schools so they haven't got a cohort of badly educated, socially-traumatised kids.
Sweden now has 564 deaths per million and will likely soon overtake Italy on 581 as it has more new cases. Only Belgium, us and Spain will have more deaths per head then in the world than Sweden does
@noneoftheabove the nearest “Leon” to me is in Manchester...
Nando's might sit in between McDonalds and Leon in terms of healthy options and thats everywhere.
You seen the calorie counts? My gods it's delicious but wow!
Calorie counting is pretty silly if you ask me (not targeting this specifically at you). A calorie isn't a calorie - fuel isn't just fuel. Ask anyone who's ever put petrol in a diesel engine. And how much more complex than a combustion engine is your body? If you're going to subject what you eat to such intense scrutiny, make it about something that matters to your health.
This is a typically stupid comment from you @Luckyguy1983
Let me guess - you never had to worry much about your weight.
What do you think matters more to an obese person's health than their weight?
How do you suggest someone who is overweight addresses that?
It isn't a stupid comment. I was a chubby child, and I'm now a non-overweight adult. Though that should read a non-overweight 'shaped' adult, because I don't weigh myself. I believe that being overweight stems from eating wrongly, not eating 'too much'. So simply forcing yourself to eat less (of a poor diet) whilst it will eventually lead to the body eating its fat reserves, is not going to result in a good health outcome.
My advice to someone who is overweight would be firstly to stop punishing themselves for being a 'greedy pig' with no 'self control', because I don't think that is true, and doesn't help. We were meant to enjoy food. In terms of more specific advice, I'd gravitate toward intermittent fasting combined with a ketogenic diet focused around nutrient-dense foods. Effectively I'd keep eating within a window of 12 midday to 6pm, with exceptions for important occasions. Ketogenic diet is largely based around limiting intake of carbs, especially empty carbs, and the degree of overweightness and speed of results would dictate the amount of carbs incorporated. Lots of eggs, lots of oily fish, good meat, vegetables and fruit. Lots of healthy fats. Combine this with an exercise regime, not based on 'how many calories you can burn' - which is like taking your car out to put miles on the clock, but based on building muscle and increasing endurance and stamina.
Well done on you shedding weight.
Here's an exclusive preview of my forthcoming best-selling diet book:
"Exercise more. Eat less."
The problem is that this seeming truism, isn't the whole story. The body is incredibly complex. I've seen some extremely interesting studies, such as feeding volunteers hugely excess (k)calories for a long period. If it was simply excess calories leads to weight gain, then all would have ballooned. They didn't. Most only gained a few extra pounds. Its the same with very low calorie diets - the body resists the diet and shuts down resting energy use. Peoples approach to food is important. My wife only eats when hungry, when she's not she has no interest in food. I, on the other hand, can eat at any time. Notably if my wife is tired, she's not hungry. No late night munchies or curries for her. Its also unhelpful for those who find it incredibly easy to not put on weight to assume that they are doing something right by conscious choice, and those that are overweight are 'weak', or eating a poor diet. Its complicated still further by fitness - you can be cardiovasularly fit, and overweight. It would be better to be fit and not overweight, but its not easy. I have run over 20 half marathons and two marathons, yet was never able to reach my goal of under 12 stone (I'm Boris height). At my fittest, I was still a plodder (2h 14 min best half time) but with a resting pulse of 52 bpm. I don't eat sweets particularly and have recently given up chocolate, and limiting cake to once a week. My weakness for certain is bread (and its usually high quality, wholegrain bread at that). All my family have this issue - we all tend to be rounder than ideal. Yet my father is now 81 and my mum 76, and in perfect health. I really want to emulate them...
Very interestingly, a 'don't be such a greedy pig - eat less, exercise more and eat more veg' diet was given a mass experiment in WW2. Verdicts on the health of this diet are mixed, but there's some evidence that it actually puts on weight. There was a programme with Giles Coren and Sue Perkins where they ate a WW2 diet for a period (I think a week?) and both put on weight. I think it was probably a switch over to carbs (from fats and proteins) that was largely responsible.
It is worth noting that a considerable portion of the population was undernourished in the pre war world. Cheap food hadn't appeared yet, in the modern sense.
Part of the design of the WWII ration (as far as they could with the knowledge of the day) was to *increase* the food groups they *thought were good* - to build up the poorer classes.
This was based on the experience from WWI - where non trivial numbers of conscripts had to be rejected as unfit due to poor physical condition.
Yes, it should definitely be remembered that all was not rosy in the garden before WW2. However, the paucity of cheese, butter, mik, eggs, under rationing really shocks me. And undoubtedly led to issues - the most visible being dental.
Yup - Chamberlin had a whole program of stuff he wanted to do, including universal health insurance. Then re-armament kicked up a notch... re-armament started in 1932, and by 1936/7 was of the "spend all money you can on expanding the arms industry"
I don't know anything about food supplies in WW2, but it does surprise me a bit how dairy had to be rationed so strictly. I would have supposed that was mostly domestically produced at the time. Getting into WW2 was catastrophic (if the right thing to do). Getting into WW1 was just catastrophic.
Probably shortage of grain (for animal feed) and difficulty with importing animal feed. The grain shortage certainly led to a reduction in whisky production in WW2 (and of course the draff byproducts which would have fed lots of cattle).
Edit: In general I don't think anyone needed to starve during WW2 in the UK - but would have had to fill up with wholemeal bread and spuds and other veg. Outwith favoured groups such as servicemen, the problem seems to have been fats and meat to make the bulk palatable, never mind have an excess to get fat on. Very different from the diets od today discussed here.
Perhaps. It's possibly a bit naive of me but I would have thought most cows grazed, supplemented by hay in those days.
A lot of dairy products came from NZ of course.
The WW2 diet was very healthy really. It seems carb heavy to modern tastes but everyone did more exercise in those days, cycling to manual jobs, housework without machinery etc. We were a lot more physically active.
If you look at old TV programmes people look very thin to modern eyes until about 1990. Junk food and less activity accounts for a lot.
Isn’t there an argument that the increasing longevity of our oldsters harks back to those days, and the equivalently austere diet of the 1950s, and that the recent first signs that life expectancy might have topped out are because the upcoming new generation of pensioners grew up at the same time as society turned toward sugar, fast food and the motor car?
There is an argument that mild malnutrition extends life, by itself. If you restrict the diets of mice, they age slower, get fewer diseases, live longer.
I am not sure that TEAMS meetings are the future. They are horrible. Lots of silences and there is a lot more to human communication than just talking.
FT: "Swedish companies reap benefits of country’s Covid-19 approach" Better than expected numbers suggests no-lockdown strategy helped business
and
Telegraph: "Spain's experience shows that Sweden's Covid approach could have been right all along" At the end of this we may well conclude that countries which attempted total suppression of the virus killed their economies for zero gain
And they didn't close their schools so they haven't got a cohort of badly educated, socially-traumatised kids.
Sweden now has 564 deaths per million and will likely soon overtake Italy on 581 as it has more new cases. Only Belgium, us and Spain will have more deaths per head then in the world than Sweden does
The push from government to get people back to offices is absolutely doomed to failure. I can understand the desperation as the economic model especially for retail and town centre businesses is falling apart before our eyes.
Staff will return to offices, for some it may even be 5 days per week, but for many others the time spent in the offices will be a limited. I'm not aware of one senior director or CEO that I know who thinks the office will ever return to what it was. The office will be a place for creative interaction that can't yet be truly replicated virtually.
Employees are being asked how they see themselves working in future.Both internal company and external engagement with partners and customers is going mainly virtual. I know for ourselves, 90% of activity was carried out face to face with those we worked with. Every indication that post pandemic it will shift the other way. No-one sees themselves travelling hours for a meeting except in exceptional circumstances. No one is sad to be losing 5 days of the commute a week.
So the economic model and hospitality and service businesses will have to adapt and change location or their business model. City and town centres need radical rethinking and reshaping.
These are not forces that government can hold back like King Canute.
Time to think radical and build a society around a changing paradigm. The pandemic has advanced the home working or rather the work from anywhere revolution by 20 years in 5 months.
Great post - make more like this!
We *categorically* are not going back to status quo ante. WFH is win win - employees get a better work/life balance, employers sacrifice a little productivity for the large cost saving of not running large offices. The government is not going to manage to persuade people to go back especially when the main reason would be to get them off the hook subsidising train companies and getting us all to buy Pret every lunchtime.
Regarding meetings I've spent 18 years until this March on the road. Every week in every year had at least a day out in customer meetings or the like, some weeks had me crossing the country from one end to the other. I expect so much of these meetings to be virtual from now on. Maybe a face to face intro meeting and a periodic review but otherwise on a screen. And probably better for it.
History suggests that, in the years immediately following the return to ‘normality’, things will return pretty much to how they were before, and people will look back and see that few of the “world has changed forever” predictions made at the peak of the crisis will have come to very much.
Later, future historians will look back and identify that many of the trends that played out over subsequent decades can be traced back to either initiation or reinforcement by the crisis we are living through.
You see similar changes in US shopping malls. Many are simply being re-developed as primarily residential and amenities projects. Those that are surviving, to this point, have a much reduced retail base, with a much higher percentage of tenants offering entertainment, food or services (nail salons, fitness, healthcare) than was the case when the malls opened.
The push from government to get people back to offices is absolutely doomed to failure. I can understand the desperation as the economic model especially for retail and town centre businesses is falling apart before our eyes.
Staff will return to offices, for some it may even be 5 days per week, but for many others the time spent in the offices will be a limited. I'm not aware of one senior director or CEO that I know who thinks the office will ever return to what it was. The office will be a place for creative interaction that can't yet be truly replicated virtually.
Employees are being asked how they see themselves working in future.Both internal company and external engagement with partners and customers is going mainly virtual. I know for ourselves, 90% of activity was carried out face to face with those we worked with. Every indication that post pandemic it will shift the other way. No-one sees themselves travelling hours for a meeting except in exceptional circumstances. No one is sad to be losing 5 days of the commute a week.
So the economic model and hospitality and service businesses will have to adapt and change location or their business model. City and town centres need radical rethinking and reshaping.
These are not forces that government can hold back like King Canute.
Time to think radical and build a society around a changing paradigm. The pandemic has advanced the home working or rather the work from anywhere revolution by 20 years in 5 months.
Why don't people want to return to the way things were 16 weeks ago?
Agree that this has hit home more than any event in my lifetime.
Covid is strange because it is a deadly virus but it isn't a deadly virus for most people so the overall reaction is understandable and also, as we are seeing from da yoof on tour, ignorable. Certainly the measures taken, lockdown, etc are once in a lifetime events. But walking around it doesn't feel as though we are in mortal danger. Whether rightly or wrongly.
For me IIRC just before Gulf 1 there was a time when it was thought that Iran and Iraq would come together to fight the infidel, thus occasioning a literal clash of civilisations. A cultural war, but a hot one, not just one conducted in the Graun Opinion section.
Covid 19 is the biggest event of my lifetime. We aren't even halfway through and it is transforming the world.
Inter alia, it will mark the decisive moment when supreme power passed from the West to the East.
Not quite, but I suspect it will be the reference pointed use in the same way that the US is regarded to have replaced the UK as the leading power between 1939 and 1945 when in reality it was probably some time in the 1920's / 30's..
FT: "Swedish companies reap benefits of country’s Covid-19 approach" Better than expected numbers suggests no-lockdown strategy helped business
and
Telegraph: "Spain's experience shows that Sweden's Covid approach could have been right all along" At the end of this we may well conclude that countries which attempted total suppression of the virus killed their economies for zero gain
And they didn't close their schools so they haven't got a cohort of badly educated, socially-traumatised kids.
Sweden now has 564 deaths per million and will likely soon overtake Italy on 581 as it has more new cases. Only Belgium, us and Spain will have more deaths per head then in the world than Sweden does
I find this a little irritating by smart arse journalists and politicos.
We are in a unique crisis situation
The hospitality sector is on its knees. Obesity is a significant factor in death rates.
These two policies (subsidising meals out and the obesity strategy) address these issues. They have been implemented quickly, and the government should be praised for that
Sure there is a small area of overlap where one may counteract the other (although I suspect it affects a very small number of people). In a perfect world you would probably have excluded fast food restaurants from the subsidised meals policy.
But that would have (a) required a definition of which restaurants were excluded; (b) required consultation, slowing things down massively; (c) probably have resulted in judicial review of the policy slowing things down even more; and (d) cost jobs in the fast food sector
Sometime you have to accept that the perfect is the enemy of the good and just get on with it. But the haters just choose to carp and criticise from the sidelines. Of course the government has got stuff wrong. But overall on the really big things - NHS capacity, ventilators, vaccine strategy, economic support - they’ve done pretty well.
The push from government to get people back to offices is absolutely doomed to failure. I can understand the desperation as the economic model especially for retail and town centre businesses is falling apart before our eyes.
Staff will return to offices, for some it may even be 5 days per week, but for many others the time spent in the offices will be a limited. I'm not aware of one senior director or CEO that I know who thinks the office will ever return to what it was. The office will be a place for creative interaction that can't yet be truly replicated virtually.
Employees are being asked how they see themselves working in future.Both internal company and external engagement with partners and customers is going mainly virtual. I know for ourselves, 90% of activity was carried out face to face with those we worked with. Every indication that post pandemic it will shift the other way. No-one sees themselves travelling hours for a meeting except in exceptional circumstances. No one is sad to be losing 5 days of the commute a week.
So the economic model and hospitality and service businesses will have to adapt and change location or their business model. City and town centres need radical rethinking and reshaping.
These are not forces that government can hold back like King Canute.
Time to think radical and build a society around a changing paradigm. The pandemic has advanced the home working or rather the work from anywhere revolution by 20 years in 5 months.
Why don't people want to return to the way things were 16 weeks ago?
Because do people really want to spend say ten hours a week commuting to and back to the office when you can do the majority of the job at home?
It boosts productivity, I'm a lot more productive now I don't have to wake up at 5am every week day.
The push from government to get people back to offices is absolutely doomed to failure. I can understand the desperation as the economic model especially for retail and town centre businesses is falling apart before our eyes.
Staff will return to offices, for some it may even be 5 days per week, but for many others the time spent in the offices will be a limited. I'm not aware of one senior director or CEO that I know who thinks the office will ever return to what it was. The office will be a place for creative interaction that can't yet be truly replicated virtually.
Employees are being asked how they see themselves working in future.Both internal company and external engagement with partners and customers is going mainly virtual. I know for ourselves, 90% of activity was carried out face to face with those we worked with. Every indication that post pandemic it will shift the other way. No-one sees themselves travelling hours for a meeting except in exceptional circumstances. No one is sad to be losing 5 days of the commute a week.
So the economic model and hospitality and service businesses will have to adapt and change location or their business model. City and town centres need radical rethinking and reshaping.
These are not forces that government can hold back like King Canute.
Time to think radical and build a society around a changing paradigm. The pandemic has advanced the home working or rather the work from anywhere revolution by 20 years in 5 months.
Why don't people want to return to the way things were 16 weeks ago?
Because they don't need to, they've had a taste of a better way of doing things. Why go backwards if WFH is better?
A lot of people are thinking "why should I spend 2 hours a day going to work and back when I don't have to"
I see the Depp case is just about over. I wonder if at the end of the day the only winners will be the lawyers on both sides. Doesn't look to me as if Depp or Heard have covered themselves with glory, but of course the Sun's reputation can stand anything. I wonder too if we're going to see 1p damages and no order as to costs!
The push from government to get people back to offices is absolutely doomed to failure. I can understand the desperation as the economic model especially for retail and town centre businesses is falling apart before our eyes.
Staff will return to offices, for some it may even be 5 days per week, but for many others the time spent in the offices will be a limited. I'm not aware of one senior director or CEO that I know who thinks the office will ever return to what it was. The office will be a place for creative interaction that can't yet be truly replicated virtually.
Employees are being asked how they see themselves working in future.Both internal company and external engagement with partners and customers is going mainly virtual. I know for ourselves, 90% of activity was carried out face to face with those we worked with. Every indication that post pandemic it will shift the other way. No-one sees themselves travelling hours for a meeting except in exceptional circumstances. No one is sad to be losing 5 days of the commute a week.
So the economic model and hospitality and service businesses will have to adapt and change location or their business model. City and town centres need radical rethinking and reshaping.
These are not forces that government can hold back like King Canute.
Time to think radical and build a society around a changing paradigm. The pandemic has advanced the home working or rather the work from anywhere revolution by 20 years in 5 months.
Why don't people want to return to the way things were 16 weeks ago?
I can only speak anecdotally but those people I know who are working from home loved it at first, but are growing increasingly fed up with it.
@noneoftheabove the nearest “Leon” to me is in Manchester...
Nando's might sit in between McDonalds and Leon in terms of healthy options and thats everywhere.
You seen the calorie counts? My gods it's delicious but wow!
Calorie counting is pretty silly if you ask me (not targeting this specifically at you). A calorie isn't a calorie - fuel isn't just fuel. Ask anyone who's ever put petrol in a diesel engine. And how much more complex than a combustion engine is your body? If you're going to subject what you eat to such intense scrutiny, make it about something that matters to your health.
This is a typically stupid comment from you @Luckyguy1983
Let me guess - you never had to worry much about your weight.
What do you think matters more to an obese person's health than their weight?
How do you suggest someone who is overweight addresses that?
It isn't a stupid comment. I was a chubby child, and I'm now a non-overweight adult. Though that should read a non-overweight 'shaped' adult, because I don't weigh myself. I believe that being overweight stems from eating wrongly, not eating 'too much'. So simply forcing yourself to eat less (of a poor diet) whilst it will eventually lead to the body eating its fat reserves, is not going to result in a good health outcome.
My advice to someone who is overweight would be firstly to stop punishing themselves for being a 'greedy pig' with no 'self control', because I don't think that is true, and doesn't help. We were meant to enjoy food. In terms of more specific advice, I'd gravitate toward intermittent fasting combined with a ketogenic diet focused around nutrient-dense foods. Effectively I'd keep eating within a window of 12 midday to 6pm, with exceptions for important occasions. Ketogenic diet is largely based around limiting intake of carbs, especially empty carbs, and the degree of overweightness and speed of results would dictate the amount of carbs incorporated. Lots of eggs, lots of oily fish, good meat, vegetables and fruit. Lots of healthy fats. Combine this with an exercise regime, not based on 'how many calories you can burn' - which is like taking your car out to put miles on the clock, but based on building muscle and increasing endurance and stamina.
Well done on you shedding weight.
Here's an exclusive preview of my forthcoming best-selling diet book:
"Exercise more. Eat less."
The problem is that this seeming truism, isn't the whole story. The body is incredibly complex. I've seen some extremely interesting studies, such as feeding volunteers hugely excess (k)calories for a long period. If it was simply excess calories leads to weight gain, then all would have ballooned. They didn't. Most only gained a few extra pounds. Its the same with very low calorie diets - the body resists the diet and shuts down resting energy use. Peoples approach to food is important. My wife only eats when hungry, when she's not she has no interest in food. I, on the other hand, can eat at any time. Notably if my wife is tired, she's not hungry. No late night munchies or curries for her. Its also unhelpful for those who find it incredibly easy to not put on weight to assume that they are doing something right by conscious choice, and those that are overweight are 'weak', or eating a poor diet. Its complicated still further by fitness - you can be cardiovasularly fit, and overweight. It would be better to be fit and not overweight, but its not easy. I have run over 20 half marathons and two marathons, yet was never able to reach my goal of under 12 stone (I'm Boris height). At my fittest, I was still a plodder (2h 14 min best half time) but with a resting pulse of 52 bpm. I don't eat sweets particularly and have recently given up chocolate, and limiting cake to once a week. My weakness for certain is bread (and its usually high quality, wholegrain bread at that). All my family have this issue - we all tend to be rounder than ideal. Yet my father is now 81 and my mum 76, and in perfect health. I really want to emulate them...
Very interestingly, a 'don't be such a greedy pig - eat less, exercise more and eat more veg' diet was given a mass experiment in WW2. Verdicts on the health of this diet are mixed, but there's some evidence that it actually puts on weight. There was a programme with Giles Coren and Sue Perkins where they ate a WW2 diet for a period (I think a week?) and both put on weight. I think it was probably a switch over to carbs (from fats and proteins) that was largely responsible.
It is worth noting that a considerable portion of the population was undernourished in the pre war world. Cheap food hadn't appeared yet, in the modern sense.
Part of the design of the WWII ration (as far as they could with the knowledge of the day) was to *increase* the food groups they *thought were good* - to build up the poorer classes.
This was based on the experience from WWI - where non trivial numbers of conscripts had to be rejected as unfit due to poor physical condition.
Yes, it should definitely be remembered that all was not rosy in the garden before WW2. However, the paucity of cheese, butter, mik, eggs, under rationing really shocks me. And undoubtedly led to issues - the most visible being dental.
Yup - Chamberlin had a whole program of stuff he wanted to do, including universal health insurance. Then re-armament kicked up a notch... re-armament started in 1932, and by 1936/7 was of the "spend all money you can on expanding the arms industry"
I don't know anything about food supplies in WW2, but it does surprise me a bit how dairy had to be rationed so strictly. I would have supposed that was mostly domestically produced at the time. Getting into WW2 was catastrophic (if the right thing to do). Getting into WW1 was just catastrophic.
Probably shortage of grain (for animal feed) and difficulty with importing animal feed. The grain shortage certainly led to a reduction in whisky production in WW2 (and of course the draff byproducts which would have fed lots of cattle).
Edit: In general I don't think anyone needed to starve during WW2 in the UK - but would have had to fill up with wholemeal bread and spuds and other veg. Outwith favoured groups such as servicemen, the problem seems to have been fats and meat to make the bulk palatable, never mind have an excess to get fat on. Very different from the diets od today discussed here.
Perhaps. It's possibly a bit naive of me but I would have thought most cows grazed, supplemented by hay in those days.
A lot of dairy products came from NZ of course.
The WW2 diet was very healthy really. It seems carb heavy to modern tastes but everyone did more exercise in those days, cycling to manual jobs, housework without machinery etc. We were a lot more physically active.
If you look at old TV programmes people look very thin to modern eyes until about 1990. Junk food and less activity accounts for a lot.
Isn’t there an argument that the increasing longevity of our oldsters harks back to those days, and the equivalently austere diet of the 1950s, and that the recent first signs that life expectancy might have topped out are because the upcoming new generation of pensioners grew up at the same time as society turned toward sugar, fast food and the motor car?
life expectancy growth has stalled in UK and USA, even gone into declines in some patches. In much of the rest of the developed world increases continue. A junk food diet is part of the problem, but also drugs, alcoholism, family breakdown, low level employment etc. Life is pretty bleak for many of our poor, and it is cruel to remove their simple transitory pleasures without addressing the causes of their misery.
Orwell wrote about this during the Great Depression in one of his most memorable passages - though mu memory is failing to say just which book it was. Road to Wigan Pier, I think?
I see the Depp case is just about over. I wonder if at the end of the day the only winners will be the lawyers on both sides. Doesn't look to me as if Depp or Heard have covered themselves with glory, but of course the Sun's reputation can stand anything. I wonder too if we're going to see 1p damages and no order as to costs!
Maybe the judge could make the award -a piece of eight in honour of his role in Pirates of the Caribbean.
The push from government to get people back to offices is absolutely doomed to failure. I can understand the desperation as the economic model especially for retail and town centre businesses is falling apart before our eyes.
Staff will return to offices, for some it may even be 5 days per week, but for many others the time spent in the offices will be a limited. I'm not aware of one senior director or CEO that I know who thinks the office will ever return to what it was. The office will be a place for creative interaction that can't yet be truly replicated virtually.
Employees are being asked how they see themselves working in future.Both internal company and external engagement with partners and customers is going mainly virtual. I know for ourselves, 90% of activity was carried out face to face with those we worked with. Every indication that post pandemic it will shift the other way. No-one sees themselves travelling hours for a meeting except in exceptional circumstances. No one is sad to be losing 5 days of the commute a week.
So the economic model and hospitality and service businesses will have to adapt and change location or their business model. City and town centres need radical rethinking and reshaping.
These are not forces that government can hold back like King Canute.
Time to think radical and build a society around a changing paradigm. The pandemic has advanced the home working or rather the work from anywhere revolution by 20 years in 5 months.
Why don't people want to return to the way things were 16 weeks ago?
Because they don't need to, they've had a taste of a better way of doing things. Why go backwards if WFH is better?
A lot of people are thinking "why should I spend 2 hours a day going to work and back when I don't have to"
Maybe people will get fed up with working from home after a few months. We don't know yet. It feels to me like a lot of long-term decisions are being made too quickly.
For example, as I mentioned yesterday, a trade fair/show that I go to every year has just been cancelled — not just for this year and next year, but permanently. I don't know how they can make that decision so soon. (I suppose they could change their minds again if things change).
Why don't people want to return to the way things were 16 weeks ago?
Because do people really want to spend say ten hours a week commuting to and back to the office when you can the majority of the job at home?
This exactly - in my line of work, people across the business have realised the physical and mental toll that sometimes travelling 6 or 7 hours a day in the car or train for a couple of meetings across country was having.
One of the drivers that might push against this yet though is how you deal with a situation where some staff are office based for a meeting where others are in their zoom box at home.
The reason virtual wasn't great pre-pandemic was this mix of some dialling in. With everyone virtual you avoid that issue. It is likely that we will say for our internal meetings that if anyone is joining virtually, even if you are in the office you will join virtually from your desk. It's key to making the virtual environment work.
We were already moving this way. No core hours for staff but an expectation they would be in the right place at the right time, work from anywhere you like. The last 5 months though have broken the physical attraction of the office.
Now some (a minority) want to get back to the office 5 days a week. That's fine - they can do that. I think they will find they have a rose-tinted view of what once was though, once they realise the majority of their colleagues won't be joining them for most of the time.
The push from government to get people back to offices is absolutely doomed to failure. I can understand the desperation as the economic model especially for retail and town centre businesses is falling apart before our eyes.
Staff will return to offices, for some it may even be 5 days per week, but for many others the time spent in the offices will be a limited. I'm not aware of one senior director or CEO that I know who thinks the office will ever return to what it was. The office will be a place for creative interaction that can't yet be truly replicated virtually.
Employees are being asked how they see themselves working in future.Both internal company and external engagement with partners and customers is going mainly virtual. I know for ourselves, 90% of activity was carried out face to face with those we worked with. Every indication that post pandemic it will shift the other way. No-one sees themselves travelling hours for a meeting except in exceptional circumstances. No one is sad to be losing 5 days of the commute a week.
So the economic model and hospitality and service businesses will have to adapt and change location or their business model. City and town centres need radical rethinking and reshaping.
These are not forces that government can hold back like King Canute.
Time to think radical and build a society around a changing paradigm. The pandemic has advanced the home working or rather the work from anywhere revolution by 20 years in 5 months.
Why don't people want to return to the way things were 16 weeks ago?
Because they don't need to, they've had a taste of a better way of doing things. Why go backwards if WFH is better?
A lot of people are thinking "why should I spend 2 hours a day going to work and back when I don't have to"
Maybe people will get fed up with working from home after a few months. We don't know yet. It feels to me like a lot of long-term decisions are being made too quickly.
For example, as I mentioned yesterday, a trade fair/show that I go to every year has just been cancelled — not just for this year and next year, but permanently. I don't know how they can make that decision so soon. (I suppose they could change their minds again if things change).
Perhaps your trade fair was already struggling and this just accelerated their decision?
The push from government to get people back to offices is absolutely doomed to failure. I can understand the desperation as the economic model especially for retail and town centre businesses is falling apart before our eyes.
Staff will return to offices, for some it may even be 5 days per week, but for many others the time spent in the offices will be a limited. I'm not aware of one senior director or CEO that I know who thinks the office will ever return to what it was. The office will be a place for creative interaction that can't yet be truly replicated virtually.
Employees are being asked how they see themselves working in future.Both internal company and external engagement with partners and customers is going mainly virtual. I know for ourselves, 90% of activity was carried out face to face with those we worked with. Every indication that post pandemic it will shift the other way. No-one sees themselves travelling hours for a meeting except in exceptional circumstances. No one is sad to be losing 5 days of the commute a week.
So the economic model and hospitality and service businesses will have to adapt and change location or their business model. City and town centres need radical rethinking and reshaping.
These are not forces that government can hold back like King Canute.
Time to think radical and build a society around a changing paradigm. The pandemic has advanced the home working or rather the work from anywhere revolution by 20 years in 5 months.
Why don't people want to return to the way things were 16 weeks ago?
I can only speak anecdotally but those people I know who are working from home loved it at first, but are growing increasingly fed up with it.
My elder son reckons he can work on Teams just as well from home as he can from his office. However younger son is anxious to go to visit one of his customers and 'press the flesh' as it were. He's not anxious to travel as much as he did before, though.
FT: "Swedish companies reap benefits of country’s Covid-19 approach" Better than expected numbers suggests no-lockdown strategy helped business
and
Telegraph: "Spain's experience shows that Sweden's Covid approach could have been right all along" At the end of this we may well conclude that countries which attempted total suppression of the virus killed their economies for zero gain
And they didn't close their schools so they haven't got a cohort of badly educated, socially-traumatised kids.
Sweden now has 564 deaths per million and will likely soon overtake Italy on 581 as it has more new cases. Only Belgium, us and Spain will have more deaths per head then in the world than Sweden does
I see the Depp case is just about over. I wonder if at the end of the day the only winners will be the lawyers on both sides. Doesn't look to me as if Depp or Heard have covered themselves with glory, but of course the Sun's reputation can stand anything. I wonder too if we're going to see 1p damages and no order as to costs!
I'd have thought a victory, even a 1p victory, could be worth millions for Depp?
If he'd done nothing and accepted the accusation of being a wife beater then he'd surely have been persona non grata in Hollywood and that would be the end of his career? Whereas if he wins and the Sun has to apologise, even without damages, I assume he can continue filming.
@noneoftheabove the nearest “Leon” to me is in Manchester...
Nando's might sit in between McDonalds and Leon in terms of healthy options and thats everywhere.
You seen the calorie counts? My gods it's delicious but wow!
Calorie counting is pretty silly if you ask me (not targeting this specifically at you). A calorie isn't a calorie - fuel isn't just fuel. Ask anyone who's ever put petrol in a diesel engine. And how much more complex than a combustion engine is your body? If you're going to subject what you eat to such intense scrutiny, make it about something that matters to your health.
This is a typically stupid comment from you @Luckyguy1983
Let me guess - you never had to worry much about your weight.
What do you think matters more to an obese person's health than their weight?
How do you suggest someone who is overweight addresses that?
It isn't a stupid comment. I was a chubby child, and I'm now a non-overweight adult. Though that should read a non-overweight 'shaped' adult, because I don't weigh myself. I believe that being overweight stems from eating wrongly, not eating 'too much'. So simply forcing yourself to eat less (of a poor diet) whilst it will eventually lead to the body eating its fat reserves, is not going to result in a good health outcome.
My advice to someone who is overweight would be firstly to stop punishing themselves for being a 'greedy pig' with no 'self control', because I don't think that is true, and doesn't help. We were meant to enjoy food. In terms of more specific advice, I'd gravitate toward intermittent fasting combined with a ketogenic diet focused around nutrient-dense foods. Effectively I'd keep eating within a window of 12 midday to 6pm, with exceptions for important occasions. Ketogenic diet is largely based around limiting intake of carbs, especially empty carbs, and the degree of overweightness and speed of results would dictate the amount of carbs incorporated. Lots of eggs, lots of oily fish, good meat, vegetables and fruit. Lots of healthy fats. Combine this with an exercise regime, not based on 'how many calories you can burn' - which is like taking your car out to put miles on the clock, but based on building muscle and increasing endurance and stamina.
Well done on you shedding weight.
Here's an exclusive preview of my forthcoming best-selling diet book:
"Exercise more. Eat less."
The problem is that this seeming truism, isn't the whole story. The body is incredibly complex. I've seen some extremely interesting studies, such as feeding volunteers hugely excess (k)calories for a long period. If it was simply excess calories leads to weight gain, then all would have ballooned. They didn't. Most only gained a few extra pounds. Its the same with very low calorie diets - the body resists the diet and shuts down resting energy use. Peoples approach to food is important. My wife only eats when hungry, when she's not she has no interest in food. I, on the other hand, can eat at any time. Notably if my wife is tired, she's not hungry. No late night munchies or curries for her. Its also unhelpful for those who find it incredibly easy to not put on weight to assume that they are doing something right by conscious choice, and those that are overweight are 'weak', or eating a poor diet. Its complicated still further by fitness - you can be cardiovasularly fit, and overweight. It would be better to be fit and not overweight, but its not easy. I have run over 20 half marathons and two marathons, yet was never able to reach my goal of under 12 stone (I'm Boris height). At my fittest, I was still a plodder (2h 14 min best half time) but with a resting pulse of 52 bpm. I don't eat sweets particularly and have recently given up chocolate, and limiting cake to once a week. My weakness for certain is bread (and its usually high quality, wholegrain bread at that). All my family have this issue - we all tend to be rounder than ideal. Yet my father is now 81 and my mum 76, and in perfect health. I really want to emulate them...
Very interestingly, a 'don't be such a greedy pig - eat less, exercise more and eat more veg' diet was given a mass experiment in WW2. Verdicts on the health of this diet are mixed, but there's some evidence that it actually puts on weight. There was a programme with Giles Coren and Sue Perkins where they ate a WW2 diet for a period (I think a week?) and both put on weight. I think it was probably a switch over to carbs (from fats and proteins) that was largely responsible.
It is worth noting that a considerable portion of the population was undernourished in the pre war world. Cheap food hadn't appeared yet, in the modern sense.
Part of the design of the WWII ration (as far as they could with the knowledge of the day) was to *increase* the food groups they *thought were good* - to build up the poorer classes.
This was based on the experience from WWI - where non trivial numbers of conscripts had to be rejected as unfit due to poor physical condition.
Yes, it should definitely be remembered that all was not rosy in the garden before WW2. However, the paucity of cheese, butter, mik, eggs, under rationing really shocks me. And undoubtedly led to issues - the most visible being dental.
Yup - Chamberlin had a whole program of stuff he wanted to do, including universal health insurance. Then re-armament kicked up a notch... re-armament started in 1932, and by 1936/7 was of the "spend all money you can on expanding the arms industry"
I don't know anything about food supplies in WW2, but it does surprise me a bit how dairy had to be rationed so strictly. I would have supposed that was mostly domestically produced at the time. Getting into WW2 was catastrophic (if the right thing to do). Getting into WW1 was just catastrophic.
Probably shortage of grain (for animal feed) and difficulty with importing animal feed. The grain shortage certainly led to a reduction in whisky production in WW2 (and of course the draff byproducts which would have fed lots of cattle).
Edit: In general I don't think anyone needed to starve during WW2 in the UK - but would have had to fill up with wholemeal bread and spuds and other veg. Outwith favoured groups such as servicemen, the problem seems to have been fats and meat to make the bulk palatable, never mind have an excess to get fat on. Very different from the diets od today discussed here.
Perhaps. It's possibly a bit naive of me but I would have thought most cows grazed, supplemented by hay in those days.
A lot of dairy products came from NZ of course.
The WW2 diet was very healthy really. It seems carb heavy to modern tastes but everyone did more exercise in those days, cycling to manual jobs, housework without machinery etc. We were a lot more physically active.
If you look at old TV programmes people look very thin to modern eyes until about 1990. Junk food and less activity accounts for a lot.
Isn’t there an argument that the increasing longevity of our oldsters harks back to those days, and the equivalently austere diet of the 1950s, and that the recent first signs that life expectancy might have topped out are because the upcoming new generation of pensioners grew up at the same time as society turned toward sugar, fast food and the motor car?
There is an argument that mild malnutrition extends life, by itself. If you restrict the diets of mice, they age slower, get fewer diseases, live longer.
Sometime you have to accept that the perfect is the enemy of the good and just get on with it. But the haters just choose to carp and criticise from the sidelines. Of course the government has got stuff wrong. But overall on the really big things - NHS capacity, ventilators, vaccine strategy, economic support - they’ve done pretty well.
The Government have adopted the headless chicken approach to policy.
Some of their tactics worked out, more or less.
Some of them didn't.
Some of them are wildly contradictory.
You find it annoying when this is pointed out. Others find it annoying when you kiss their ass for not killing you, yet...
The push from government to get people back to offices is absolutely doomed to failure. I can understand the desperation as the economic model especially for retail and town centre businesses is falling apart before our eyes.
Staff will return to offices, for some it may even be 5 days per week, but for many others the time spent in the offices will be a limited. I'm not aware of one senior director or CEO that I know who thinks the office will ever return to what it was. The office will be a place for creative interaction that can't yet be truly replicated virtually.
Employees are being asked how they see themselves working in future.Both internal company and external engagement with partners and customers is going mainly virtual. I know for ourselves, 90% of activity was carried out face to face with those we worked with. Every indication that post pandemic it will shift the other way. No-one sees themselves travelling hours for a meeting except in exceptional circumstances. No one is sad to be losing 5 days of the commute a week.
So the economic model and hospitality and service businesses will have to adapt and change location or their business model. City and town centres need radical rethinking and reshaping.
These are not forces that government can hold back like King Canute.
Time to think radical and build a society around a changing paradigm. The pandemic has advanced the home working or rather the work from anywhere revolution by 20 years in 5 months.
Why don't people want to return to the way things were 16 weeks ago?
Because they don't need to, they've had a taste of a better way of doing things. Why go backwards if WFH is better?
A lot of people are thinking "why should I spend 2 hours a day going to work and back when I don't have to"
Maybe people will get fed up with working from home after a few months. We don't know yet. It feels to me like a lot of long-term decisions are being made too quickly.
For example, as I mentioned yesterday, a trade fair/show that I go to every year has just been cancelled — not just for this year and next year, but permanently. I don't know how they can make that decision so soon. (I suppose they could change their minds again if things change).
I'd assume if they've made that decision the fair was already struggling. The decision makers will know what they're thinking.
I think it is fair to say that after that very good start, they somewhat regressed to the mean we have unfortunately come to expect from them since Walsh and Ambrose retired.
@noneoftheabove the nearest “Leon” to me is in Manchester...
Nando's might sit in between McDonalds and Leon in terms of healthy options and thats everywhere.
You seen the calorie counts? My gods it's delicious but wow!
Calorie counting is pretty silly if you ask me (not targeting this specifically at you). A calorie isn't a calorie - fuel isn't just fuel. Ask anyone who's ever put petrol in a diesel engine. And how much more complex than a combustion engine is your body? If you're going to subject what you eat to such intense scrutiny, make it about something that matters to your health.
This is a typically stupid comment from you @Luckyguy1983
Let me guess - you never had to worry much about your weight.
What do you think matters more to an obese person's health than their weight?
How do you suggest someone who is overweight addresses that?
It isn't a stupid comment. I was a chubby child, and I'm now a non-overweight adult. Though that should read a non-overweight 'shaped' adult, because I don't weigh myself. I believe that being overweight stems from eating wrongly, not eating 'too much'. So simply forcing yourself to eat less (of a poor diet) whilst it will eventually lead to the body eating its fat reserves, is not going to result in a good health outcome.
My advice to someone who is overweight would be firstly to stop punishing themselves for being a 'greedy pig' with no 'self control', because I don't think that is true, and doesn't help. We were meant to enjoy food. In terms of more specific advice, I'd gravitate toward intermittent fasting combined with a ketogenic diet focused around nutrient-dense foods. Effectively I'd keep eating within a window of 12 midday to 6pm, with exceptions for important occasions. Ketogenic diet is largely based around limiting intake of carbs, especially empty carbs, and the degree of overweightness and speed of results would dictate the amount of carbs incorporated. Lots of eggs, lots of oily fish, good meat, vegetables and fruit. Lots of healthy fats. Combine this with an exercise regime, not based on 'how many calories you can burn' - which is like taking your car out to put miles on the clock, but based on building muscle and increasing endurance and stamina.
Well done on you shedding weight.
Here's an exclusive preview of my forthcoming best-selling diet book:
"Exercise more. Eat less."
The problem is that this seeming truism, isn't the whole story. The body is incredibly complex. I've seen some extremely interesting studies, such as feeding volunteers hugely excess (k)calories for a long period. If it was simply excess calories leads to weight gain, then all would have ballooned. They didn't. Most only gained a few extra pounds. Its the same with very low calorie diets - the body resists the diet and shuts down resting energy use. Peoples approach to food is important. My wife only eats when hungry, when she's not she has no interest in food. I, on the other hand, can eat at any time. Notably if my wife is tired, she's not hungry. No late night munchies or curries for her. Its also unhelpful for those who find it incredibly easy to not put on weight to assume that they are doing something right by conscious choice, and those that are overweight are 'weak', or eating a poor diet. Its complicated still further by fitness - you can be cardiovasularly fit, and overweight. It would be better to be fit and not overweight, but its not easy. I have run over 20 half marathons and two marathons, yet was never able to reach my goal of under 12 stone (I'm Boris height). At my fittest, I was still a plodder (2h 14 min best half time) but with a resting pulse of 52 bpm. I don't eat sweets particularly and have recently given up chocolate, and limiting cake to once a week. My weakness for certain is bread (and its usually high quality, wholegrain bread at that). All my family have this issue - we all tend to be rounder than ideal. Yet my father is now 81 and my mum 76, and in perfect health. I really want to emulate them...
Very interestingly, a 'don't be such a greedy pig - eat less, exercise more and eat more veg' diet was given a mass experiment in WW2. Verdicts on the health of this diet are mixed, but there's some evidence that it actually puts on weight. There was a programme with Giles Coren and Sue Perkins where they ate a WW2 diet for a period (I think a week?) and both put on weight. I think it was probably a switch over to carbs (from fats and proteins) that was largely responsible.
It is worth noting that a considerable portion of the population was undernourished in the pre war world. Cheap food hadn't appeared yet, in the modern sense.
Part of the design of the WWII ration (as far as they could with the knowledge of the day) was to *increase* the food groups they *thought were good* - to build up the poorer classes.
This was based on the experience from WWI - where non trivial numbers of conscripts had to be rejected as unfit due to poor physical condition.
Yes, it should definitely be remembered that all was not rosy in the garden before WW2. However, the paucity of cheese, butter, mik, eggs, under rationing really shocks me. And undoubtedly led to issues - the most visible being dental.
Yup - Chamberlin had a whole program of stuff he wanted to do, including universal health insurance. Then re-armament kicked up a notch... re-armament started in 1932, and by 1936/7 was of the "spend all money you can on expanding the arms industry"
I don't know anything about food supplies in WW2, but it does surprise me a bit how dairy had to be rationed so strictly. I would have supposed that was mostly domestically produced at the time. Getting into WW2 was catastrophic (if the right thing to do). Getting into WW1 was just catastrophic.
Probably shortage of grain (for animal feed) and difficulty with importing animal feed. The grain shortage certainly led to a reduction in whisky production in WW2 (and of course the draff byproducts which would have fed lots of cattle).
Edit: In general I don't think anyone needed to starve during WW2 in the UK - but would have had to fill up with wholemeal bread and spuds and other veg. Outwith favoured groups such as servicemen, the problem seems to have been fats and meat to make the bulk palatable, never mind have an excess to get fat on. Very different from the diets od today discussed here.
Perhaps. It's possibly a bit naive of me but I would have thought most cows grazed, supplemented by hay in those days.
A lot of dairy products came from NZ of course.
The WW2 diet was very healthy really. It seems carb heavy to modern tastes but everyone did more exercise in those days, cycling to manual jobs, housework without machinery etc. We were a lot more physically active.
If you look at old TV programmes people look very thin to modern eyes until about 1990. Junk food and less activity accounts for a lot.
Isn’t there an argument that the increasing longevity of our oldsters harks back to those days, and the equivalently austere diet of the 1950s, and that the recent first signs that life expectancy might have topped out are because the upcoming new generation of pensioners grew up at the same time as society turned toward sugar, fast food and the motor car?
There is an argument that mild malnutrition extends life, by itself. If you restrict the diets of mice, they age slower, get fewer diseases, live longer.
Masks Do More than Protect Others during COVID-19: Reducing the Inoculum of SARS-CoV-2 https://ucsf.app.box.com/s/blvolkp5z0mydzd82rjks4wyleagt036 ...Although the benefit of population-level public facial masking to protect others during the COVID-19 pandemic has received a great deal of attention, we discuss for one of the first times the hypothesis – compiling virologic, epidemiologic and ecologic evidence- that universal masking reduces the “inoculum” or dose of the virus for the mask-wearer, leading to more mild and asymptomatic infection manifestations. Masks, depending on type, filter out the majority of viral particles, but not all. We first discuss the near-century old literature around the viral inoculum and severity of disease (conceptualized as the LD50 or lethal dose of the virus). We include examples of rising rates of asymptomatic infection with population-level masking, including in closed settings (e.g. cruise ships) with and without universal masking. Asymptomatic infections may be harmful for spread but could actually be beneficial if they lead to higher rates of exposure. Exposing society to SARS-CoV-2 without the unacceptable consequences of severe illness with public masking could lead to greater community-level immunity and slower spread as we await a vaccine. This theory of viral inoculum and mild or asymptomatic disease with SARS-CoV-2 in light of population-level masking shows the benefits of mask-wearing for the individual (as well as others) as a pillar of COVID-19 pandemic control...
Why don't people want to return to the way things were 16 weeks ago?
Because do people really want to spend say ten hours a week commuting to and back to the office when you can the majority of the job at home?
This exactly - in my line of work, people across the business have realised the physical and mental toll that sometimes travelling 6 or 7 hours a day in the car or train for a couple of meetings across country was having.
One of the drivers that might push against this yet though is how you deal with a situation where some staff are office based for a meeting where others are in their zoom box at home.
The reason virtual wasn't great pre-pandemic was this mix of some dialling in. With everyone virtual you avoid that issue. It is likely that we will say for our internal meetings that if anyone is joining virtually, even if you are in the office you will join virtually from your desk. It's key to making the virtual environment work.
We were already moving this way. No core hours for staff but an expectation they would be in the right place at the right time, work from anywhere you like. The last 5 months though have broken the physical attraction of the office.
Now some (a minority) want to get back to the office 5 days a week. That's fine - they can do that. I think they will find they have a rose-tinted view of what once was though, once they realise the majority of their colleagues won't be joining them for most of the time.
I think the biggest barriers stopping people from enjoying working from home
1) A lack of decent broadband speed.
2) A lack of space to work from home.
3) Young children who are lovely but distracting, who don't care that you are working.
4) Missing the physical interaction of dealing with colleagues/friends
My firm has told us we're working from home until the new year but my staff and others are working on the basis when we're allowed back into the office we'll maybe go in once a week.
In my job the other issue is the data protection angle, but that shouldn't be insurmountable
I see the Depp case is just about over. I wonder if at the end of the day the only winners will be the lawyers on both sides. Doesn't look to me as if Depp or Heard have covered themselves with glory, but of course the Sun's reputation can stand anything. I wonder too if we're going to see 1p damages and no order as to costs!
I'd have thought a victory, even a 1p victory, could be worth millions for Depp?
If he'd done nothing and accepted the accusation of being a wife beater then he'd surely have been persona non grata in Hollywood and that would be the end of his career? Whereas if he wins and the Sun has to apologise, even without damages, I assume he can continue filming.
How much weight does a comment like that in the London Sun have in Hollywood?
The push from government to get people back to offices is absolutely doomed to failure. I can understand the desperation as the economic model especially for retail and town centre businesses is falling apart before our eyes.
Staff will return to offices, for some it may even be 5 days per week, but for many others the time spent in the offices will be a limited. I'm not aware of one senior director or CEO that I know who thinks the office will ever return to what it was. The office will be a place for creative interaction that can't yet be truly replicated virtually.
Employees are being asked how they see themselves working in future.Both internal company and external engagement with partners and customers is going mainly virtual. I know for ourselves, 90% of activity was carried out face to face with those we worked with. Every indication that post pandemic it will shift the other way. No-one sees themselves travelling hours for a meeting except in exceptional circumstances. No one is sad to be losing 5 days of the commute a week.
So the economic model and hospitality and service businesses will have to adapt and change location or their business model. City and town centres need radical rethinking and reshaping.
These are not forces that government can hold back like King Canute.
Time to think radical and build a society around a changing paradigm. The pandemic has advanced the home working or rather the work from anywhere revolution by 20 years in 5 months.
Why don't people want to return to the way things were 16 weeks ago?
Cos it was shit? How many thousands of pounds were how many millions of people spending to spend hours every day / week crushed into a train commuting to go to work? How much were they then spending once they got there on food and drink?
Slightly smaller swing to Biden than nationally - arguably a good thing given its implication as to how the national swing translates into ECVs.
Only 78% preferencing either candidate, even this far out from the election, is exceptionally low. And Gary Johnson put in one of the best third party efforts in 2016 and that is very unlikely to be repeated this year, so that makes it even worse. This is a pollster that got Hillary spot on and Biden is 5 points below that level. So not really good for either side.
The push from government to get people back to offices is absolutely doomed to failure. I can understand the desperation as the economic model especially for retail and town centre businesses is falling apart before our eyes.
Staff will return to offices, for some it may even be 5 days per week, but for many others the time spent in the offices will be a limited. I'm not aware of one senior director or CEO that I know who thinks the office will ever return to what it was. The office will be a place for creative interaction that can't yet be truly replicated virtually.
Employees are being asked how they see themselves working in future.Both internal company and external engagement with partners and customers is going mainly virtual. I know for ourselves, 90% of activity was carried out face to face with those we worked with. Every indication that post pandemic it will shift the other way. No-one sees themselves travelling hours for a meeting except in exceptional circumstances. No one is sad to be losing 5 days of the commute a week.
So the economic model and hospitality and service businesses will have to adapt and change location or their business model. City and town centres need radical rethinking and reshaping.
These are not forces that government can hold back like King Canute.
Time to think radical and build a society around a changing paradigm. The pandemic has advanced the home working or rather the work from anywhere revolution by 20 years in 5 months.
Why don't people want to return to the way things were 16 weeks ago?
I can only speak anecdotally but those people I know who are working from home loved it at first, but are growing increasingly fed up with it.
My elder son reckons he can work on Teams just as well from home as he can from his office. However younger son is anxious to go to visit one of his customers and 'press the flesh' as it were. He's not anxious to travel as much as he did before, though.
I see the Depp case is just about over. I wonder if at the end of the day the only winners will be the lawyers on both sides. Doesn't look to me as if Depp or Heard have covered themselves with glory, but of course the Sun's reputation can stand anything. I wonder too if we're going to see 1p damages and no order as to costs!
I'd have thought a victory, even a 1p victory, could be worth millions for Depp?
If he'd done nothing and accepted the accusation of being a wife beater then he'd surely have been persona non grata in Hollywood and that would be the end of his career? Whereas if he wins and the Sun has to apologise, even without damages, I assume he can continue filming.
How much weight does a comment like that in the London Sun have in Hollywood?
A lot.
It led to calls for him to be removed from the multi-million pound Fantastic Beasts series, for example.
It wouldn’t affect my view of him - but then I’m not stupid enough to believe anything written in the Sun (and they didn’t help their case in that regard by hiring the infamous Sasha Wass as their counsel). He was weird before, he’s weird now. But that’s a far cry from accusing him of domestic abuse.
I see the Depp case is just about over. I wonder if at the end of the day the only winners will be the lawyers on both sides. Doesn't look to me as if Depp or Heard have covered themselves with glory, but of course the Sun's reputation can stand anything. I wonder too if we're going to see 1p damages and no order as to costs!
I'd have thought a victory, even a 1p victory, could be worth millions for Depp?
If he'd done nothing and accepted the accusation of being a wife beater then he'd surely have been persona non grata in Hollywood and that would be the end of his career? Whereas if he wins and the Sun has to apologise, even without damages, I assume he can continue filming.
How much weight does a comment like that in the London Sun have in Hollywood?
THe loud thumping noises you can hear coming from South Manchester are the West Indies batsmen kicking themselves that they couldn’t hang on another half an hour.
Slightly smaller swing to Biden than nationally - arguably a good thing given its implication as to how the national swing translates into ECVs.
Only 78% preferencing either candidate, even this far out from the election, is exceptionally low. And Gary Johnson put in one of the best third party efforts in 2016 and that is very unlikely to be repeated this year, so that makes it even worse. This is a pollster that got Hillary spot on and Biden is 5 points below that level. So not really good for either side.
Those low preference numbers seem pretty unusual for this election. I'll run an analysis, but I think we're probably seeing a great percentage of voters who say they've made up their mind than in 2016.
The push from government to get people back to offices is absolutely doomed to failure. I can understand the desperation as the economic model especially for retail and town centre businesses is falling apart before our eyes.
Staff will return to offices, for some it may even be 5 days per week, but for many others the time spent in the offices will be a limited. I'm not aware of one senior director or CEO that I know who thinks the office will ever return to what it was. The office will be a place for creative interaction that can't yet be truly replicated virtually.
Employees are being asked how they see themselves working in future.Both internal company and external engagement with partners and customers is going mainly virtual. I know for ourselves, 90% of activity was carried out face to face with those we worked with. Every indication that post pandemic it will shift the other way. No-one sees themselves travelling hours for a meeting except in exceptional circumstances. No one is sad to be losing 5 days of the commute a week.
So the economic model and hospitality and service businesses will have to adapt and change location or their business model. City and town centres need radical rethinking and reshaping.
These are not forces that government can hold back like King Canute.
Time to think radical and build a society around a changing paradigm. The pandemic has advanced the home working or rather the work from anywhere revolution by 20 years in 5 months.
Why don't people want to return to the way things were 16 weeks ago?
Cos it was shit? How many thousands of pounds were how many millions of people spending to spend hours every day / week crushed into a train commuting to go to work? How much were they then spending once they got there on food and drink?
The work-life balance argument is crucial. Reducing commuting has freed up very valuable family time, and in time might go some way to counteracting the effect of our long-hours, low-productivity culture, which has contributed to some of the highest rates of mental illness and family breakdown in Europe.
In a country where people work longer hours than many, and feeling the refreshing draught of a sudden change, people may be more resistant than elsewhere to going back to how things were before.
I see the Depp case is just about over. I wonder if at the end of the day the only winners will be the lawyers on both sides. Doesn't look to me as if Depp or Heard have covered themselves with glory, but of course the Sun's reputation can stand anything. I wonder too if we're going to see 1p damages and no order as to costs!
I'd have thought a victory, even a 1p victory, could be worth millions for Depp?
If he'd done nothing and accepted the accusation of being a wife beater then he'd surely have been persona non grata in Hollywood and that would be the end of his career? Whereas if he wins and the Sun has to apologise, even without damages, I assume he can continue filming.
+1 the money doesn't matter here it's complete irrelevant.
If the Sun wins Depp's career is finished (as is the Fantastic Beasts franchise without a rewrite).
If Depp wins his career can restart.
And while Depp is clearly a strange person, Heard really doesn't come out of this well.
My company has ruled out long term remote working. Want everyone back in the office as soon as there's a vaccine, willing to pay privately for staff to be vaccinated if the NHS queue is too long. Open to people doing up to two days a week from home but would prefer people do one day or no days.
Essentially, the story is going to be "as you were" for us when there's a vaccine. Anecdotally I've heard similar stories across the City and for lots of London based tech workers.
The push from government to get people back to offices is absolutely doomed to failure. I can understand the desperation as the economic model especially for retail and town centre businesses is falling apart before our eyes.
Staff will return to offices, for some it may even be 5 days per week, but for many others the time spent in the offices will be a limited. I'm not aware of one senior director or CEO that I know who thinks the office will ever return to what it was. The office will be a place for creative interaction that can't yet be truly replicated virtually.
Employees are being asked how they see themselves working in future.Both internal company and external engagement with partners and customers is going mainly virtual. I know for ourselves, 90% of activity was carried out face to face with those we worked with. Every indication that post pandemic it will shift the other way. No-one sees themselves travelling hours for a meeting except in exceptional circumstances. No one is sad to be losing 5 days of the commute a week.
So the economic model and hospitality and service businesses will have to adapt and change location or their business model. City and town centres need radical rethinking and reshaping.
These are not forces that government can hold back like King Canute.
Time to think radical and build a society around a changing paradigm. The pandemic has advanced the home working or rather the work from anywhere revolution by 20 years in 5 months.
Why don't people want to return to the way things were 16 weeks ago?
Cos it was shit? How many thousands of pounds were how many millions of people spending to spend hours every day / week crushed into a train commuting to go to work? How much were they then spending once they got there on food and drink?
Events like these accelerate/enable change.
pre 9/11, business travel was... business travel. In the company I worked for, full fare British Airways tickets. Business class for anything over 4 hours (for us plebs).
post 9/11 - whatever is cheapest, and much less of that. None of the nonsense about flying a guy to Hong Kong and back for one meeting.
COVID had kicked WFH through a barrier.
As for spending -
The issue seems to be where the spending has moved to.
Potentially close contest? I thought Biden was a street ahead.
You don't understand, Trump is undermining democracy. Well, at least that's what I'm told by the people who say that if he were to win it must be because of the Russians/Vote rigging etc etc
My company has ruled out long term remote working. Want everyone back in the office as soon as there's a vaccine, willing to pay privately for staff to be vaccinated if the NHS queue is too long. Open to people doing up to two days a week from home but would prefer people do one day or no days.
Essentially, the story is going to be "as you were" for us when there's a vaccine. Anecdotally I've heard similar stories across the City and for lots of London based tech workers.
Long-term, is there not going to be a competitive element to this? If you're advertising for a job, the option of home working is likely to become a big part of the equation.
That would be icing on the cake for 2020, wouldn't it!
I am in pessimistic mood. I suspect the military are going to have to remove Trump. This might trigger social unrest bordering on civil war to be honest.
The push from government to get people back to offices is absolutely doomed to failure. I can understand the desperation as the economic model especially for retail and town centre businesses is falling apart before our eyes.
Staff will return to offices, for some it may even be 5 days per week, but for many others the time spent in the offices will be a limited. I'm not aware of one senior director or CEO that I know who thinks the office will ever return to what it was. The office will be a place for creative interaction that can't yet be truly replicated virtually.
Employees are being asked how they see themselves working in future.Both internal company and external engagement with partners and customers is going mainly virtual. I know for ourselves, 90% of activity was carried out face to face with those we worked with. Every indication that post pandemic it will shift the other way. No-one sees themselves travelling hours for a meeting except in exceptional circumstances. No one is sad to be losing 5 days of the commute a week.
So the economic model and hospitality and service businesses will have to adapt and change location or their business model. City and town centres need radical rethinking and reshaping.
These are not forces that government can hold back like King Canute.
Time to think radical and build a society around a changing paradigm. The pandemic has advanced the home working or rather the work from anywhere revolution by 20 years in 5 months.
Why don't people want to return to the way things were 16 weeks ago?
Because they don't need to, they've had a taste of a better way of doing things. Why go backwards if WFH is better?
A lot of people are thinking "why should I spend 2 hours a day going to work and back when I don't have to"
Maybe people will get fed up with working from home after a few months. We don't know yet. It feels to me like a lot of long-term decisions are being made too quickly.
For example, as I mentioned yesterday, a trade fair/show that I go to every year has just been cancelled — not just for this year and next year, but permanently. I don't know how they can make that decision so soon. (I suppose they could change their minds again if things change).
It depends on circumstance - a friend has a "Garden Office" that was a garage built by previous owner to an absurd spec for his precious sports car. Brick built, proper insulation, double glazing on the doors and windows, proper roof etc...
So my friend has a large office, all to himself, big double doors onto the garden....
A long way from balancing a laptop on the ironing board. Which is what some are doing....
My company has ruled out long term remote working. Want everyone back in the office as soon as there's a vaccine, willing to pay privately for staff to be vaccinated if the NHS queue is too long. Open to people doing up to two days a week from home but would prefer people do one day or no days.
Essentially, the story is going to be "as you were" for us when there's a vaccine. Anecdotally I've heard similar stories across the City and for lots of London based tech workers.
A lot of my clients are the exact opposite. Looking to try and maintain as much home working as possible with the office space being reduced and used only for essential meetings/operations.
My company has ruled out long term remote working. Want everyone back in the office as soon as there's a vaccine, willing to pay privately for staff to be vaccinated if the NHS queue is too long. Open to people doing up to two days a week from home but would prefer people do one day or no days.
Essentially, the story is going to be "as you were" for us when there's a vaccine. Anecdotally I've heard similar stories across the City and for lots of London based tech workers.
Long-term, is there not going to be a competitive element to this? If you're advertising for a job, the option of home working is likely to become a big part of the equation.
For those with young kids, the option to work from an office is going to be a big positive.
"I'm really sorry honey, but this job requires me to go in. I'd really love to help with keeping a three year old amused for nine hours without the use of television or iPad, but sadly it won't be possibl."
I see the Depp case is just about over. I wonder if at the end of the day the only winners will be the lawyers on both sides. Doesn't look to me as if Depp or Heard have covered themselves with glory, but of course the Sun's reputation can stand anything. I wonder too if we're going to see 1p damages and no order as to costs!
I'd have thought a victory, even a 1p victory, could be worth millions for Depp?
If he'd done nothing and accepted the accusation of being a wife beater then he'd surely have been persona non grata in Hollywood and that would be the end of his career? Whereas if he wins and the Sun has to apologise, even without damages, I assume he can continue filming.
+1 the money doesn't matter here it's complete irrelevant.
If the Sun wins Depp's career is finished (as is the Fantastic Beasts franchise without a rewrite).
If Depp wins his career can restart.
And while Depp is clearly a strange person, Heard really doesn't come out of this well.
I do get he impression a lot of this was originally based on the idea that they thought everyone would believe Heard because Depp is strange. If that is the case then I do hope he wins. Being strange is certainly not a crime and shouldn't be punished.
Agree that this has hit home more than any event in my lifetime.
Covid is strange because it is a deadly virus but it isn't a deadly virus for most people so the overall reaction is understandable and also, as we are seeing from da yoof on tour, ignorable. Certainly the measures taken, lockdown, etc are once in a lifetime events. But walking around it doesn't feel as though we are in mortal danger. Whether rightly or wrongly.
For me IIRC just before Gulf 1 there was a time when it was thought that Iran and Iraq would come together to fight the infidel, thus occasioning a literal clash of civilisations. A cultural war, but a hot one, not just one conducted in the Graun Opinion section.
Covid 19 is the biggest event of my lifetime. We aren't even halfway through and it is transforming the world.
Inter alia, it will mark the decisive moment when supreme power passed from the West to the East.
Not quite, but I suspect it will be the reference pointed use in the same way that the US is regarded to have replaced the UK as the leading power between 1939 and 1945 when in reality it was probably some time in the 1920's / 30's..
India was still party of the Empire until 1947
How is that relevant to eek's point?
It was control of India which made the British Empire a Superpower, once India got independence so Britain's Superpower status went with it
I see the Depp case is just about over. I wonder if at the end of the day the only winners will be the lawyers on both sides. Doesn't look to me as if Depp or Heard have covered themselves with glory, but of course the Sun's reputation can stand anything. I wonder too if we're going to see 1p damages and no order as to costs!
I'd have thought a victory, even a 1p victory, could be worth millions for Depp?
If he'd done nothing and accepted the accusation of being a wife beater then he'd surely have been persona non grata in Hollywood and that would be the end of his career? Whereas if he wins and the Sun has to apologise, even without damages, I assume he can continue filming.
+1 the money doesn't matter here it's complete irrelevant.
If the Sun wins Depp's career is finished (as is the Fantastic Beasts franchise without a rewrite).
If Depp wins his career can restart.
And while Depp is clearly a strange person, Heard really doesn't come out of this well.
Indeed, look how quickly Kevin Spacey's career was brought to an abrupt close.
FT: "Swedish companies reap benefits of country’s Covid-19 approach" Better than expected numbers suggests no-lockdown strategy helped business
and
Telegraph: "Spain's experience shows that Sweden's Covid approach could have been right all along" At the end of this we may well conclude that countries which attempted total suppression of the virus killed their economies for zero gain
And they didn't close their schools so they haven't got a cohort of badly educated, socially-traumatised kids.
Sweden now has 564 deaths per million and will likely soon overtake Italy on 581 as it has more new cases. Only Belgium, us and Spain will have more deaths per head then in the world than Sweden does
But, like Italy or Spain, they are only registering a few deaths per day, now.
Yet the Swedish recession will be dwarfed by the recessions (Depressions) in southern Europe (and in the UK)
And Sweden kept the schools open, and they're not even using masks.
It still too early to say, but if you HAD to choose a European model to follow (if you could) it would be Sweden
No. It would be Germany, far fewer deaths than Sweden per head and opened up its economy from lockdown earlier than us
++++++
Perhaps. But Germany now has a hint of a second wave, and it is possible their excellent earlier record was more from luck than judgement.
Sweden's outcome was a result of definite policy.
As ever, we shall see
Sweden still has more daily cases per head than Germany, it was German mass testing from an early stage and lockdown imposed when needed that was key.
Germany also has more facemask wearing than Sweden and now requires facemasks outside as well as inside
It does? - (looks outside) - Nobody seems to have been told.
'The head of Germany's public health agency has said he is "very concerned" by rising infections in the country...At a press conference on Tuesday, Mr Wieler asked people for the first time to wear a mask outdoors if they cannot maintain a physical distance of at least 1.5 metres (5ft).
Previously the guidance had been to wear masks indoors in public.'
My company has ruled out long term remote working. Want everyone back in the office as soon as there's a vaccine, willing to pay privately for staff to be vaccinated if the NHS queue is too long. Open to people doing up to two days a week from home but would prefer people do one day or no days.
Essentially, the story is going to be "as you were" for us when there's a vaccine. Anecdotally I've heard similar stories across the City and for lots of London based tech workers.
Long-term, is there not going to be a competitive element to this? If you're advertising for a job, the option of home working is likely to become a big part of the equation.
There is but the answer is not as clear cut as you may think. A lot of younger people, often the target of recruitment ads, will prefer working in an office. And as an employer whilst happy without an office for existing staff, feel it would be a nightmare taking on someone fresh out of uni to work from home.
I am sure the shift to wfh will accelerate sharply as a result of 2020 but for many businesses offices will still be best.
As I said to an American relative - "I am waiting for Trump to jump over the shark that is jumping over the shark that is jumping over the shark that...."
My company has ruled out long term remote working. Want everyone back in the office as soon as there's a vaccine, willing to pay privately for staff to be vaccinated if the NHS queue is too long. Open to people doing up to two days a week from home but would prefer people do one day or no days.
Essentially, the story is going to be "as you were" for us when there's a vaccine. Anecdotally I've heard similar stories across the City and for lots of London based tech workers.
I anticipate that in future the flexibility of an employer to working from home will be a consideration alongside salary, days leave, maternity leave etc.
Companies can try and turn back the clock but their competitors will be able to cheaply take their staff by offering the WFH flexibility that is now taken for granted.
Additionally aving a preference for zero days WFH will be a HR nightmare: its like having a preference for people who only need 30 minutes to commute - it leaves you right open to accusations of bias; mainly because its true.
When it comes to WFH employers don't all have to jump at once but they will all end up jumping eventually.
Comments
That wouldnt stop casual and speculative new jobs being created but would reduce it as a permanent exploitative option for companies.
Recently, I was trying to explain the Miners Strike to some young, quite left wing people. I literally could not get them to believe the Scargill demands - they had to look them up on their phones...
I'm sympathetic to why people would feel this way- for example, a lot of racial inequality is driven by the desire to create an economic underclass- but I really think this view fails on both moral and tactical grounds. On moral grounds because ignoring, say, homophobia because it doesn't have a class overlay is clearly a dereliction of moral duty (as is pretending that racial issues are 100% class-based).
On tactical grounds because I believe there are very powerful forces arrayed in protection of existing class hierarchies and I'm sure they could easily adapt to no longer being able to divide people this way. For example, with Bernie Sanders we saw those to his right gleefully adopt faux-wokeness as their choice of weapon in protection of the status quo, saying surely people would prefer a black female candidate.
And they didn't close their schools so they haven't got a cohort of badly educated, socially-traumatised kids.
Sweden now has 564 deaths per million and will likely soon overtake Italy on 581 as it has more new cases. Only Belgium, us and Spain will have more deaths per head then in the world than Sweden does
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?utm_campaign=homeAdvegas1?
The WW2 diet was very healthy really. It seems carb heavy to modern tastes but everyone did more exercise in those days, cycling to manual jobs, housework without machinery etc. We were a lot more physically active.
If you look at old TV programmes people look very thin to modern eyes until about 1990. Junk food and less activity accounts for a lot.
Everything tells me the East (in general, not just China) is overtaking.
In some important areas this is happening right now, and literally.
eg America has finally lost its long-held supremacy in chip manufacturing. This is from Friday's FT:
https://www.ft.com/content/051b2c80-d53b-410e-8e80-f433d25a82dd
"A stunning slip in Intel’s manufacturing development reverberated through Wall Street on Friday, as the chip industry contemplated a decisive shift in leadership in the world’s most advanced manufacturing technology.
"Following a rare lapse in moving to the previous generation of chipmaking technology, the latest slip marked a clear end to Intel’s long-running lead in global chip manufacturing, while handing Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC a significant edge.
We *categorically* are not going back to status quo ante. WFH is win win - employees get a better work/life balance, employers sacrifice a little productivity for the large cost saving of not running large offices. The government is not going to manage to persuade people to go back especially when the main reason would be to get them off the hook subsidising train companies and getting us all to buy Pret every lunchtime.
Regarding meetings I've spent 18 years until this March on the road. Every week in every year had at least a day out in customer meetings or the like, some weeks had me crossing the country from one end to the other. I expect so much of these meetings to be virtual from now on. Maybe a face to face intro meeting and a periodic review but otherwise on a screen. And probably better for it.
And they didn't close their schools so they haven't got a cohort of badly educated, socially-traumatised kids.
Sweden now has 564 deaths per million and will likely soon overtake Italy on 581 as it has more new cases. Only Belgium, us and Spain will have more deaths per head then in the world than Sweden does
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?utm_campaign=homeAdvegas1?
+++++++++++
But, like Italy or Spain, they are only registering a few deaths per day, now.
Yet the Swedish recession will be dwarfed by the recessions (Depressions) in southern Europe (and in the UK)
And Sweden kept the schools open, and they're not even using masks.
It still too early to say, but if you HAD to choose a European model to follow (if you could) it would be Sweden
Later, future historians will look back and identify that many of the trends that played out over subsequent decades can be traced back to either initiation or reinforcement by the crisis we are living through.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?utm_campaign=homeAdvegas1?
+++++++++++
But, like Italy or Spain, they are only registering a few deaths per day, now.
Yet the Swedish recession will be dwarfed by the recessions (Depressions) in southern Europe (and in the UK)
And Sweden kept the schools open, and they're not even using masks.
It still too early to say, but if you HAD to choose a European model to follow (if you could) it would be Sweden
No. It would be Germany, far fewer deaths than Sweden per head and opened up its economy from lockdown earlier than us
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/222a/5a6b9165191fec34b1ef4c174198c9bc5f97.pdf
Again, this is probably because our bodies are designed for periods of famine. Fasting is the answer.
Windies have about as much chance of retaining the Wisden Trophy as Trump does the Oval Office.
+++++++++++
But, like Italy or Spain, they are only registering a few deaths per day, now.
Yet the Swedish recession will be dwarfed by the recessions (Depressions) in southern Europe (and in the UK)
And Sweden kept the schools open, and they're not even using masks.
It still too early to say, but if you HAD to choose a European model to follow (if you could) it would be Sweden
No. It would be Germany, far fewer deaths than Sweden per head and opened up its economy from lockdown earlier than us
++++++
Perhaps. But Germany now has a hint of a second wave, and it is possible their excellent earlier record was more from luck than judgement.
Sweden's outcome was a result of definite policy.
As ever, we shall see
https://www.krisinformation.se/en/hazards-and-risks/disasters-and-incidents/2020/official-information-on-the-new-coronavirus/restriktioner-och-forbud
++++++
Perhaps. But Germany now has a hint of a second wave, and it is possible their excellent earlier record was more from luck than judgement.
Sweden's outcome was a result of definite policy.
As ever, we shall see
Sweden still has more daily cases per head than Germany, it was German mass testing from an early stage and lockdown imposed when needed that was key.
Germany also has more facemask wearing than Sweden and now requires facemasks outside as well as inside
We are in a unique crisis situation
The hospitality sector is on its knees. Obesity is a significant factor in death rates.
These two policies (subsidising meals out and the obesity strategy) address these issues. They have been implemented quickly, and the government should be praised for that
Sure there is a small area of overlap where one may counteract the other (although I suspect it affects a very small number of people). In a perfect world you would probably have excluded fast food restaurants from the subsidised meals policy.
But that would have (a) required a definition of which restaurants were excluded; (b) required consultation, slowing things down massively; (c) probably have resulted in judicial review of the policy slowing things down even more; and (d) cost jobs in the fast food sector
Sometime you have to accept that the perfect is the enemy of the good and just get on with it. But the haters just choose to carp and criticise from the sidelines. Of course the government has got stuff wrong. But overall on the really big things - NHS capacity, ventilators, vaccine strategy, economic support - they’ve done pretty well.
It boosts productivity, I'm a lot more productive now I don't have to wake up at 5am every week day.
A lot of people are thinking "why should I spend 2 hours a day going to work and back when I don't have to"
I wonder too if we're going to see 1p damages and no order as to costs!
https://twitter.com/JillMcClary/status/1287862468711243777
For example, as I mentioned yesterday, a trade fair/show that I go to every year has just been cancelled — not just for this year and next year, but permanently. I don't know how they can make that decision so soon. (I suppose they could change their minds again if things change).
One of the drivers that might push against this yet though is how you deal with a situation where some staff are office based for a meeting where others are in their zoom box at home.
The reason virtual wasn't great pre-pandemic was this mix of some dialling in. With everyone virtual you avoid that issue. It is likely that we will say for our internal meetings that if anyone is joining virtually, even if you are in the office you will join virtually from your desk. It's key to making the virtual environment work.
We were already moving this way. No core hours for staff but an expectation they would be in the right place at the right time, work from anywhere you like. The last 5 months though have broken the physical attraction of the office.
Now some (a minority) want to get back to the office 5 days a week. That's fine - they can do that. I think they will find they have a rose-tinted view of what once was though, once they realise the majority of their colleagues won't be joining them for most of the time.
Perhaps. But Germany now has a hint of a second wave, and it is possible their excellent earlier record was more from luck than judgement.
Sweden's outcome was a result of definite policy.
As ever, we shall see
Sweden still has more daily cases per head than Germany, it was German mass testing from an early stage and lockdown imposed when needed that was key.
Germany also has more facemask wearing than Sweden and now requires facemasks outside as well as inside
It does?
- (looks outside) -
Nobody seems to have been told.
If he'd done nothing and accepted the accusation of being a wife beater then he'd surely have been persona non grata in Hollywood and that would be the end of his career? Whereas if he wins and the Sun has to apologise, even without damages, I assume he can continue filming.
I would incorporate an awesome pun.
Some of their tactics worked out, more or less.
Some of them didn't.
Some of them are wildly contradictory.
You find it annoying when this is pointed out. Others find it annoying when you kiss their ass for not killing you, yet...
I think it is fair to say that after that very good start, they somewhat regressed to the mean we have unfortunately come to expect from them since Walsh and Ambrose retired.
https://ucsf.app.box.com/s/blvolkp5z0mydzd82rjks4wyleagt036
...Although the benefit of population-level public facial masking to protect others during the COVID-19 pandemic has received a great deal of attention, we discuss for one of the first times the hypothesis – compiling virologic, epidemiologic and ecologic evidence- that universal masking reduces the “inoculum” or dose of the virus for the mask-wearer, leading to more mild and asymptomatic infection manifestations. Masks, depending on type, filter out the majority of viral particles, but not all. We first discuss the near-century old literature around the viral inoculum and severity of disease (conceptualized as the LD50 or lethal dose of the virus). We include examples of rising rates of asymptomatic infection with population-level masking, including in closed settings (e.g. cruise ships) with and without universal masking. Asymptomatic infections may be harmful for spread but could actually be beneficial if they lead to higher rates of exposure. Exposing society to SARS-CoV-2 without the unacceptable consequences of severe illness with public masking could lead to greater community-level immunity and slower spread as we await a vaccine. This theory of viral inoculum and mild or asymptomatic disease with SARS-CoV-2 in light of population-level masking shows the benefits of mask-wearing for the individual (as well as others) as a pillar of COVID-19 pandemic control...
1) A lack of decent broadband speed.
2) A lack of space to work from home.
3) Young children who are lovely but distracting, who don't care that you are working.
4) Missing the physical interaction of dealing with colleagues/friends
My firm has told us we're working from home until the new year but my staff and others are working on the basis when we're allowed back into the office we'll maybe go in once a week.
In my job the other issue is the data protection angle, but that shouldn't be insurmountable
https://twitter.com/kakape/status/1288084553404383237
https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-keep-employees-home-until-summer-2021-amid-coronavirus-pandemic-11595854201
It led to calls for him to be removed from the multi-million pound Fantastic Beasts series, for example.
It wouldn’t affect my view of him - but then I’m not stupid enough to believe anything written in the Sun (and they didn’t help their case in that regard by hiring the infamous Sasha Wass as their counsel). He was weird before, he’s weird now. But that’s a far cry from accusing him of domestic abuse.
In a country where people work longer hours than many, and feeling the refreshing draught of a sudden change, people may be more resistant than elsewhere to going back to how things were before.
If the Sun wins Depp's career is finished (as is the Fantastic Beasts franchise without a rewrite).
If Depp wins his career can restart.
And while Depp is clearly a strange person, Heard really doesn't come out of this well.
Essentially, the story is going to be "as you were" for us when there's a vaccine. Anecdotally I've heard similar stories across the City and for lots of London based tech workers.
pre 9/11, business travel was... business travel. In the company I worked for, full fare British Airways tickets. Business class for anything over 4 hours (for us plebs).
post 9/11 - whatever is cheapest, and much less of that. None of the nonsense about flying a guy to Hong Kong and back for one meeting.
COVID had kicked WFH through a barrier.
As for spending -
The issue seems to be where the spending has moved to.
https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/scientists-are-sharing-their-favorite-paper-titles-and-theyre-hilarious/
"Fantastic Yeasts and where to find them"
"One ring to multiplex them all" ...... etc
So my friend has a large office, all to himself, big double doors onto the garden....
A long way from balancing a laptop on the ironing board. Which is what some are doing....
Also, potentially a Biden landslide.
"I'm really sorry honey, but this job requires me to go in. I'd really love to help with keeping a three year old amused for nine hours without the use of television or iPad, but sadly it won't be possibl."
https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1288117581916721152
I could see anything from a three point Trump win, to a ten point Biden one.
There will be much Joffreying for position shortly.
That is what The Sun could have done to Depp.
Germany also has more facemask wearing than Sweden and now requires facemasks outside as well as inside
It does?
- (looks outside) -
Nobody seems to have been told.
'The head of Germany's public health agency has said he is "very concerned" by rising infections in the country...At a press conference on Tuesday, Mr Wieler asked people for the first time to wear a mask outdoors if they cannot maintain a physical distance of at least 1.5 metres (5ft).
Previously the guidance had been to wear masks indoors in public.'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-53566880
I am sure the shift to wfh will accelerate sharply as a result of 2020 but for many businesses offices will still be best.
On the other hand the whiff of sulphur covers BO well.
Companies can try and turn back the clock but their competitors will be able to cheaply take their staff by offering the WFH flexibility that is now taken for granted.
Additionally aving a preference for zero days WFH will be a HR nightmare: its like having a preference for people who only need 30 minutes to commute - it leaves you right open to accusations of bias; mainly because its true.
When it comes to WFH employers don't all have to jump at once but they will all end up jumping eventually.