It was their Chief Executive, no less, that had written the article linked to yesterday which said, amongst other things, that the Supreme Court and the Court of Session are of equal rank and that when they disagree it gets "tricky". Pig ignorant doesn't even begin to describe it.
Actually, that's not strictly true.
He said the Court of Sessions was superior to the Supreme Court.
Oh look, Aberdonians being preening special snowflakes. There is a shock.
Aberdonians the wrong kind of Scots?
Not true Scots?
They're a Tory/suspended-from-Lab coalition, they love to 'differentiate' from the SG. Since they okayed turning Union St into a beer garden before the outbreak, their Covid record speaks for itself.
Beer gardens being a good thing as they're outdoors so reduce transmission? I take it that's what you mean?
It's northern Scotland though so while being outside is good the issue was that you need to gather close (like penguins) to stay warm..
Years ago when I as an English Tory said that I supported Scottish independence I was treated with incredulity and like I was insane. Such a combination was considered impossible.
I still get treated like I'm insane sometimes for my beliefs here, but not because of that anymore it seems. The idea of the English, even English Tories, thinking that Scottish independence would be a good idea does seem to be becoming more and more accepted as a more mainstream idea and not batshit crazy.
I still support the Union as we are stronger together but yes some English Tories are attracted to Scotland leaving the UK as it would make it almost impossible for a non Blairite Labour party to ever win a general election again
It would not make it impossible, the Labour Party would just need to adapt to be more attractive to the English. The pendulum will always swing eventually.
And they would have to adapt by becoming Blairite again.
Not since 1966 has Labour won a majority in England without Blair as leader and Cameron in 2010 and May in 2017 won comfortable Tory majorities in England alone
Leave won 68.5% of English seats, how is a Brexit blocker like Starmer going to appeal?
to the 45% of English that voted Remain, to Leave voters who are not obsessed with Brexit, but rather prioritise other issues like competency, and also those who realise that Leave was a mistake. Between all those it is quite possible to have a substantial majority
Two observations.
First, Starmer has very sensibly said very little about Brexit since becoming leader, because it's understandably obvious that Johnson wants to return to that conversation.
Second, we don't know how Brexit is going to turn out. It's the elephant in the room that's yet to land. Though if the "let's sign up for everything including the Euro and speaking French" campaign were to run the UK's preparations, I'm not sure they could sabotage the process more than the government is.
If Brexit goes well, BoJo is PM for as long as he wants, irrespective of everything else. If it goes meh, or is an omnishambles, that leave majority could melt away pretty quickly, and nobody will be able to call SKS Captain Hindsight ever again.
When it comes to an election he wont be able to just ignore it. I would suppose the Tories will hammer the point home, in Leave voting areas, that Starmer was a Remainer who tried to stop the result being implemented
That only works if it turns into a stonking success, which remains to be seen. (And if it is a success, there's not much anyone will be able to do to prise Johnson out of No 10.)
If it's a clustershambles (you have to admit, it's possible) then Starmer has enough of a record of trying to prevent disaster to get the credit.
If it's a mediocre success or failure, then Starmer wants to make sure that Johnson's fingerprints are over the compromises. Not that there's much Starmer can do anyway.
Seriously- if this goes wrong, who are the Conservatives going to blame? The voters for making them do this terrible thing?
I disagree that it only works if its a stonking success. It's my view that Brexit was all about immigration, and trade deals or what have you wont really affect most Leave voter's opinions. Someone who listened to the people that demanded change will have their ear regardless, when the opposition is someone who disagreed with them, then refused to accept the result.
That's what we're about to find out. No question that immigration (control from Europe) was a big issue. But so was fish. So was control of regulations. So was the cost to be a member. There are various potential benefits from Brexit, to set against the extra faff for people and businesses by leaving the single market.
What we don't know (which is mad; 4 months from now, the world will be shutting down for Christmas) what the future arrangements for all this will be. What are the tradeoffs? What will get better? What will get worse? Will the price for having control be worth paying?
Because if the costs are high and unexpected, telling people "this is what you said you wanted" isn't going to be much of a defence.
Yes I suppose we will see. I am pretty convinced that if net migration is seen to be falling, most Leave voters will be ok
Polling for "there is too much immigration" is pretty much constant irregardless of net migration.
In the 80s when there was negative net migration the majority of people thought there was too much immigration.
What they mean is too many immigrants, not the flow either way, and often 2nd and 3rd generations from immigrants. It won't go away as a concern.
Notably it remains a high concern in places that have few immigrants and even declining populations. The people in these places feel abandoned by Westminster, and that immigrants are getting the opportunities that should be theirs.
The extra high peak around the 10th was the Northampton outbreak. The question is, whether we are see a reversion to the slow, steady increase, or something else.
According to the main gov.uk dashboard, the seven day average of confirmed positive tests has now levelled off. Too early to know if that's the new normal, but it's mildly encouraging.
That's using reporting date - the above is using specimen date.
As I mentioned, what we are seeing is aftermath of the Northampton spike. The question is whether we are back on the slow increase seen previously.
From the colour coding it doesn't look like a Northampton spike alone. The green, bright blue and others seem to be increasing too.
We were in a steady increase before the Northampton spike. The probability is that the same trend is continuing.
In case you aren't aware - you can click on the images. Which takes you to imgur.com where I uploaded them, and see them at full resolution.
It was their Chief Executive, no less, that had written the article linked to yesterday which said, amongst other things, that the Supreme Court and the Court of Session are of equal rank and that when they disagree it gets "tricky". Pig ignorant doesn't even begin to describe it.
Actually, that's not strictly true.
He said the Court of Sessions was superior to the Supreme Court.
It was their Chief Executive, no less, that had written the article linked to yesterday which said, amongst other things, that the Supreme Court and the Court of Session are of equal rank and that when they disagree it gets "tricky". Pig ignorant doesn't even begin to describe it.
Actually, that's not strictly true.
He said the Court of Sessions was superior to the Supreme Court.
And he's a lawyer?
No. He's a failed businessman and think tank operator.
Cyclefree, I am writing from relative ignorance, but what you say makes sense to me. There ought to be a word to describe the tendentious twisting of logic and science to one's own ends. Are we getting worse in this aspect ?
Perhaps the word you seek is "Rationalisation". If you want something stronger then "Blind Faith" or "Denial" might work.....
All those things, yes. Or how about Trumpe-l'œil ?
The Tory lead over Labour has collapsed to two points, its lowest since Boris Johnson became prime minister, after the A-levels fiasco.
A YouGov poll for The Times conducted since Monday’s dramatic reversal to abandon computer-generated grades found that support for the Conservatives had dropped four points to 40 per cent and Labour had gained three points to 38 per cent since last week’s survey.
Sir Kier Starmer has opened up a four-point lead over Mr Johnson on the question of who is preferred as prime minister, meanwhile. The proportion preferring the Labour leader has risen three points to 35 per cent while Mr Johnson’s rating slipped a point to 31 per cent.
While Mr Johnson’s rating on the question of the best prime minister has been slipping for some time, Conservatives had been comforted by a stable lead over Labour in recent months despite criticism of the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
The new poll — showing the lowest Tory lead since June 25, 2019 — was conducted on Tuesday and today in the immediate aftermath of Gavin Williamson’s retreat from a grading system that he and Mr Johnson had previously insisted was “robust”.
The extra high peak around the 10th was the Northampton outbreak. The question is, whether we are see a reversion to the slow, steady increase, or something else.
According to the main gov.uk dashboard, the seven day average of confirmed positive tests has now levelled off. Too early to know if that's the new normal, but it's mildly encouraging.
That's using reporting date - the above is using specimen date.
As I mentioned, what we are seeing is aftermath of the Northampton spike. The question is whether we are back on the slow increase seen previously.
From the colour coding it doesn't look like a Northampton spike alone. The green, bright blue and others seem to be increasing too.
We were in a steady increase before the Northampton spike. The probability is that the same trend is continuing.
Northampton is a symptom not the cause, as was the Melton outbreak in another food processing factory.
The curious issue really is the relative paucity of severe disease, and not just here. Greece may reach our quarantine list with several hundred new cases per day, but also have hardly any hospitalised. Only 20 inpatients in Greece according to one of my Greek colleagues.
This Government is destroying the Union day by day.
People on here were warning about this back in 2016 and that was with a more Conservative govt than the UKIP-lite we have now.
You are a beautiful example of the phenomena I've just posted about in response to @MaxPB
You have been driven mad by Brexit, and are now delighted that there's a new course of revenge that's potentially about to get served up on the table.
I do find it ironic that people insist that taking back control is ok regardless of the economic costs but it's not OK to give control back to a different group of people.
The only person I can think of on this site who is adamant there should be no second referendum even if the Scots vote to hold one is HYUFD - and he's a Remainer.
Not entirely. The result of a Holyrood election which sees turnout of circa 50% should not override a Referendum in respect of which 85% voted. The lower turnout for Holyrood v Westminster too would tend to suggest that voters in Scotland see it as a lower or secondary tier of authority.
I don't know whether anything should be read into this too much - listening to a bunch of speakers dialling in is not an idea of fund but it might be interesting to compare with what the RNC comes up with.
The extra high peak around the 10th was the Northampton outbreak. The question is, whether we are see a reversion to the slow, steady increase, or something else.
According to the main gov.uk dashboard, the seven day average of confirmed positive tests has now levelled off. Too early to know if that's the new normal, but it's mildly encouraging.
That's using reporting date - the above is using specimen date.
As I mentioned, what we are seeing is aftermath of the Northampton spike. The question is whether we are back on the slow increase seen previously.
From the colour coding it doesn't look like a Northampton spike alone. The green, bright blue and others seem to be increasing too.
We were in a steady increase before the Northampton spike. The probability is that the same trend is continuing.
Northampton is a symptom not the cause, as was the Melton outbreak in another food processing factory.
The curious issue really is the relative paucity of severe disease, and not just here. Greece may reach our quarantine list with several hundred new cases per day, but also have hardly any hospitalised. Only 20 inpatients in Greece according to one of my Greek colleagues.
My own theory is that a less lethal version of the virus is in circulation.
The alternative is that the really vulnerable are already dead and those remaining are more resistant.
This Government is destroying the Union day by day.
People on here were warning about this back in 2016 and that was with a more Conservative govt than the UKIP-lite we have now.
You are a beautiful example of the phenomena I've just posted about in response to @MaxPB
You have been driven mad by Brexit, and are now delighted that there's a new course of revenge that's potentially about to get served up on the table.
I do find it ironic that people insist that taking back control is ok regardless of the economic costs but it's not OK to give control back to a different group of people.
The only person I can think of on this site who is adamant there should be no second referendum even if the Scots vote to hold one is HYUFD - and he's a Remainer.
Not entirely. The result of a Holyrood election which sees turnout of circa 50% should not override a Referendum in respect of which 85% voted. The lower turnout for Holyrood v Westminster too would tend to suggest that voters in Scotland see it as a lower or secondary tier of authority.
The Tory lead over Labour has collapsed to two points, its lowest since Boris Johnson became prime minister, after the A-levels fiasco.
A YouGov poll for The Times conducted since Monday’s dramatic reversal to abandon computer-generated grades found that support for the Conservatives had dropped four points to 40 per cent and Labour had gained three points to 38 per cent since last week’s survey.
Sir Kier Starmer has opened up a four-point lead over Mr Johnson on the question of who is preferred as prime minister, meanwhile. The proportion preferring the Labour leader has risen three points to 35 per cent while Mr Johnson’s rating slipped a point to 31 per cent.
While Mr Johnson’s rating on the question of the best prime minister has been slipping for some time, Conservatives had been comforted by a stable lead over Labour in recent months despite criticism of the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
The new poll — showing the lowest Tory lead since June 25, 2019 — was conducted on Tuesday and today in the immediate aftermath of Gavin Williamson’s retreat from a grading system that he and Mr Johnson had previously insisted was “robust”.
I'm torn between being pleased or thinking Starmer should be way ahead by now. I think it's reasonable to expect continued cock ups from this govt, so hopefully Labour can continue to improve.
This is really a very silly article, sorry Ms Cyclefree. Is Dido Harding 'the best person in the whole of the country to run this vital new body?'. What a stupid question. Is there any appointment, anywhere in the world, where the answer to that question could be 'Yes'?
And what the hell has McKinsey got to do with it? She worked there for a while, thirty years ago,. So did many very talented people. It is absurd, verging on a raving bonkers conspiracy theory, to throw around words like 'corruption' in this case.
I know the country has gone mad, but really, here on PB we should try to maintain a modicum of sanity. Dido Harding's appointment may be good or poor, but the idea that it is 'corrupt' is madness. Quite apart from anything else, she has a very good CV. If she wanted to make money, she could get any number of very highly paid jobs in the private sector. Instead she's gone for public service, initially as the unpaid chair of NHS Improvement. Is the fact that government ministers have seen her in that and other roles, and presumably found her effective, supposed to rule her out from being appointed?
It was their Chief Executive, no less, that had written the article linked to yesterday which said, amongst other things, that the Supreme Court and the Court of Session are of equal rank and that when they disagree it gets "tricky". Pig ignorant doesn't even begin to describe it.
Actually, that's not strictly true.
He said the Court of Sessions was superior to the Supreme Court.
And he's a lawyer?
No. He's a failed businessman and think tank operator.
Perfect for government then, deserves to head a quango at least. The ideal scapegoat for when a minister screws up.
This is really a very silly article, sorry Ms Cyclefree. Is Dido Harding 'the best person in the whole of the country to run this vital new body?'. What a stupid question. Is there any appointment, anywhere in the world, where the answer to that question could be 'Yes'?
And what the hell has McKinsey got to do with it? She worked there for a while, thirty years ago,. So did many very talented people. It is absurd, verging on a raving bonkers conspiracy theory, to throw around words like 'corruption' in this case.
I know the country has gone mad, but really, here on PB we should try to maintain a modicum of sanity. Dido Harding's appointment may be good or poor, but the idea that it is 'corrupt' is madness. Quite apart from anything else, she has a very good CV. If she wanted to make money, she could get any number of very highly paid jobs in the private sector. Instead she's gone for public service, initially as the unpaid chair of NHS Improvement. Is the fact that government ministers have seen her in that and other roles, and presumably found her effective, supposed to rule her out from being appointed?
Perhaps it helps that she is a Tory peer and married to a Tory MP? It is just another example of the nepotistic cronyism that passes for government now.
The only thing in her favour is that she doesn't appear to have been in the RCP.
The extra high peak around the 10th was the Northampton outbreak. The question is, whether we are see a reversion to the slow, steady increase, or something else.
According to the main gov.uk dashboard, the seven day average of confirmed positive tests has now levelled off. Too early to know if that's the new normal, but it's mildly encouraging.
That's using reporting date - the above is using specimen date.
As I mentioned, what we are seeing is aftermath of the Northampton spike. The question is whether we are back on the slow increase seen previously.
From the colour coding it doesn't look like a Northampton spike alone. The green, bright blue and others seem to be increasing too.
We were in a steady increase before the Northampton spike. The probability is that the same trend is continuing.
Northampton is a symptom not the cause, as was the Melton outbreak in another food processing factory.
The curious issue really is the relative paucity of severe disease, and not just here. Greece may reach our quarantine list with several hundred new cases per day, but also have hardly any hospitalised. Only 20 inpatients in Greece according to one of my Greek colleagues.
My own theory is that a less lethal version of the virus is in circulation.
The alternative is that the really vulnerable are already dead and those remaining are more resistant.
My understanding is that as part of the surveillance and other testing, that regular sampling of the genome of the virus is occurring.
This is really a very silly article, sorry Ms Cyclefree. Is Dido Harding 'the best person in the whole of the country to run this vital new body?'. What a stupid question. Is there any appointment, anywhere in the world, where the answer to that question could be 'Yes'?
And what the hell has McKinsey got to do with it? She worked there for a while, thirty years ago,. So did many very talented people. It is absurd, verging on a raving bonkers conspiracy theory, to throw around words like 'corruption' in this case.
I know the country has gone mad, but really, here on PB we should try to maintain a modicum of sanity. Dido Harding's appointment may be good or poor, but the idea that it is 'corrupt' is madness. Quite apart from anything else, she has a very good CV. If she wanted to make money, she could get any number of very highly paid jobs in the private sector. Instead she's gone for public service, initially as the unpaid chair of NHS Improvement. Is the fact that government ministers have seen her in that and other roles, and presumably found her effective, supposed to rule her out from being appointed?
As I've said many times, she's an analogue person on charge of what is essentially a digital organisation. She's not the right person for the job, she showed at TalkTalk how little she understands data and the new PHE is the NHS's data arm and will have to work smartly with health data everyday, we need someone in charge who can sit in a room with data analysts, data scientists and software developers and still understand what it is they are talking about.
On McKinsey I fully agree, as I said earlier, the idea that £500k to them is some form of bribery or corruption is absolutely laughable.
The effort by @Malmesbury to post the C19 case data every day is very much appreciated - however, it does cause the Vanilla comments page to unload and fail to reload most days (on an aging iPad having tried Edge, Safari and Firefox with no success, they all crash the page at the same point). Is it possible to post links to the data rather than the tables themselves?
It was their Chief Executive, no less, that had written the article linked to yesterday which said, amongst other things, that the Supreme Court and the Court of Session are of equal rank and that when they disagree it gets "tricky". Pig ignorant doesn't even begin to describe it.
Actually, that's not strictly true.
He said the Court of Sessions was superior to the Supreme Court.
And he's a lawyer?
No. He's a failed businessman and think tank operator.
Their board has quite a breadth of business experience:
- Solicitor - Corporate Lawyer - Consultant - Retired Surveyor - Distance learning MD - Landscape Technician - Solicitor - Former owner of a trucking company - Solicitor - Marketer & Consultant
Not that these aren't worthy professions - but I doubt many of them actually make anything that has to cross the border into England.
The extra high peak around the 10th was the Northampton outbreak. The question is, whether we are see a reversion to the slow, steady increase, or something else.
According to the main gov.uk dashboard, the seven day average of confirmed positive tests has now levelled off. Too early to know if that's the new normal, but it's mildly encouraging.
That's using reporting date - the above is using specimen date.
As I mentioned, what we are seeing is aftermath of the Northampton spike. The question is whether we are back on the slow increase seen previously.
From the colour coding it doesn't look like a Northampton spike alone. The green, bright blue and others seem to be increasing too.
We were in a steady increase before the Northampton spike. The probability is that the same trend is continuing.
Northampton is a symptom not the cause, as was the Melton outbreak in another food processing factory.
The curious issue really is the relative paucity of severe disease, and not just here. Greece may reach our quarantine list with several hundred new cases per day, but also have hardly any hospitalised. Only 20 inpatients in Greece according to one of my Greek colleagues.
My own theory is that a less lethal version of the virus is in circulation.
The alternative is that the really vulnerable are already dead and those remaining are more resistant.
The extra high peak around the 10th was the Northampton outbreak. The question is, whether we are see a reversion to the slow, steady increase, or something else.
According to the main gov.uk dashboard, the seven day average of confirmed positive tests has now levelled off. Too early to know if that's the new normal, but it's mildly encouraging.
That's using reporting date - the above is using specimen date.
As I mentioned, what we are seeing is aftermath of the Northampton spike. The question is whether we are back on the slow increase seen previously.
From the colour coding it doesn't look like a Northampton spike alone. The green, bright blue and others seem to be increasing too.
We were in a steady increase before the Northampton spike. The probability is that the same trend is continuing.
Northampton is a symptom not the cause, as was the Melton outbreak in another food processing factory.
The curious issue really is the relative paucity of severe disease, and not just here. Greece may reach our quarantine list with several hundred new cases per day, but also have hardly any hospitalised. Only 20 inpatients in Greece according to one of my Greek colleagues.
My own theory is that a less lethal version of the virus is in circulation.
The alternative is that the really vulnerable are already dead and those remaining are more resistant.
My understanding is that as part of the surveillance and other testing, that regular sampling of the genome of the virus is occurring.
Indeed. I posted a link downthread that a new variation of the virus (641G IIRC) is in circulation which is much more infectious than the original Wuhan strain, but does not seem to be any more severe.
It was their Chief Executive, no less, that had written the article linked to yesterday which said, amongst other things, that the Supreme Court and the Court of Session are of equal rank and that when they disagree it gets "tricky". Pig ignorant doesn't even begin to describe it.
Actually, that's not strictly true.
He said the Court of Sessions was superior to the Supreme Court.
And he's a lawyer?
No. He's a failed businessman and think tank operator.
Perfect for government then, deserves to head a quango at least. The ideal scapegoat for when a minister screws up.
That record qualifies him for a Chief Adviser's job at No 10.
If only someone had predicted messing around with the futures of children might upset the voters.
The government messed around with the futures of children when they closed schools fopr months, cancelled exams.and allowed public sector teachers to in some cases let their pupils rot. The opposition agreed with them every step of the way, except they wanted more draconian proposals.
Its got so bad that there's now an organisation called USforthem with 25,000 parents urging Williamson to pledge that not an hour of schooling will be lost again, and to set it in stone that governments cannot simply close down schools.
The Tory lead over Labour has collapsed to two points, its lowest since Boris Johnson became prime minister, after the A-levels fiasco.
A YouGov poll for The Times conducted since Monday’s dramatic reversal to abandon computer-generated grades found that support for the Conservatives had dropped four points to 40 per cent and Labour had gained three points to 38 per cent since last week’s survey.
Sir Kier Starmer has opened up a four-point lead over Mr Johnson on the question of who is preferred as prime minister, meanwhile. The proportion preferring the Labour leader has risen three points to 35 per cent while Mr Johnson’s rating slipped a point to 31 per cent.
While Mr Johnson’s rating on the question of the best prime minister has been slipping for some time, Conservatives had been comforted by a stable lead over Labour in recent months despite criticism of the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
The new poll — showing the lowest Tory lead since June 25, 2019 — was conducted on Tuesday and today in the immediate aftermath of Gavin Williamson’s retreat from a grading system that he and Mr Johnson had previously insisted was “robust”.
I'm torn between being pleased or thinking Starmer should be way ahead by now. I think it's reasonable to expect continued cock ups from this govt, so hopefully Labour can continue to improve.
It is quite incredible that Labour aren't ahead. Miliband was well clear of Cameron at this stage, without the pandemic to help him. He did have a smaller gap to close though I guess
Perhaps it helps that she is a Tory peer and married to a Tory MP? It is just another example of the nepotistic cronyism that passes for government now.
When you say 'now', does that 'now' include the periods when Rod Aldridge, David Sainsbury, Paul Drayson, or - going back a lot further - Frederick Lindemann were active in public life? Or does this new rule that ministers should never appoint someone they know and trust to a position apply only since 2016 or 2010?
The Tory lead over Labour has collapsed to two points, its lowest since Boris Johnson became prime minister, after the A-levels fiasco.
A YouGov poll for The Times conducted since Monday’s dramatic reversal to abandon computer-generated grades found that support for the Conservatives had dropped four points to 40 per cent and Labour had gained three points to 38 per cent since last week’s survey.
Sir Kier Starmer has opened up a four-point lead over Mr Johnson on the question of who is preferred as prime minister, meanwhile. The proportion preferring the Labour leader has risen three points to 35 per cent while Mr Johnson’s rating slipped a point to 31 per cent.
While Mr Johnson’s rating on the question of the best prime minister has been slipping for some time, Conservatives had been comforted by a stable lead over Labour in recent months despite criticism of the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
The new poll — showing the lowest Tory lead since June 25, 2019 — was conducted on Tuesday and today in the immediate aftermath of Gavin Williamson’s retreat from a grading system that he and Mr Johnson had previously insisted was “robust”.
I'm torn between being pleased or thinking Starmer should be way ahead by now. I think it's reasonable to expect continued cock ups from this govt, so hopefully Labour can continue to improve.
It is quite incredible that Labour aren't ahead. Miliband was well clear of Cameron at this stage, without the pandemic to help him. He did have a smaller gap to close though I guess
Cameron hadn't yet embraced the UKIP vote. Don't forget that with that he would have been in a similar position to Boris now.
He realised the benefits of doing this, and hence we are where we are.
The extra high peak around the 10th was the Northampton outbreak. The question is, whether we are see a reversion to the slow, steady increase, or something else.
According to the main gov.uk dashboard, the seven day average of confirmed positive tests has now levelled off. Too early to know if that's the new normal, but it's mildly encouraging.
That's using reporting date - the above is using specimen date.
As I mentioned, what we are seeing is aftermath of the Northampton spike. The question is whether we are back on the slow increase seen previously.
From the colour coding it doesn't look like a Northampton spike alone. The green, bright blue and others seem to be increasing too.
We were in a steady increase before the Northampton spike. The probability is that the same trend is continuing.
Northampton is a symptom not the cause, as was the Melton outbreak in another food processing factory.
The curious issue really is the relative paucity of severe disease, and not just here. Greece may reach our quarantine list with several hundred new cases per day, but also have hardly any hospitalised. Only 20 inpatients in Greece according to one of my Greek colleagues.
My own theory is that a less lethal version of the virus is in circulation.
The alternative is that the really vulnerable are already dead and those remaining are more resistant.
I admit I`ve pondered about the hypothesis of your first sentence for a few weeks now. It`s an attractive thought, but why would it become less lethal? I still side with the view that social distancing is resulting in lower prevalence and lower viral load, meaning that infections are more likely to be tackled by the body`s immune system when caught.
The Tory lead over Labour has collapsed to two points, its lowest since Boris Johnson became prime minister, after the A-levels fiasco.
A YouGov poll for The Times conducted since Monday’s dramatic reversal to abandon computer-generated grades found that support for the Conservatives had dropped four points to 40 per cent and Labour had gained three points to 38 per cent since last week’s survey.
Sir Kier Starmer has opened up a four-point lead over Mr Johnson on the question of who is preferred as prime minister, meanwhile. The proportion preferring the Labour leader has risen three points to 35 per cent while Mr Johnson’s rating slipped a point to 31 per cent.
While Mr Johnson’s rating on the question of the best prime minister has been slipping for some time, Conservatives had been comforted by a stable lead over Labour in recent months despite criticism of the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
The new poll — showing the lowest Tory lead since June 25, 2019 — was conducted on Tuesday and today in the immediate aftermath of Gavin Williamson’s retreat from a grading system that he and Mr Johnson had previously insisted was “robust”.
The Tory lead over Labour has collapsed to two points, its lowest since Boris Johnson became prime minister, after the A-levels fiasco.
A YouGov poll for The Times conducted since Monday’s dramatic reversal to abandon computer-generated grades found that support for the Conservatives had dropped four points to 40 per cent and Labour had gained three points to 38 per cent since last week’s survey.
Sir Kier Starmer has opened up a four-point lead over Mr Johnson on the question of who is preferred as prime minister, meanwhile. The proportion preferring the Labour leader has risen three points to 35 per cent while Mr Johnson’s rating slipped a point to 31 per cent.
While Mr Johnson’s rating on the question of the best prime minister has been slipping for some time, Conservatives had been comforted by a stable lead over Labour in recent months despite criticism of the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
The new poll — showing the lowest Tory lead since June 25, 2019 — was conducted on Tuesday and today in the immediate aftermath of Gavin Williamson’s retreat from a grading system that he and Mr Johnson had previously insisted was “robust”.
I'm torn between being pleased or thinking Starmer should be way ahead by now. I think it's reasonable to expect continued cock ups from this govt, so hopefully Labour can continue to improve.
It is quite incredible that Labour aren't ahead. Miliband was well clear of Cameron at this stage, without the pandemic to help him. He did have a smaller gap to close though I guess
Cameron hadn't yet embraced the UKIP vote. Don't forget that with that he would have been in a similar position to Boris now.
He realised the benefits of doing this, and hence we are where we are.
This is really a very silly article, sorry Ms Cyclefree. Is Dido Harding 'the best person in the whole of the country to run this vital new body?'. What a stupid question. Is there any appointment, anywhere in the world, where the answer to that question could be 'Yes'?
And what the hell has McKinsey got to do with it? She worked there for a while, thirty years ago,. So did many very talented people. It is absurd, verging on a raving bonkers conspiracy theory, to throw around words like 'corruption' in this case.
I know the country has gone mad, but really, here on PB we should try to maintain a modicum of sanity. Dido Harding's appointment may be good or poor, but the idea that it is 'corrupt' is madness. Quite apart from anything else, she has a very good CV. If she wanted to make money, she could get any number of very highly paid jobs in the private sector. Instead she's gone for public service, initially as the unpaid chair of NHS Improvement. Is the fact that government ministers have seen her in that and other roles, and presumably found her effective, supposed to rule her out from being appointed?
She fucked up track and trace and presided over a fiasco at Talk Talk. Her "good CV" is typical of someone born into the elite and given every opportunity and who has exploited the extreme narrowness of that elite - which means she knows all the people she needs to know. This is the real "blob". One thing I have learned though is that if you ever point any of this out to the English elite, you will face a prolonged onslaught of plummy-voweled self-righteousness the like of which you have never seen. Hopefully at some point the whole lot will be swept away. The next Labour government needs to be a lot more aggressive about cultural change in our institutions than the Blair/Brown government was.
The Tory lead over Labour has collapsed to two points, its lowest since Boris Johnson became prime minister, after the A-levels fiasco.
A YouGov poll for The Times conducted since Monday’s dramatic reversal to abandon computer-generated grades found that support for the Conservatives had dropped four points to 40 per cent and Labour had gained three points to 38 per cent since last week’s survey.
Sir Kier Starmer has opened up a four-point lead over Mr Johnson on the question of who is preferred as prime minister, meanwhile. The proportion preferring the Labour leader has risen three points to 35 per cent while Mr Johnson’s rating slipped a point to 31 per cent.
While Mr Johnson’s rating on the question of the best prime minister has been slipping for some time, Conservatives had been comforted by a stable lead over Labour in recent months despite criticism of the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
The new poll — showing the lowest Tory lead since June 25, 2019 — was conducted on Tuesday and today in the immediate aftermath of Gavin Williamson’s retreat from a grading system that he and Mr Johnson had previously insisted was “robust”.
I'm torn between being pleased or thinking Starmer should be way ahead by now. I think it's reasonable to expect continued cock ups from this govt, so hopefully Labour can continue to improve.
It is quite incredible that Labour aren't ahead. Miliband was well clear of Cameron at this stage, without the pandemic to help him. He did have a smaller gap to close though I guess
Cameron hadn't yet embraced the UKIP vote. Don't forget that with that he would have been in a similar position to Boris now.
He realised the benefits of doing this, and hence we are where we are.
Corbyn's first YouGov lead was 6 months in
Corbyn between 2017 and early 2018 outperformed all Labour leaders since the earliest Blair, and after that went into absolute reverse, to a 1983-style rout. This means there's very few clear lessons to be learnt from his tenure, despite what either Corbynites or Blair-era politicians wish to project on it. In steering a middle way between them, Starmer probably has the right idea.
Perhaps it helps that she is a Tory peer and married to a Tory MP? It is just another example of the nepotistic cronyism that passes for government now.
When you say 'now', does that 'now' include the periods when Rod Aldridge, David Sainsbury, Paul Drayson, or - going back a lot further - Frederick Lindemann were active in public life? Or does this new rule that ministers should never appoint someone they know and trust to a position apply only since 2016 or 2010?
Were any of those governments committed to "taking back control from a metropolitan elite" Then handing out sinecures to their friends from Oxford PPE?
The thing is that either the new organisation continues with much the same staff (experienced epidemiologists and public health specialists are a rare breed) or appoints a bunch of novices. The first is pointless the second reckless.
I work with PHE on a number of chronic programmes over the last 2 decades, and the perpetual re-organisations hamper everything. Everything stops while people compete for the reshuffled jobs. The same with the FCO/DfID merger from what my sources tell.
The extra high peak around the 10th was the Northampton outbreak. The question is, whether we are see a reversion to the slow, steady increase, or something else.
According to the main gov.uk dashboard, the seven day average of confirmed positive tests has now levelled off. Too early to know if that's the new normal, but it's mildly encouraging.
That's using reporting date - the above is using specimen date.
As I mentioned, what we are seeing is aftermath of the Northampton spike. The question is whether we are back on the slow increase seen previously.
From the colour coding it doesn't look like a Northampton spike alone. The green, bright blue and others seem to be increasing too.
We were in a steady increase before the Northampton spike. The probability is that the same trend is continuing.
Northampton is a symptom not the cause, as was the Melton outbreak in another food processing factory.
The curious issue really is the relative paucity of severe disease, and not just here. Greece may reach our quarantine list with several hundred new cases per day, but also have hardly any hospitalised. Only 20 inpatients in Greece according to one of my Greek colleagues.
My own theory is that a less lethal version of the virus is in circulation.
The alternative is that the really vulnerable are already dead and those remaining are more resistant.
I admit I`ve pondered about the hypothesis of your first sentence for a few weeks now. It`s an attractive thought, but why would it become less lethal? I still side with the view that social distancing is resulting in lower prevalence and lower viral load, meaning that infections are more likely to be tackled by the body`s immune system when caught.
Viruses always mutate, Ireland is a good example, they are panic stricken about the increase in cases yet only have 17 in hospital with Covid in the whole of Ireland. We should forget about cases and just concentrate on hospital admissions. If hardly anyone is being admitted to hospital then we don't have to worry.
The extra high peak around the 10th was the Northampton outbreak. The question is, whether we are see a reversion to the slow, steady increase, or something else.
According to the main gov.uk dashboard, the seven day average of confirmed positive tests has now levelled off. Too early to know if that's the new normal, but it's mildly encouraging.
That's using reporting date - the above is using specimen date.
As I mentioned, what we are seeing is aftermath of the Northampton spike. The question is whether we are back on the slow increase seen previously.
From the colour coding it doesn't look like a Northampton spike alone. The green, bright blue and others seem to be increasing too.
We were in a steady increase before the Northampton spike. The probability is that the same trend is continuing.
Northampton is a symptom not the cause, as was the Melton outbreak in another food processing factory.
The curious issue really is the relative paucity of severe disease, and not just here. Greece may reach our quarantine list with several hundred new cases per day, but also have hardly any hospitalised. Only 20 inpatients in Greece according to one of my Greek colleagues.
Is it really so curious? Many of the most vulnerable are already dead or else are shielding. Testing is picking up an ever greater number of "cases" of people who neither exhibit any symptoms or are especially infectious, making the positive result something for philosophers to consider rather than medics.
Testing is not only more prevalent so more local hotpots are identified that would have been missed. But if TrackNTrace is even a slightly worthwhile exercise, we'd expect the positivity rate to increase with each week as we leave fewer stones unturned.
Malmebury's graphs are terrific but if we are honest about the data shortcomings, wouldn't they really show something like 100k cases per day in March and April, making these graphs unreadable except in log form?
A question for the Second Wavers... at what point do they start to see hospitalisations and ICU admissions starting to rise? At what point is the cure admitted as hopelessly over the top compared with the risk and actually counterproductive?
How to explain the relatively benign stats in the face of international travel resuming, summer raves, social "bubbles" expanding to the point of farce, pubs and cafes open etc... except to wonder whether the herd immunity target is much much lower than the 60-80% number originally assumed?
The extra high peak around the 10th was the Northampton outbreak. The question is, whether we are see a reversion to the slow, steady increase, or something else.
According to the main gov.uk dashboard, the seven day average of confirmed positive tests has now levelled off. Too early to know if that's the new normal, but it's mildly encouraging.
That's using reporting date - the above is using specimen date.
As I mentioned, what we are seeing is aftermath of the Northampton spike. The question is whether we are back on the slow increase seen previously.
From the colour coding it doesn't look like a Northampton spike alone. The green, bright blue and others seem to be increasing too.
We were in a steady increase before the Northampton spike. The probability is that the same trend is continuing.
Northampton is a symptom not the cause, as was the Melton outbreak in another food processing factory.
The curious issue really is the relative paucity of severe disease, and not just here. Greece may reach our quarantine list with several hundred new cases per day, but also have hardly any hospitalised. Only 20 inpatients in Greece according to one of my Greek colleagues.
My own theory is that a less lethal version of the virus is in circulation.
The alternative is that the really vulnerable are already dead and those remaining are more resistant.
Both your thoughts are correct
Thank you Doctor.
Now about that new opinion poll. Parties being so close to be short lived and a genuine crossover a year out.
The extra high peak around the 10th was the Northampton outbreak. The question is, whether we are see a reversion to the slow, steady increase, or something else.
According to the main gov.uk dashboard, the seven day average of confirmed positive tests has now levelled off. Too early to know if that's the new normal, but it's mildly encouraging.
That's using reporting date - the above is using specimen date.
As I mentioned, what we are seeing is aftermath of the Northampton spike. The question is whether we are back on the slow increase seen previously.
From the colour coding it doesn't look like a Northampton spike alone. The green, bright blue and others seem to be increasing too.
We were in a steady increase before the Northampton spike. The probability is that the same trend is continuing.
Northampton is a symptom not the cause, as was the Melton outbreak in another food processing factory.
The curious issue really is the relative paucity of severe disease, and not just here. Greece may reach our quarantine list with several hundred new cases per day, but also have hardly any hospitalised. Only 20 inpatients in Greece according to one of my Greek colleagues.
My own theory is that a less lethal version of the virus is in circulation.
The alternative is that the really vulnerable are already dead and those remaining are more resistant.
I admit I`ve pondered about the hypothesis of your first sentence for a few weeks now. It`s an attractive thought, but why would it become less lethal? I still side with the view that social distancing is resulting in lower prevalence and lower viral load, meaning that infections are more likely to be tackled by the body`s immune system when caught.
Viruses always mutate, Ireland is a good example, they are panic stricken about the increase in cases yet only have 17 in hospital with Covid in the whole of Ireland. We should forget about cases and just concentrate on hospital admissions. If hardly anyone is being admitted to hospital then we don't have to worry.
I wholehearedly agree - and have been banging on about this for a while - hospital admissions is the metric to look at. Number of deaths and number of infections are problematic measures.
On mutation - I`m no expert but I don`t think this is how natural selection works. Firstly, mutations come from errors in gene replication in one organism (not en masse) and, secondly, why would a mutation be favoured by natural selection when it makes it less successful in its environment?
GDP grew by 5.7pc in June, falling short of the 8.7pc surge recorded nationally.
It came after the economy shrank by 5.8pc in March and 19.2pc in April - both extremely large drops, but less severe than the UK-wide collapse.
But despite this better starting position, growth has been slower since April.
As a result, the Scottish economy was still 17.6pc smaller in June than it was in February, meaning it has effectively been overtaken by the rest of the country. The British economy overall is now 17.2pc smaller than it was before the pandemic struck.
Perhaps it helps that she is a Tory peer and married to a Tory MP? It is just another example of the nepotistic cronyism that passes for government now.
When you say 'now', does that 'now' include the periods when Rod Aldridge, David Sainsbury, Paul Drayson, or - going back a lot further - Frederick Lindemann were active in public life? Or does this new rule that ministers should never appoint someone they know and trust to a position apply only since 2016 or 2010?
Were any of those governments committed to "taking back control from a metropolitan elite" Then handing out sincerest to their friends from Oxford PPE?
The thing is that either the new organisation continues with much the same staff (experienced epidemiologists and public health specialists are a rare breed) or appoints a bunch of novices. Neither is a great move.
I work with PHE on a number of chronic programmes over the last 2 decades, and the perpetual re-organisations hamper everything. Everything stops while people compete for the reshuffled jobs. The same with the FCO/DfID merger from what my sources tell.
I have some knowledge of people dealing with PHE at a senior level. It seems to be a bureaucratic nightmare, with numerous committees all passing the buck to each other and no-one making any decisions. It certainly doesn't seem to have performed very well in this crisis. I take your point about the perpetual re-organisations, but this one may be justified.
The extra high peak around the 10th was the Northampton outbreak. The question is, whether we are see a reversion to the slow, steady increase, or something else.
According to the main gov.uk dashboard, the seven day average of confirmed positive tests has now levelled off. Too early to know if that's the new normal, but it's mildly encouraging.
That's using reporting date - the above is using specimen date.
As I mentioned, what we are seeing is aftermath of the Northampton spike. The question is whether we are back on the slow increase seen previously.
From the colour coding it doesn't look like a Northampton spike alone. The green, bright blue and others seem to be increasing too.
We were in a steady increase before the Northampton spike. The probability is that the same trend is continuing.
Northampton is a symptom not the cause, as was the Melton outbreak in another food processing factory.
The curious issue really is the relative paucity of severe disease, and not just here. Greece may reach our quarantine list with several hundred new cases per day, but also have hardly any hospitalised. Only 20 inpatients in Greece according to one of my Greek colleagues.
My own theory is that a less lethal version of the virus is in circulation.
The alternative is that the really vulnerable are already dead and those remaining are more resistant.
I admit I`ve pondered about the hypothesis of your first sentence for a few weeks now. It`s an attractive thought, but why would it become less lethal? I still side with the view that social distancing is resulting in lower prevalence and lower viral load, meaning that infections are more likely to be tackled by the body`s immune system when caught.
Viruses always mutate, Ireland is a good example, they are panic stricken about the increase in cases yet only have 17 in hospital with Covid in the whole of Ireland. We should forget about cases and just concentrate on hospital admissions. If hardly anyone is being admitted to hospital then we don't have to worry.
Well - if it is similar to the Spanish pattern many of the new cases were in the younger age groups doing the things they do. However, a few weeks on and now olde relatives and even old people's homes are again being infected and both the hospital admissions and deaths are rising too. The Spanish health minister reckong the majority of outbrekas are family related. I think the death rate will be lower this time round as there have been some treatment advances. The idea that we don't have to worry is I think mistaken.
There are currently 2 people in ICUs in the whole of Scotland. And yesterday we recorded our first death for a few weeks but it turns out to be someone who actually died in April. And all the gyms are shut. All the pools are shut as are many of the hotels that have pools. All the spas are shut. The Courts are not working at even 10% of normal capacity. People are still not allowed to work in offices unless this is deemed "essential". We still have to listen to Nicola wittering for half an hour a day in a party political broadcast.
This nonsense may be good for the SNP poll ratings but its absolutely disastrous for the country. It needs to stop.
So how do the SNP supporters on this site react to this?
Before any of you nasty people have a go at poor Richard, this line is straight from Starmer Towers.
I don't think there's any electoral sense in Labour abandoning unionism, but there might be some in not going into the election with Leonard. I'm sure he's a nice guy, can't say much either way for his competence, but he's English. An English politician cannot be successful as the leader of a political party in Scotland, bottom line, at present. It would be nice to envisage a time when it might be possible, but right now it isn't.
I have honestly never heard that put as an objection to him - except by his opponents in SLAB atr the time of the leadership election.
I doubt anyone would be so crass as to verbalise it. Share some material of him with some sympathetic (yet non political enough not to have heard of him) people and watch the raised eyebrows and knowing glances.
The extra high peak around the 10th was the Northampton outbreak. The question is, whether we are see a reversion to the slow, steady increase, or something else.
According to the main gov.uk dashboard, the seven day average of confirmed positive tests has now levelled off. Too early to know if that's the new normal, but it's mildly encouraging.
That's using reporting date - the above is using specimen date.
As I mentioned, what we are seeing is aftermath of the Northampton spike. The question is whether we are back on the slow increase seen previously.
From the colour coding it doesn't look like a Northampton spike alone. The green, bright blue and others seem to be increasing too.
We were in a steady increase before the Northampton spike. The probability is that the same trend is continuing.
Northampton is a symptom not the cause, as was the Melton outbreak in another food processing factory.
The curious issue really is the relative paucity of severe disease, and not just here. Greece may reach our quarantine list with several hundred new cases per day, but also have hardly any hospitalised. Only 20 inpatients in Greece according to one of my Greek colleagues.
My own theory is that a less lethal version of the virus is in circulation.
The alternative is that the really vulnerable are already dead and those remaining are more resistant.
I admit I`ve pondered about the hypothesis of your first sentence for a few weeks now. It`s an attractive thought, but why would it become less lethal? I still side with the view that social distancing is resulting in lower prevalence and lower viral load, meaning that infections are more likely to be tackled by the body`s immune system when caught.
Viruses always mutate, Ireland is a good example, they are panic stricken about the increase in cases yet only have 17 in hospital with Covid in the whole of Ireland. We should forget about cases and just concentrate on hospital admissions. If hardly anyone is being admitted to hospital then we don't have to worry.
I wholehearedly agree - and have been banging on about this for a while - hospital admissions is the metric to look at. Number of deaths and number of infections are problematic measures.
On mutation - I`m no expert but I don`t think this is how natural selection works. Firstly, mutations come from errors in gene replication in one organism (not en masse) and, secondly, why would a mutation be favoured by natural selection when it makes it less successful in its environment?
Any biologists around?
In a couple of weeks less than 0.25% of hospital beds will be taken up by covid positive patients. To continue living the restricted life we are when Covid is almost a medical irrelevance to the NHS is plain daft.
Corbyn led in the weeks after GE 2017 and Starmer has led in the last month.
Wasn't exactly a predictor of great times ahead for Gordo and Jezza
Well leader ratings are much more accurate.
The final ones have never let me down.
Starmer has only been ahead in 3 polls on that measure this year (and 2 tied) and has not yet got above 37% in Best PM rating. To be the largest party, he probably needs to be outpolling consistently ahead of Johnson by 10+% on that front with most of the undecideds stripped out.
That said seeing the Tories down to 40% albeit in one poll is relatively encouraging.
The extra high peak around the 10th was the Northampton outbreak. The question is, whether we are see a reversion to the slow, steady increase, or something else.
According to the main gov.uk dashboard, the seven day average of confirmed positive tests has now levelled off. Too early to know if that's the new normal, but it's mildly encouraging.
That's using reporting date - the above is using specimen date.
As I mentioned, what we are seeing is aftermath of the Northampton spike. The question is whether we are back on the slow increase seen previously.
From the colour coding it doesn't look like a Northampton spike alone. The green, bright blue and others seem to be increasing too.
We were in a steady increase before the Northampton spike. The probability is that the same trend is continuing.
Northampton is a symptom not the cause, as was the Melton outbreak in another food processing factory.
The curious issue really is the relative paucity of severe disease, and not just here. Greece may reach our quarantine list with several hundred new cases per day, but also have hardly any hospitalised. Only 20 inpatients in Greece according to one of my Greek colleagues.
My own theory is that a less lethal version of the virus is in circulation.
The alternative is that the really vulnerable are already dead and those remaining are more resistant.
I admit I`ve pondered about the hypothesis of your first sentence for a few weeks now. It`s an attractive thought, but why would it become less lethal? I still side with the view that social distancing is resulting in lower prevalence and lower viral load, meaning that infections are more likely to be tackled by the body`s immune system when caught.
Viruses always mutate, Ireland is a good example, they are panic stricken about the increase in cases yet only have 17 in hospital with Covid in the whole of Ireland. We should forget about cases and just concentrate on hospital admissions. If hardly anyone is being admitted to hospital then we don't have to worry.
I wholehearedly agree - and have been banging on about this for a while - hospital admissions is the metric to look at. Number of deaths and number of infections are problematic measures.
On mutation - I`m no expert but I don`t think this is how natural selection works. Firstly, mutations come from errors in gene replication in one organism (not en masse) and, secondly, why would a mutation be favoured by natural selection when it makes it less successful in its environment?
Any biologists around?
In a couple of weeks less than 0.25% of hospital beds will be taken up by covid positive patients. To continue living the restricted life we are when Covid is almost a medical irrelevance to the NHS is plain daft.
'McKinsey (the consultants invariably brought in by those CEOs and others too unimaginative to think for themselves, too scared to make their own decisions or just looking for someone else to blame).'
This was exactly my experience with them. They would come to you room, spend a lot of time finding out what you did and how you did it. They would type it up and report this to the CEO, leaving you wondering why the CEO didn't just ask you himself. The result of all this earnest research was the recommendation that the firm (which was profitable and successful) should carry on pretty much as before.
Naturally they were paid a huge sum for this timeless advice.
There is a reason for that which is (a) objectivity and (b) independence.
On the first, most staff will tell the CEO what they want to hear or what they think will make themselves look good in front of the CEO or advance their own agendas to the CEO. CEO doesn't know which to believe. He or she also doesn't know who's stayed quiet about what's really going on: everything gets filtered by chinese whispers & agendas through the chain of command.
On the second, the name of a McKinsey or Big4 firm carries weight as an independent assessor/auditor thus lending credibility to the findings.
That's why so many hire management consultants: to tell them the state of play in their own company, benchmark it against others in the industry (they'll have done the same elsewhere) and use their brand-name as credibility for the findings so they can take action.
That's no excuse for offering simple or poor advice, or subject to confirmation bias, and that's what differentiates good consultants from bad ones.
I did IT Consultancy for a while. A couple interesting things -
- Coming in from outside, we would often have to build documentation for a rats nest of systems. Often I would be told that my diagram (entirely created so I could understand it) was immensely valuable to the client. They often had no idea what was connecting to what.....
- Large companies/organisations are often a jumble of fiefdoms. They will tell you what protects their little patch. Quite often we had to get direct access to systems and work round the incumbent teams to find out what the hell was going on.
- Defiance. You might think that the CEO orders something to happen and... well stuff happens. In fact, when it effects their fiefdoms (see above), the incumbents will often defend their patch to the point of insubordination. And beyond.
All of the above is part of the reason that change is very very hard in large organisations. To the point where, it is necessary to burn the whole thing down and start again, every so often.
The answer still should never be mcKinseys. For example I worked at ici as a chemist. They came in asked us all what we did and how long it took. Mostly people worked a few hours over their time every week because some things just can't fit into a 7.5 hour day, eg you have something that requires a 10 hour run to complete.
McKinseys then too how long we spent doing each task and used to formula of putative hours worked/ divided by actual hours worked and used this to calculate how long things took so for example a 10 hour reaction apparently would now only take 8 hours.
They then used these revised times to say you have overmanning and a load of people got made redundant. McKinseys wandered off into the sunset with a pocket full of cash....senior managers were happy they were now a lean efficient company.....that division of ICI ended up going down the pan about a year later as nothing was ever getting done as we now had to few staff to do everything and people were so pissed off at the extra work they were expected to do to pick up the slack they were saying "sod it end of my contracted hours, want me to stay finish this experiment then pay me overtime"
Before any of you nasty people have a go at poor Richard, this line is straight from Starmer Towers.
I don't think there's any electoral sense in Labour abandoning unionism, but there might be some in not going into the election with Leonard. I'm sure he's a nice guy, can't say much either way for his competence, but he's English. An English politician cannot be successful as the leader of a political party in Scotland, bottom line, at present. It would be nice to envisage a time when it might be possible, but right now it isn't.
I have honestly never heard that put as an objection to him - except by his opponents in SLAB atr the time of the leadership election.
I doubt anyone would be so crass as to verbalise it. Share some material of him with some sympathetic (yet non political enough not to have heard of him) people and watch the raised eyebrows and knowing glances.
I'm not talking only about actual people saying they won't vote cos he is English (though he's Scottish as well now) - I'm talking about political comment and discourse, of the kind which we see on PB. I can't remember ANYONE raising the issue since his opponents in the election did. Edit: I mean talking about the problems which pols face - much as one can discuss racism by a certain element without being a racist oneself.
Indeed, in my memory it's unusual for Scottish politicians to complain about anti-English racism aimed at them. The last time I recall was the Tories in indyref 1 complaining that being anti-Tory was by definition (in their view) anti-English racism - but they stopped that line of discourse very, very quickly.
This Government is destroying the Union day by day.
People on here were warning about this back in 2016 and that was with a more Conservative govt than the UKIP-lite we have now.
You are a beautiful example of the phenomena I've just posted about in response to @MaxPB
You have been driven mad by Brexit, and are now delighted that there's a new course of revenge that's potentially about to get served up on the table.
I do find it ironic that people insist that taking back control is ok regardless of the economic costs but it's not OK to give control back to a different group of people.
The only person I can think of on this site who is adamant there should be no second referendum even if the Scots vote to hold one is HYUFD - and he's a Remainer.
Not entirely. The result of a Holyrood election which sees turnout of circa 50% should not override a Referendum in respect of which 85% voted. The lower turnout for Holyrood v Westminster too would tend to suggest that voters in Scotland see it as a lower or secondary tier of authority.
Comments
He said the Court of Sessions was superior to the Supreme Court.
Notably it remains a high concern in places that have few immigrants and even declining populations. The people in these places feel abandoned by Westminster, and that immigrants are getting the opportunities that should be theirs.
In case you aren't aware - you can click on the images. Which takes you to imgur.com where I uploaded them, and see them at full resolution.
A YouGov poll for The Times conducted since Monday’s dramatic reversal to abandon computer-generated grades found that support for the Conservatives had dropped four points to 40 per cent and Labour had gained three points to 38 per cent since last week’s survey.
Sir Kier Starmer has opened up a four-point lead over Mr Johnson on the question of who is preferred as prime minister, meanwhile. The proportion preferring the Labour leader has risen three points to 35 per cent while Mr Johnson’s rating slipped a point to 31 per cent.
While Mr Johnson’s rating on the question of the best prime minister has been slipping for some time, Conservatives had been comforted by a stable lead over Labour in recent months despite criticism of the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
The new poll — showing the lowest Tory lead since June 25, 2019 — was conducted on Tuesday and today in the immediate aftermath of Gavin Williamson’s retreat from a grading system that he and Mr Johnson had previously insisted was “robust”.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/gavin-williamson-bows-to-pressure-and-backs-ofqual-h99h5mlm0
The curious issue really is the relative paucity of severe disease, and not just here. Greece may reach our quarantine list with several hundred new cases per day, but also have hardly any hospitalised. Only 20 inpatients in Greece according to one of my Greek colleagues.
https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/354888/virtual-dnc-telecast-earns-1975-million-viewers.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headline&utm_campaign=119514&hashid=jhnZjSdjDmvbLj5CyYKOANgv1vw
I don't know whether anything should be read into this too much - listening to a bunch of speakers dialling in is not an idea of fund but it might be interesting to compare with what the RNC comes up with.
The alternative is that the really vulnerable are already dead and those remaining are more resistant.
And what the hell has McKinsey got to do with it? She worked there for a while, thirty years ago,. So did many very talented people. It is absurd, verging on a raving bonkers conspiracy theory, to throw around words like 'corruption' in this case.
I know the country has gone mad, but really, here on PB we should try to maintain a modicum of sanity. Dido Harding's appointment may be good or poor, but the idea that it is 'corrupt' is madness. Quite apart from anything else, she has a very good CV. If she wanted to make money, she could get any number of very highly paid jobs in the private sector. Instead she's gone for public service, initially as the unpaid chair of NHS Improvement. Is the fact that government ministers have seen her in that and other roles, and presumably found her effective, supposed to rule her out from being appointed?
The only thing in her favour is that she doesn't appear to have been in the RCP.
On McKinsey I fully agree, as I said earlier, the idea that £500k to them is some form of bribery or corruption is absolutely laughable.
Newspapers desperately seek vindication that what they think is important is also thought important by the public shock.
Neither Johnson nor Starmer are in way really popular or seen as the way forward.
The lack of confidence in the whole shooting match has fallen through the floor.
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- Solicitor
- Marketer & Consultant
Not that these aren't worthy professions - but I doubt many of them actually make anything that has to cross the border into England.
Its got so bad that there's now an organisation called USforthem with 25,000 parents urging Williamson to pledge that not an hour of schooling will be lost again, and to set it in stone that governments cannot simply close down schools.
He realised the benefits of doing this, and hence we are where we are.
https://twitter.com/leonardocarella/status/1296118659367276544?s=20
One thing I have learned though is that if you ever point any of this out to the English elite, you will face a prolonged onslaught of plummy-voweled self-righteousness the like of which you have never seen. Hopefully at some point the whole lot will be swept away. The next Labour government needs to be a lot more aggressive about cultural change in our institutions than the Blair/Brown government was.
The final ones have never let me down.
The thing is that either the new organisation continues with much the same staff (experienced epidemiologists and public health specialists are a rare breed) or appoints a bunch of novices. The first is pointless the second reckless.
I work with PHE on a number of chronic programmes over the last 2 decades, and the perpetual re-organisations hamper everything. Everything stops while people compete for the reshuffled jobs. The same with the FCO/DfID merger from what my sources tell.
Testing is not only more prevalent so more local hotpots are identified that would have been missed. But if TrackNTrace is even a slightly worthwhile exercise, we'd expect the positivity rate to increase with each week as we leave fewer stones unturned.
Malmebury's graphs are terrific but if we are honest about the data shortcomings, wouldn't they really show something like 100k cases per day in March and April, making these graphs unreadable except in log form?
A question for the Second Wavers... at what point do they start to see hospitalisations and ICU admissions starting to rise? At what point is the cure admitted as hopelessly over the top compared with the risk and actually counterproductive?
How to explain the relatively benign stats in the face of international travel resuming, summer raves, social "bubbles" expanding to the point of farce, pubs and cafes open etc... except to wonder whether the herd immunity target is much much lower than the 60-80% number originally assumed?
Now about that new opinion poll. Parties being so close to be short lived and a genuine crossover a year out.
On mutation - I`m no expert but I don`t think this is how natural selection works. Firstly, mutations come from errors in gene replication in one organism (not en masse) and, secondly, why would a mutation be favoured by natural selection when it makes it less successful in its environment?
Any biologists around?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/08/19/scotland-struggles-rebound-despite-smaller-recession/
GDP grew by 5.7pc in June, falling short of the 8.7pc surge recorded nationally.
It came after the economy shrank by 5.8pc in March and 19.2pc in April - both extremely large drops, but less severe than the UK-wide collapse.
But despite this better starting position, growth has been slower since April.
As a result, the Scottish economy was still 17.6pc smaller in June than it was in February, meaning it has effectively been overtaken by the rest of the country. The British economy overall is now 17.2pc smaller than it was before the pandemic struck.
NEW THREAD
That said seeing the Tories down to 40% albeit in one poll is relatively encouraging.
McKinseys then too how long we spent doing each task and used to formula of putative hours worked/ divided by actual hours worked and used this to calculate how long things took so for example a 10 hour reaction apparently would now only take 8 hours.
They then used these revised times to say you have overmanning and a load of people got made redundant. McKinseys wandered off into the sunset with a pocket full of cash....senior managers were happy they were now a lean efficient company.....that division of ICI ended up going down the pan about a year later as nothing was ever getting done as we now had to few staff to do everything and people were so pissed off at the extra work they were expected to do to pick up the slack they were saying "sod it end of my contracted hours, want me to stay finish this experiment then pay me overtime"
Indeed, in my memory it's unusual for Scottish politicians to complain about anti-English racism aimed at them. The last time I recall was the Tories in indyref 1 complaining that being anti-Tory was by definition (in their view) anti-English racism - but they stopped that line of discourse very, very quickly.