Re:universities and “the rule of six”. How on earth does this work in campus accommodation with a dozen (at least) people having shared kitchens?
What i was told (before the rule of 6) about one unis approach was they were already bring told that each "flat" in halls was being deemed as a household and they would be limited in who else they could socialise.
Sounded like a prison camp.
Not sure how well horny freshers will stick to it, and if they do sounds like it wont be much fun.
I’m sadly anticipating one of the stories of the next few months is going to be unprecedented levels of student drop outs and record levels of mental health problems and suicides. And paying 10k+ a year for the privilege.
Moonshine said ""After careful consideration I shall be writing to my MP asking him to lodge a vote of no confidence in the prime minister as leader of the Conservative Party.
This bullshit can’t go on much longer or everything that is great about Western democracy is going to wither and die. It’s that serious. The UK is setting an appalling example to wannabe authoritarians everywhere. And through quite unacceptable fear mongering the government is sedating the population into accepting the likely permenant erosion of civil liberties.
I know not who I want to replace the PM, as there has been such an abject lack of leadership from the political class. For now I shall settle with the immediate sacking of Johnson, Hancock, Cummings and importantly Witty, Van Tam and Valance. Let us get on with our lives and balance our own risk tolerances.
Yours
ITV local news [East Midlands] interviewed 2 former labour voters who said they would carry on voting tory and one undecided who would carry on voting tory - they had done a poll on Boris in Worksop [I think] p poll to come out on later programme
I don't see much Boregret either...yet. I do think it will come however, once the economic picture starts to look much darker.
We are likely to be on No Deal WTO terms by January, agreed.
However ironically free trade Leavers may find their best hope of reaching their EEA promised land lies with a PM Starmer after the next election who would surely accept an EEA style trade deal with the EU, Boris' coalition would see that as a betrayal so the Tories are now committed to hard Brexit for a generation
If the will of the people turns towards a less extreme relationship with the EU that is what the next government will strive for. Cummings master plan can be unpicked quite quickly once power has been transferred to the grown-ups.
Therein lies the beauty of Parliamentary sovereignty. If you don't like something, you can vote in a new lot and they can change the law.
Question is, if you don't like an EU law, how do you change it? Who do you vote for?
The democratic deficit at the heart of the EU hasn't gone away.
You can't vote in a new lot, because you only control one MP. The best you can do is vote in a new representative for your particular area, and hope that other people in other areas also vote in like-minded people, and they get together and change the law.
This also works for EU laws.
It does not.
In the UK with have UK parties debating the UK issues on our UK news channels and getting watched and then voted on by the voters. We also have a good voting system that ensures every area of the UK is represented by their most popular party in that area. Our MPs get together and can pass, change or repeal any law. Change of government happens at the ballot box.
In the EU none of that is true. There are no real EU parties - yes there exists EU labels that badge on existing national parties but its not the same thing. The EU news isn't debated on EU news channels. They also have a dodgy voting system that takes power away from the voters and towards post-election political horsetrading. MEPs lack the power to pass, change or repeal any law they want to.
OK, let's accept for the sake of argument that the French Socialists have nothing to do with the Spanish Socialists and the Dutch Liberals have nothing to do with the German Liberals.
Do voters in Northern Ireland not have a democracy?
They do, though they're definitely unique to the rest of the UK.
But if the voters of Northern Ireland dislike any UK law, lets say the NI Protocol of the EU Withdrawal Act as an example, and then the MPs representing Northern Ireland constituencies work with a majority of MPs across the UK and vote to repeal the law then the law is gone. That is democracy.
If the voters of Northern Ireland want a new law and then convince a majority of MPs from across the country to back it then it becomes the law. That is democracy.
Does the same thing happen with MEPs? If a majority of MEPs vote to remove a law does it go? Can an MEP introduce a proposed new law and see it become the law because a majority of MEPs backed it?
No, because law changes aren't simply decided by the Parliament. The European Parliament is not sovereign like ours is.
I never said anything about the European Parliament. The democratic process would also work if there was no European Parliament, and decisions were all made via the traditional route of MP->National government->Council of ministers.
If you want a new law, and convince a majority of MPs from across the EU to back it, their governments vote for it and it becomes the law.
Anti lockdown people are in a similar situation to those who wanted to leave the EU were in the early part of the last decade - there are quite a lot of them, but they are totally unrepresented by the parties in the HofC
We are likely to be on No Deal WTO terms by January, agreed.
However ironically free trade Leavers may find their best hope of reaching their EEA promised land lies with a PM Starmer after the next election who would surely accept an EEA style trade deal with the EU, Boris' coalition would see that as a betrayal so the Tories are now committed to hard Brexit for a generation
If the will of the people turns towards a less extreme relationship with the EU that is what the next government will strive for. Cummings master plan can be unpicked quite quickly once power has been transferred to the grown-ups.
Therein lies the beauty of Parliamentary sovereignty. If you don't like something, you can vote in a new lot and they can change the law.
Question is, if you don't like an EU law, how do you change it? Who do you vote for?
The democratic deficit at the heart of the EU hasn't gone away.
You can't vote in a new lot, because you only control one MP. The best you can do is vote in a new representative for your particular area, and hope that other people in other areas also vote in like-minded people, and they get together and change the law.
This also works for EU laws.
It does not.
In the UK with have UK parties debating the UK issues on our UK news channels and getting watched and then voted on by the voters. We also have a good voting system that ensures every area of the UK is represented by their most popular party in that area. Our MPs get together and can pass, change or repeal any law. Change of government happens at the ballot box.
In the EU none of that is true. There are no real EU parties - yes there exists EU labels that badge on existing national parties but its not the same thing. The EU news isn't debated on EU news channels. They also have a dodgy voting system that takes power away from the voters and towards post-election political horsetrading. MEPs lack the power to pass, change or repeal any law they want to.
OK, let's accept for the sake of argument that the French Socialists have nothing to do with the Spanish Socialists and the Dutch Liberals have nothing to do with the German Liberals.
Do voters in Northern Ireland not have a democracy?
They do, though they're definitely unique to the rest of the UK.
But if the voters of Northern Ireland dislike any UK law, lets say the NI Protocol of the EU Withdrawal Act as an example, and then the MPs representing Northern Ireland constituencies work with a majority of MPs across the UK and vote to repeal the law then the law is gone. That is democracy.
If the voters of Northern Ireland want a new law and then convince a majority of MPs from across the country to back it then it becomes the law. That is democracy.
Does the same thing happen with MEPs? If a majority of MEPs vote to remove a law does it go? Can an MEP introduce a proposed new law and see it become the law because a majority of MEPs backed it?
No, because law changes aren't simply decided by the Parliament. The European Parliament is not sovereign like ours is.
How do you feel about the Internal Market bill giving Ministers the power to change/override U.K. law without reference to Parliament and without possibility of judicial review?
Why is it that I can gain way more info off these internet shows like unherd or spectator tv than any of the crap on the rolling news channels or peston show etc.
You don't need to agree with the political bent of the spectator to know Andrew Neal is a great interviewer and in just 2 episodes the two expert guests have been excellent.
I think often these types of programmes benefit hugely from the lack of statutory requirement or expectation of political balance. Ironically the lack of a need to avoid the appearance of bias means they can say what they genuinely think, without worrying about those who disagree with what they say complaining that they are breaking their obligation to balance. Particularly when focusing on internal politics within their own political sphere.
I think it is more you don't get the stupid interruptathon tactics / petty point scoring.
As Dara O Briain put it in his comedy routine criticising balance, a professor of dentistry should not be debating with a guy who takes his tooth out with string and a door. Ironic then that Mock The Week should be a target of complaints that there are too many left wing comedians.
Re Diana Rigg, I've been trying to get round to watching On Her Majesty's Secret Service for about 20 years. They don't show it on TV very often.
It's a very weird film - sort of a mixture of a very camp Bond and a Carry On. I can see why it was the only time they tried that formula.
Yeah, it's hard to say exactly why, but there's always been a lot of resistance to OHMSS...
Lazenby! He really is bad. So bad, that when Bond enters Blofeld's lair incognito as Sir Hilary, he is voiced over by George Baker. Rigg, Savalas, the story and the locations are all fine though
Moonshine said ""After careful consideration I shall be writing to my MP asking him to lodge a vote of no confidence in the prime minister as leader of the Conservative Party.
This bullshit can’t go on much longer or everything that is great about Western democracy is going to wither and die. It’s that serious. The UK is setting an appalling example to wannabe authoritarians everywhere. And through quite unacceptable fear mongering the government is sedating the population into accepting the likely permenant erosion of civil liberties.
I know not who I want to replace the PM, as there has been such an abject lack of leadership from the political class. For now I shall settle with the immediate sacking of Johnson, Hancock, Cummings and importantly Witty, Van Tam and Valance. Let us get on with our lives and balance our own risk tolerances.
Yours
ITV local news [East Midlands] interviewed 2 former labour voters who said they would carry on voting tory and one undecided who would carry on voting tory - they had done a poll on Boris in Worksop [I think] p poll to come out on later programme
I don't see much Boregret either...yet. I do think it will come however, once the economic picture starts to look much darker.
I agree. However. Labour voters who switched to the Tories are not some sanctified section of the electorate whose views carry extra weight. Regular Tory voters who are thinking of deserting are just as important. There are plenty of them on here for a start.
We are likely to be on No Deal WTO terms by January, agreed.
However ironically free trade Leavers may find their best hope of reaching their EEA promised land lies with a PM Starmer after the next election who would surely accept an EEA style trade deal with the EU, Boris' coalition would see that as a betrayal so the Tories are now committed to hard Brexit for a generation
If the will of the people turns towards a less extreme relationship with the EU that is what the next government will strive for. Cummings master plan can be unpicked quite quickly once power has been transferred to the grown-ups.
Therein lies the beauty of Parliamentary sovereignty. If you don't like something, you can vote in a new lot and they can change the law.
Question is, if you don't like an EU law, how do you change it? Who do you vote for?
The democratic deficit at the heart of the EU hasn't gone away.
You can't vote in a new lot, because you only control one MP. The best you can do is vote in a new representative for your particular area, and hope that other people in other areas also vote in like-minded people, and they get together and change the law.
This also works for EU laws.
And in most cases you can't vote in a new representative for your area. As many many seats have huge majorities.
Where I live, they weigh the Labour vote or measure it with a metre-stick.....
The current percentage of closed Covid-19 cases as a proportion of total cases is 75%. It'll be interesting to see how many days it takes for the figure to reach 80%.
We are likely to be on No Deal WTO terms by January, agreed.
However ironically free trade Leavers may find their best hope of reaching their EEA promised land lies with a PM Starmer after the next election who would surely accept an EEA style trade deal with the EU, Boris' coalition would see that as a betrayal so the Tories are now committed to hard Brexit for a generation
If the will of the people turns towards a less extreme relationship with the EU that is what the next government will strive for. Cummings master plan can be unpicked quite quickly once power has been transferred to the grown-ups.
Therein lies the beauty of Parliamentary sovereignty. If you don't like something, you can vote in a new lot and they can change the law.
Question is, if you don't like an EU law, how do you change it? Who do you vote for?
The democratic deficit at the heart of the EU hasn't gone away.
You can't vote in a new lot, because you only control one MP. The best you can do is vote in a new representative for your particular area, and hope that other people in other areas also vote in like-minded people, and they get together and change the law.
This also works for EU laws.
It does not.
In the UK with have UK parties debating the UK issues on our UK news channels and getting watched and then voted on by the voters. We also have a good voting system that ensures every area of the UK is represented by their most popular party in that area. Our MPs get together and can pass, change or repeal any law. Change of government happens at the ballot box.
In the EU none of that is true. There are no real EU parties - yes there exists EU labels that badge on existing national parties but its not the same thing. The EU news isn't debated on EU news channels. They also have a dodgy voting system that takes power away from the voters and towards post-election political horsetrading. MEPs lack the power to pass, change or repeal any law they want to.
OK, let's accept for the sake of argument that the French Socialists have nothing to do with the Spanish Socialists and the Dutch Liberals have nothing to do with the German Liberals.
Do voters in Northern Ireland not have a democracy?
They do, though they're definitely unique to the rest of the UK.
But if the voters of Northern Ireland dislike any UK law, lets say the NI Protocol of the EU Withdrawal Act as an example, and then the MPs representing Northern Ireland constituencies work with a majority of MPs across the UK and vote to repeal the law then the law is gone. That is democracy.
If the voters of Northern Ireland want a new law and then convince a majority of MPs from across the country to back it then it becomes the law. That is democracy.
Does the same thing happen with MEPs? If a majority of MEPs vote to remove a law does it go? Can an MEP introduce a proposed new law and see it become the law because a majority of MEPs backed it?
No, because law changes aren't simply decided by the Parliament. The European Parliament is not sovereign like ours is.
I never said anything about the European Parliament. The democratic process would also work if there was no European Parliament, and decisions were all made via the traditional route of MP->National government->Council of ministers.
If you want a new law, and convince a majority of MPs from across the EU to back it, their governments vote for it and it becomes the law.
But it doesn't work that way. Not even a majority of MPs from across the EU backing it does it either.
Just like here if you convince a majority of Councillors to change the law, it doesn't.
Our law changing is simple: we elect MPs, MPs vote, the law changes. That is not the case with the EU at all.
The key point is that British departure from the CU and SM is a breach of international law - given that the Republic of Ireland is staying in them. In other words a hard Brexit is a breach of international law, namely of the Good Friday Agreement.
That was the whole point of the NI protocol! To allow for the possibility of a no deal departure without breaching the GFA. And why the crap the govt were coming up with yesterday about their legislation “safeguarding” the GFA being such nonsense.
The NI Protocol was designed for a no deal scenario, not something that could be ditched if no deal occurred!
Implementation of the NI Protocol would be a breach of the GFA.
Thank Heavens you are here! So many top law people, barristers and judges missed that.
We are likely to be on No Deal WTO terms by January, agreed.
However ironically free trade Leavers may find their best hope of reaching their EEA promised land lies with a PM Starmer after the next election who would surely accept an EEA style trade deal with the EU, Boris' coalition would see that as a betrayal so the Tories are now committed to hard Brexit for a generation
If the will of the people turns towards a less extreme relationship with the EU that is what the next government will strive for. Cummings master plan can be unpicked quite quickly once power has been transferred to the grown-ups.
Therein lies the beauty of Parliamentary sovereignty. If you don't like something, you can vote in a new lot and they can change the law.
Question is, if you don't like an EU law, how do you change it? Who do you vote for?
The democratic deficit at the heart of the EU hasn't gone away.
You can't vote in a new lot, because you only control one MP. The best you can do is vote in a new representative for your particular area, and hope that other people in other areas also vote in like-minded people, and they get together and change the law.
This also works for EU laws.
It does not.
In the UK with have UK parties debating the UK issues on our UK news channels and getting watched and then voted on by the voters. We also have a good voting system that ensures every area of the UK is represented by their most popular party in that area. Our MPs get together and can pass, change or repeal any law. Change of government happens at the ballot box.
In the EU none of that is true. There are no real EU parties - yes there exists EU labels that badge on existing national parties but its not the same thing. The EU news isn't debated on EU news channels. They also have a dodgy voting system that takes power away from the voters and towards post-election political horsetrading. MEPs lack the power to pass, change or repeal any law they want to.
OK, let's accept for the sake of argument that the French Socialists have nothing to do with the Spanish Socialists and the Dutch Liberals have nothing to do with the German Liberals.
Do voters in Northern Ireland not have a democracy?
They do, though they're definitely unique to the rest of the UK.
But if the voters of Northern Ireland dislike any UK law, lets say the NI Protocol of the EU Withdrawal Act as an example, and then the MPs representing Northern Ireland constituencies work with a majority of MPs across the UK and vote to repeal the law then the law is gone. That is democracy.
If the voters of Northern Ireland want a new law and then convince a majority of MPs from across the country to back it then it becomes the law. That is democracy.
Does the same thing happen with MEPs? If a majority of MEPs vote to remove a law does it go? Can an MEP introduce a proposed new law and see it become the law because a majority of MEPs backed it?
No, because law changes aren't simply decided by the Parliament. The European Parliament is not sovereign like ours is.
How do you feel about the Internal Market bill giving Ministers the power to change/override U.K. law without reference to Parliament and without possibility of judicial review?
It is subject to UK law and if Parliament isn't happy with it then Parliament can override it and take the power it has given to Ministers back off them.
Moonshine said ""After careful consideration I shall be writing to my MP asking him to lodge a vote of no confidence in the prime minister as leader of the Conservative Party.
This bullshit can’t go on much longer or everything that is great about Western democracy is going to wither and die. It’s that serious. The UK is setting an appalling example to wannabe authoritarians everywhere. And through quite unacceptable fear mongering the government is sedating the population into accepting the likely permenant erosion of civil liberties.
I know not who I want to replace the PM, as there has been such an abject lack of leadership from the political class. For now I shall settle with the immediate sacking of Johnson, Hancock, Cummings and importantly Witty, Van Tam and Valance. Let us get on with our lives and balance our own risk tolerances.
Yours
ITV local news [East Midlands] interviewed 2 former labour voters who said they would carry on voting tory and one undecided who would carry on voting tory - they had done a poll on Boris in Worksop [I think] p poll to come out on later programme
I don't see much Boregret either...yet. I do think it will come however, once the economic picture starts to look much darker.
I agree. However. Labour voters who switched to the Tories are not some sanctified section of the electorate whose views carry extra weight. Regular Tory voters who are thinking of deserting are just as important. There are plenty of them on here for a start.
I think the group you mention is more susceptible to the charms if Starmer than those xenophobic dog-whistle enthusiasts from the blue collar groups.
We are likely to be on No Deal WTO terms by January, agreed.
However ironically free trade Leavers may find their best hope of reaching their EEA promised land lies with a PM Starmer after the next election who would surely accept an EEA style trade deal with the EU, Boris' coalition would see that as a betrayal so the Tories are now committed to hard Brexit for a generation
If the will of the people turns towards a less extreme relationship with the EU that is what the next government will strive for. Cummings master plan can be unpicked quite quickly once power has been transferred to the grown-ups.
Therein lies the beauty of Parliamentary sovereignty. If you don't like something, you can vote in a new lot and they can change the law.
Question is, if you don't like an EU law, how do you change it? Who do you vote for?
The democratic deficit at the heart of the EU hasn't gone away.
You can't vote in a new lot, because you only control one MP. The best you can do is vote in a new representative for your particular area, and hope that other people in other areas also vote in like-minded people, and they get together and change the law.
This also works for EU laws.
And in most cases you can't vote in a new representative for your area. As many many seats have huge majorities.
Where I live, they weigh the Labour vote or measure it with a metre-stick.....
As they do to the Tory vote here. For you and me it is not quite so simple as just "voting someone out".
The key point is that British departure from the CU and SM is a breach of international law - given that the Republic of Ireland is staying in them. In other words a hard Brexit is a breach of international law, namely of the Good Friday Agreement.
That was the whole point of the NI protocol! To allow for the possibility of a no deal departure without breaching the GFA. And why the crap the govt were coming up with yesterday about their legislation “safeguarding” the GFA being such nonsense.
The NI Protocol was designed for a no deal scenario, not something that could be ditched if no deal occurred!
Implementation of the NI Protocol would be a breach of the GFA.
Thank Heavens you are here! So many top law people, barristers and judges missed that.
10,000 cases today in France, hardly any in Sweden. Which country has mandatory mask wearing ?
The one with the big tourism industry.
There are very few tourists in France. Just look throughout Europe where mask wearing is mandatory, cases are climbing hugely.
How anyone can defend mask wearing now is beyond me. Countries need to get back to social distancing, people feel too protected in masks and don’t distance.
There was a reason that the WHO didn’t recommend masks at the start of the pandemic. They don’t work because wearing one changes peoples behaviour and as they only offer very limited protection infections are rising. Forget laboratory tests of masks, look at the real world evidence. Sweden no masks very low cases, everywhere else with masks very high cases.
We realise you have a hard on for masks.
But the reality is that throughout this process, the empirical evidence for mask wearing has grown and grown. As in peer reviewed, scientific papers.
Now. You can choose to believe that Spain's spike in CV-19 cases was due to mask wearing rather than (say) re-opening nightclubs. But all that demonstrates is that you don't really care about the academic research, or indeed the data.
OK, let's accept for the sake of argument that the French Socialists have nothing to do with the Spanish Socialists and the Dutch Liberals have nothing to do with the German Liberals.
Do voters in Northern Ireland not have a democracy?
No, not really.
Every Norn Iron MP could fit in a minibus. Even if every single one of them agreed on something they wanted changed, their 18 votes would count for little.
Wales, Scotland and England at least have Labour and Conservative MPs so they have a chance to influence things, but none of the mainland parties organise in NI.
So votes for NI parties are generally pointless - which made the DUP's performance over Brexit a once in a life-time thing to remember.
We are likely to be on No Deal WTO terms by January, agreed.
However ironically free trade Leavers may find their best hope of reaching their EEA promised land lies with a PM Starmer after the next election who would surely accept an EEA style trade deal with the EU, Boris' coalition would see that as a betrayal so the Tories are now committed to hard Brexit for a generation
If the will of the people turns towards a less extreme relationship with the EU that is what the next government will strive for. Cummings master plan can be unpicked quite quickly once power has been transferred to the grown-ups.
Therein lies the beauty of Parliamentary sovereignty. If you don't like something, you can vote in a new lot and they can change the law.
Question is, if you don't like an EU law, how do you change it? Who do you vote for?
The democratic deficit at the heart of the EU hasn't gone away.
You can't vote in a new lot, because you only control one MP. The best you can do is vote in a new representative for your particular area, and hope that other people in other areas also vote in like-minded people, and they get together and change the law.
This also works for EU laws.
It does not.
In the UK with have UK parties debating the UK issues on our UK news channels and getting watched and then voted on by the voters. We also have a good voting system that ensures every area of the UK is represented by their most popular party in that area. Our MPs get together and can pass, change or repeal any law. Change of government happens at the ballot box.
In the EU none of that is true. There are no real EU parties - yes there exists EU labels that badge on existing national parties but its not the same thing. The EU news isn't debated on EU news channels. They also have a dodgy voting system that takes power away from the voters and towards post-election political horsetrading. MEPs lack the power to pass, change or repeal any law they want to.
OK, let's accept for the sake of argument that the French Socialists have nothing to do with the Spanish Socialists and the Dutch Liberals have nothing to do with the German Liberals.
Do voters in Northern Ireland not have a democracy?
They do, though they're definitely unique to the rest of the UK.
But if the voters of Northern Ireland dislike any UK law, lets say the NI Protocol of the EU Withdrawal Act as an example, and then the MPs representing Northern Ireland constituencies work with a majority of MPs across the UK and vote to repeal the law then the law is gone. That is democracy.
If the voters of Northern Ireland want a new law and then convince a majority of MPs from across the country to back it then it becomes the law. That is democracy.
Does the same thing happen with MEPs? If a majority of MEPs vote to remove a law does it go? Can an MEP introduce a proposed new law and see it become the law because a majority of MEPs backed it?
No, because law changes aren't simply decided by the Parliament. The European Parliament is not sovereign like ours is.
I never said anything about the European Parliament. The democratic process would also work if there was no European Parliament, and decisions were all made via the traditional route of MP->National government->Council of ministers.
If you want a new law, and convince a majority of MPs from across the EU to back it, their governments vote for it and it becomes the law.
But it doesn't work that way. Not even a majority of MPs from across the EU backing it does it either.
Just like here if you convince a majority of Councillors to change the law, it doesn't.
Our law changing is simple: we elect MPs, MPs vote, the law changes. That is not the case with the EU at all.
No, it's not that simple, there's indirection. The MPs are in parties. Even if the MPs want something, if the governing party doesn't want it, it usually won't happen, unless it's too trivial for the leader of the governing party to care about stopping. Often (3 out of the last 4 parliaments) what the governing party wants will change partway through, because it will change its leader, without going back to the voters at all.
Having indirection is fine, and sometimes a good idea, it doesn't mean the system isn't democratic. The EU system also has indirection, because there are national governments in between. That may or may not be a good system - it might be better to have less indirection, with a strong European Parliament and a directly elected leader, or it might be better to keep the indirection and get rid of the parliament altogether, but the indirection doesn't make or unmake the democracy.
We are likely to be on No Deal WTO terms by January, agreed.
However ironically free trade Leavers may find their best hope of reaching their EEA promised land lies with a PM Starmer after the next election who would surely accept an EEA style trade deal with the EU, Boris' coalition would see that as a betrayal so the Tories are now committed to hard Brexit for a generation
If the will of the people turns towards a less extreme relationship with the EU that is what the next government will strive for. Cummings master plan can be unpicked quite quickly once power has been transferred to the grown-ups.
Therein lies the beauty of Parliamentary sovereignty. If you don't like something, you can vote in a new lot and they can change the law.
Question is, if you don't like an EU law, how do you change it? Who do you vote for?
The democratic deficit at the heart of the EU hasn't gone away.
You can't vote in a new lot, because you only control one MP. The best you can do is vote in a new representative for your particular area, and hope that other people in other areas also vote in like-minded people, and they get together and change the law.
This also works for EU laws.
It does not.
In the UK with have UK parties debating the UK issues on our UK news channels and getting watched and then voted on by the voters. We also have a good voting system that ensures every area of the UK is represented by their most popular party in that area. Our MPs get together and can pass, change or repeal any law. Change of government happens at the ballot box.
In the EU none of that is true. There are no real EU parties - yes there exists EU labels that badge on existing national parties but its not the same thing. The EU news isn't debated on EU news channels. They also have a dodgy voting system that takes power away from the voters and towards post-election political horsetrading. MEPs lack the power to pass, change or repeal any law they want to.
OK, let's accept for the sake of argument that the French Socialists have nothing to do with the Spanish Socialists and the Dutch Liberals have nothing to do with the German Liberals.
Do voters in Northern Ireland not have a democracy?
They do, though they're definitely unique to the rest of the UK.
But if the voters of Northern Ireland dislike any UK law, lets say the NI Protocol of the EU Withdrawal Act as an example, and then the MPs representing Northern Ireland constituencies work with a majority of MPs across the UK and vote to repeal the law then the law is gone. That is democracy.
If the voters of Northern Ireland want a new law and then convince a majority of MPs from across the country to back it then it becomes the law. That is democracy.
Does the same thing happen with MEPs? If a majority of MEPs vote to remove a law does it go? Can an MEP introduce a proposed new law and see it become the law because a majority of MEPs backed it?
No, because law changes aren't simply decided by the Parliament. The European Parliament is not sovereign like ours is.
I never said anything about the European Parliament. The democratic process would also work if there was no European Parliament, and decisions were all made via the traditional route of MP->National government->Council of ministers.
If you want a new law, and convince a majority of MPs from across the EU to back it, their governments vote for it and it becomes the law.
But it doesn't work that way. Not even a majority of MPs from across the EU backing it does it either.
Just like here if you convince a majority of Councillors to change the law, it doesn't.
Our law changing is simple: we elect MPs, MPs vote, the law changes. That is not the case with the EU at all.
No, it's not that simple, there's indirection. The MPs are in parties. Even if the MPs want something, if the governing party doesn't want it, it usually won't happen, unless it's too trivial for the leader of the governing party to care about stopping. Often (3 out of the last 4 parliaments) what the governing party wants will change partway through, because it will change its leader, without going back to the voters at all.
Having indirection is fine, and sometimes a good idea, it doesn't mean the system isn't democratic. The EU system also has indirection, because there are national governments in between. That may or may not be a good system - it might be better to have less indirection, with a strong European Parliament and a directly elected leader, or it might be better to keep the indirection and get rid of the parliament altogether, but the indirection doesn't make or unmake the democracy.
It is simple - if the MPs vote, regardless of parties, then it happens. If the MPs don't, then it doesn't. If the voters don't like it, they can vote for new MPs.
The EU is not the same. Neither MPs nor MEPs have the power to change the law in the same way.
We are likely to be on No Deal WTO terms by January, agreed.
However ironically free trade Leavers may find their best hope of reaching their EEA promised land lies with a PM Starmer after the next election who would surely accept an EEA style trade deal with the EU, Boris' coalition would see that as a betrayal so the Tories are now committed to hard Brexit for a generation
If the will of the people turns towards a less extreme relationship with the EU that is what the next government will strive for. Cummings master plan can be unpicked quite quickly once power has been transferred to the grown-ups.
Therein lies the beauty of Parliamentary sovereignty. If you don't like something, you can vote in a new lot and they can change the law.
Question is, if you don't like an EU law, how do you change it? Who do you vote for?
The democratic deficit at the heart of the EU hasn't gone away.
You can't vote in a new lot, because you only control one MP. The best you can do is vote in a new representative for your particular area, and hope that other people in other areas also vote in like-minded people, and they get together and change the law.
This also works for EU laws.
And in most cases you can't vote in a new representative for your area. As many many seats have huge majorities.
Where I live, they weigh the Labour vote or measure it with a metre-stick.....
As they do to the Tory vote here. For you and me it is not quite so simple as just "voting someone out".
Of course it is. All you have to do is convince a plurality of your constituency to do so.
That may not be easy, but it is very, very doable.
We are likely to be on No Deal WTO terms by January, agreed.
However ironically free trade Leavers may find their best hope of reaching their EEA promised land lies with a PM Starmer after the next election who would surely accept an EEA style trade deal with the EU, Boris' coalition would see that as a betrayal so the Tories are now committed to hard Brexit for a generation
If the will of the people turns towards a less extreme relationship with the EU that is what the next government will strive for. Cummings master plan can be unpicked quite quickly once power has been transferred to the grown-ups.
Therein lies the beauty of Parliamentary sovereignty. If you don't like something, you can vote in a new lot and they can change the law.
Question is, if you don't like an EU law, how do you change it? Who do you vote for?
The democratic deficit at the heart of the EU hasn't gone away.
You can't vote in a new lot, because you only control one MP. The best you can do is vote in a new representative for your particular area, and hope that other people in other areas also vote in like-minded people, and they get together and change the law.
This also works for EU laws.
And in most cases you can't vote in a new representative for your area. As many many seats have huge majorities.
Where I live, they weigh the Labour vote or measure it with a metre-stick.....
As they do to the Tory vote here. For you and me it is not quite so simple as just "voting someone out".
Of course it is. All you have to do is convince a plurality of your constituency to do so.
That may not be easy, but it is very, very doable.
It’s not much use if the person you want to vote out isn’t standing in your constituency.
We are likely to be on No Deal WTO terms by January, agreed.
However ironically free trade Leavers may find their best hope of reaching their EEA promised land lies with a PM Starmer after the next election who would surely accept an EEA style trade deal with the EU, Boris' coalition would see that as a betrayal so the Tories are now committed to hard Brexit for a generation
If the will of the people turns towards a less extreme relationship with the EU that is what the next government will strive for. Cummings master plan can be unpicked quite quickly once power has been transferred to the grown-ups.
Therein lies the beauty of Parliamentary sovereignty. If you don't like something, you can vote in a new lot and they can change the law.
Question is, if you don't like an EU law, how do you change it? Who do you vote for?
The democratic deficit at the heart of the EU hasn't gone away.
You can't vote in a new lot, because you only control one MP. The best you can do is vote in a new representative for your particular area, and hope that other people in other areas also vote in like-minded people, and they get together and change the law.
This also works for EU laws.
It does not.
In the UK with have UK parties debating the UK issues on our UK news channels and getting watched and then voted on by the voters. We also have a good voting system that ensures every area of the UK is represented by their most popular party in that area. Our MPs get together and can pass, change or repeal any law. Change of government happens at the ballot box.
In the EU none of that is true. There are no real EU parties - yes there exists EU labels that badge on existing national parties but its not the same thing. The EU news isn't debated on EU news channels. They also have a dodgy voting system that takes power away from the voters and towards post-election political horsetrading. MEPs lack the power to pass, change or repeal any law they want to.
OK, let's accept for the sake of argument that the French Socialists have nothing to do with the Spanish Socialists and the Dutch Liberals have nothing to do with the German Liberals.
Do voters in Northern Ireland not have a democracy?
They do, though they're definitely unique to the rest of the UK.
But if the voters of Northern Ireland dislike any UK law, lets say the NI Protocol of the EU Withdrawal Act as an example, and then the MPs representing Northern Ireland constituencies work with a majority of MPs across the UK and vote to repeal the law then the law is gone. That is democracy.
If the voters of Northern Ireland want a new law and then convince a majority of MPs from across the country to back it then it becomes the law. That is democracy.
Does the same thing happen with MEPs? If a majority of MEPs vote to remove a law does it go? Can an MEP introduce a proposed new law and see it become the law because a majority of MEPs backed it?
No, because law changes aren't simply decided by the Parliament. The European Parliament is not sovereign like ours is.
How do you feel about the Internal Market bill giving Ministers the power to change/override U.K. law without reference to Parliament and without possibility of judicial review?
It is subject to UK law and if Parliament isn't happy with it then Parliament can override it and take the power it has given to Ministers back off them.
That is highly debatable. Perhaps some legal experts might like to comment. Once Parliament has given powers to ministers to act unilaterally it becomes very difficult to take them back. Not least because the Executive controls the legislative timetable and would have no interest in allowing it.
And without the possibility of judicial review there is also no ability for the courts to rule that ministers are acting contrary to Parliaments intention when ceding the powers.
It’s an Enabling Act in all but name. A massive power grab to the detriment of Parliament under the cover of “delivering Brexit and safeguarding the Union”.
Re:universities and “the rule of six”. How on earth does this work in campus accommodation with a dozen (at least) people having shared kitchens?
What i was told (before the rule of 6) about one unis approach was they were already bring told that each "flat" in halls was being deemed as a household and they would be limited in who else they could socialise.
Sounded like a prison camp.
Not sure how well horny freshers will stick to it, and if they do sounds like it wont be much fun.
I’m sadly anticipating one of the stories of the next few months is going to be unprecedented levels of student drop outs and record levels of mental health problems and suicides. And paying 10k+ a year for the privilege.
iirc one of the predictors of students dropping out was living at home, where they spent time socialising with their old peers, rather than on campus or in digs with other students where there is group pressure to study. If so, then online lectures to students back at home likely will lead to increased drop out rates.
We are likely to be on No Deal WTO terms by January, agreed.
However ironically free trade Leavers may find their best hope of reaching their EEA promised land lies with a PM Starmer after the next election who would surely accept an EEA style trade deal with the EU, Boris' coalition would see that as a betrayal so the Tories are now committed to hard Brexit for a generation
If the will of the people turns towards a less extreme relationship with the EU that is what the next government will strive for. Cummings master plan can be unpicked quite quickly once power has been transferred to the grown-ups.
Therein lies the beauty of Parliamentary sovereignty. If you don't like something, you can vote in a new lot and they can change the law.
Question is, if you don't like an EU law, how do you change it? Who do you vote for?
The democratic deficit at the heart of the EU hasn't gone away.
You can't vote in a new lot, because you only control one MP. The best you can do is vote in a new representative for your particular area, and hope that other people in other areas also vote in like-minded people, and they get together and change the law.
This also works for EU laws.
And in most cases you can't vote in a new representative for your area. As many many seats have huge majorities.
Where I live, they weigh the Labour vote or measure it with a metre-stick.....
As they do to the Tory vote here. For you and me it is not quite so simple as just "voting someone out".
Of course it is. All you have to do is convince a plurality of your constituency to do so.
That may not be easy, but it is very, very doable.
It’s not much use if the person you want to vote out isn’t standing in your constituency.
What an odd argument.
If the person you want to vote out isn't in your constituency they don't represent you. You don't get to vote out other people's MPs who aren't yours, yeah that's true. Not sure what point you're trying to prove.
We are likely to be on No Deal WTO terms by January, agreed.
However ironically free trade Leavers may find their best hope of reaching their EEA promised land lies with a PM Starmer after the next election who would surely accept an EEA style trade deal with the EU, Boris' coalition would see that as a betrayal so the Tories are now committed to hard Brexit for a generation
If the will of the people turns towards a less extreme relationship with the EU that is what the next government will strive for. Cummings master plan can be unpicked quite quickly once power has been transferred to the grown-ups.
Therein lies the beauty of Parliamentary sovereignty. If you don't like something, you can vote in a new lot and they can change the law.
Question is, if you don't like an EU law, how do you change it? Who do you vote for?
The democratic deficit at the heart of the EU hasn't gone away.
You can't vote in a new lot, because you only control one MP. The best you can do is vote in a new representative for your particular area, and hope that other people in other areas also vote in like-minded people, and they get together and change the law.
This also works for EU laws.
And in most cases you can't vote in a new representative for your area. As many many seats have huge majorities.
Where I live, they weigh the Labour vote or measure it with a metre-stick.....
As they do to the Tory vote here. For you and me it is not quite so simple as just "voting someone out".
Of course it is. All you have to do is convince a plurality of your constituency to do so.
That may not be easy, but it is very, very doable.
Don't be an ass. There is no way you could convince half + 1 of the voters where I live to vote Tory. The new MP was a Corbynite who got just under 80% of the vote which was a decrease on the previous Labour MP.
We are likely to be on No Deal WTO terms by January, agreed.
However ironically free trade Leavers may find their best hope of reaching their EEA promised land lies with a PM Starmer after the next election who would surely accept an EEA style trade deal with the EU, Boris' coalition would see that as a betrayal so the Tories are now committed to hard Brexit for a generation
If the will of the people turns towards a less extreme relationship with the EU that is what the next government will strive for. Cummings master plan can be unpicked quite quickly once power has been transferred to the grown-ups.
Therein lies the beauty of Parliamentary sovereignty. If you don't like something, you can vote in a new lot and they can change the law.
Question is, if you don't like an EU law, how do you change it? Who do you vote for?
The democratic deficit at the heart of the EU hasn't gone away.
You can't vote in a new lot, because you only control one MP. The best you can do is vote in a new representative for your particular area, and hope that other people in other areas also vote in like-minded people, and they get together and change the law.
This also works for EU laws.
It does not.
In the UK with have UK parties debating the UK issues on our UK news channels and getting watched and then voted on by the voters. We also have a good voting system that ensures every area of the UK is represented by their most popular party in that area. Our MPs get together and can pass, change or repeal any law. Change of government happens at the ballot box.
In the EU none of that is true. There are no real EU parties - yes there exists EU labels that badge on existing national parties but its not the same thing. The EU news isn't debated on EU news channels. They also have a dodgy voting system that takes power away from the voters and towards post-election political horsetrading. MEPs lack the power to pass, change or repeal any law they want to.
OK, let's accept for the sake of argument that the French Socialists have nothing to do with the Spanish Socialists and the Dutch Liberals have nothing to do with the German Liberals.
Do voters in Northern Ireland not have a democracy?
They do, though they're definitely unique to the rest of the UK.
But if the voters of Northern Ireland dislike any UK law, lets say the NI Protocol of the EU Withdrawal Act as an example, and then the MPs representing Northern Ireland constituencies work with a majority of MPs across the UK and vote to repeal the law then the law is gone. That is democracy.
If the voters of Northern Ireland want a new law and then convince a majority of MPs from across the country to back it then it becomes the law. That is democracy.
Does the same thing happen with MEPs? If a majority of MEPs vote to remove a law does it go? Can an MEP introduce a proposed new law and see it become the law because a majority of MEPs backed it?
No, because law changes aren't simply decided by the Parliament. The European Parliament is not sovereign like ours is.
I never said anything about the European Parliament. The democratic process would also work if there was no European Parliament, and decisions were all made via the traditional route of MP->National government->Council of ministers.
If you want a new law, and convince a majority of MPs from across the EU to back it, their governments vote for it and it becomes the law.
But it doesn't work that way. Not even a majority of MPs from across the EU backing it does it either.
Just like here if you convince a majority of Councillors to change the law, it doesn't.
Our law changing is simple: we elect MPs, MPs vote, the law changes. That is not the case with the EU at all.
No, it's not that simple, there's indirection. The MPs are in parties. Even if the MPs want something, if the governing party doesn't want it, it usually won't happen, unless it's too trivial for the leader of the governing party to care about stopping. Often (3 out of the last 4 parliaments) what the governing party wants will change partway through, because it will change its leader, without going back to the voters at all.
Having indirection is fine, and sometimes a good idea, it doesn't mean the system isn't democratic. The EU system also has indirection, because there are national governments in between. That may or may not be a good system - it might be better to have less indirection, with a strong European Parliament and a directly elected leader, or it might be better to keep the indirection and get rid of the parliament altogether, but the indirection doesn't make or unmake the democracy.
It is simple - if the MPs vote, regardless of parties, then it happens. If the MPs don't, then it doesn't. If the voters don't like it, they can vote for new MPs.
The EU is not the same. Neither MPs nor MEPs have the power to change the law in the same way.
What you're describing is nothing like the actual working of British democracy. But for the sake of argument let's go with it.
Switzerland has cantons in between the voters and the laws, to pass a law you need some minimum agreement at the level of the cantons. Is Switzerland not a democracy?
A month old. So why release outdated figures now???
Rasmussen had just a 2% Biden lead a few days ago, there has been no major change since mid August bar the conventions which if anything gave Trump more bounce
Look at page 5 - their weightings seem a bit strange - 39.2% Trump voters, 35.1% Clinton voters.
I'm also slightly confused about how they came to their end numbers. They have Trump winning men by 10%, and Biden winning women by 15%. Now, if an equal number of men and women voted, that would suggest a 2.5% Biden lead.
But they don't. 55% of voters at the alst Presidential election were women, again 45% men.
We are likely to be on No Deal WTO terms by January, agreed.
However ironically free trade Leavers may find their best hope of reaching their EEA promised land lies with a PM Starmer after the next election who would surely accept an EEA style trade deal with the EU, Boris' coalition would see that as a betrayal so the Tories are now committed to hard Brexit for a generation
If the will of the people turns towards a less extreme relationship with the EU that is what the next government will strive for. Cummings master plan can be unpicked quite quickly once power has been transferred to the grown-ups.
Therein lies the beauty of Parliamentary sovereignty. If you don't like something, you can vote in a new lot and they can change the law.
Question is, if you don't like an EU law, how do you change it? Who do you vote for?
The democratic deficit at the heart of the EU hasn't gone away.
You can't vote in a new lot, because you only control one MP. The best you can do is vote in a new representative for your particular area, and hope that other people in other areas also vote in like-minded people, and they get together and change the law.
This also works for EU laws.
And in most cases you can't vote in a new representative for your area. As many many seats have huge majorities.
Where I live, they weigh the Labour vote or measure it with a metre-stick.....
As they do to the Tory vote here. For you and me it is not quite so simple as just "voting someone out".
Of course it is. All you have to do is convince a plurality of your constituency to do so.
That may not be easy, but it is very, very doable.
Don't be an ass. There is no way you could convince half + 1 of the voters where I live to vote Tory. The new MP was a Corbynite who got just under 80% of the vote which was a decrease on the previous Labour MP.
Immaterial. That is the voter's choice.
If the voters change their minds then they change their mind. It happens. It happened across the red wall, it happened in Scotland in 2015. It is possible and if it doesn't happen then that is your neighbours choice. Their vote, their choice.
Re:universities and “the rule of six”. How on earth does this work in campus accommodation with a dozen (at least) people having shared kitchens?
What i was told (before the rule of 6) about one unis approach was they were already bring told that each "flat" in halls was being deemed as a household and they would be limited in who else they could socialise.
Sounded like a prison camp.
Not sure how well horny freshers will stick to it, and if they do sounds like it wont be much fun.
I’m sadly anticipating one of the stories of the next few months is going to be unprecedented levels of student drop outs and record levels of mental health problems and suicides. And paying 10k+ a year for the privilege.
iirc one of the predictors of students dropping out was living at home, where they spent time socialising with their old peers, rather than on campus or in digs with other students where there is group pressure to study. If so, then online lectures to students back at home likely will lead to increased drop out rates.
The circumstances to which students will be subjected to are unprecedented. Many may have almost zero contact with fellow students on their courses. Their social groups will be predefined by their initial accommodation allocations with limited opportunity to seek out alternatives via clubs and societies or indeed casual passing acquaintances. Traditionally there are multiple routes to finding fulfilling social groupings at university, many of which are going to be denied students, depending on how harshly “the rules” are going to be enforced. I don’t thing the traditional characteristics of university drop outs will necessarily be a good guide.
A month old. So why release outdated figures now???
Rasmussen had just a 2% Biden lead a few days ago, there has been no major change since mid August bar the conventions which if anything gave Trump more bounce
The 538 and RCP poll of polls continue to show basically no movement, with Biden on 50-51% and Trump on 43-44%.
We are likely to be on No Deal WTO terms by January, agreed.
However ironically free trade Leavers may find their best hope of reaching their EEA promised land lies with a PM Starmer after the next election who would surely accept an EEA style trade deal with the EU, Boris' coalition would see that as a betrayal so the Tories are now committed to hard Brexit for a generation
If the will of the people turns towards a less extreme relationship with the EU that is what the next government will strive for. Cummings master plan can be unpicked quite quickly once power has been transferred to the grown-ups.
Therein lies the beauty of Parliamentary sovereignty. If you don't like something, you can vote in a new lot and they can change the law.
Question is, if you don't like an EU law, how do you change it? Who do you vote for?
The democratic deficit at the heart of the EU hasn't gone away.
You can't vote in a new lot, because you only control one MP. The best you can do is vote in a new representative for your particular area, and hope that other people in other areas also vote in like-minded people, and they get together and change the law.
This also works for EU laws.
It does not.
In the UK with have UK parties debating the UK issues on our UK news channels and getting watched and then voted on by the voters. We also have a good voting system that ensures every area of the UK is represented by their most popular party in that area. Our MPs get together and can pass, change or repeal any law. Change of government happens at the ballot box.
In the EU none of that is true. There are no real EU parties - yes there exists EU labels that badge on existing national parties but its not the same thing. The EU news isn't debated on EU news channels. They also have a dodgy voting system that takes power away from the voters and towards post-election political horsetrading. MEPs lack the power to pass, change or repeal any law they want to.
OK, let's accept for the sake of argument that the French Socialists have nothing to do with the Spanish Socialists and the Dutch Liberals have nothing to do with the German Liberals.
Do voters in Northern Ireland not have a democracy?
They do, though they're definitely unique to the rest of the UK.
But if the voters of Northern Ireland dislike any UK law, lets say the NI Protocol of the EU Withdrawal Act as an example, and then the MPs representing Northern Ireland constituencies work with a majority of MPs across the UK and vote to repeal the law then the law is gone. That is democracy.
If the voters of Northern Ireland want a new law and then convince a majority of MPs from across the country to back it then it becomes the law. That is democracy.
Does the same thing happen with MEPs? If a majority of MEPs vote to remove a law does it go? Can an MEP introduce a proposed new law and see it become the law because a majority of MEPs backed it?
No, because law changes aren't simply decided by the Parliament. The European Parliament is not sovereign like ours is.
I never said anything about the European Parliament. The democratic process would also work if there was no European Parliament, and decisions were all made via the traditional route of MP->National government->Council of ministers.
If you want a new law, and convince a majority of MPs from across the EU to back it, their governments vote for it and it becomes the law.
But it doesn't work that way. Not even a majority of MPs from across the EU backing it does it either.
Just like here if you convince a majority of Councillors to change the law, it doesn't.
Our law changing is simple: we elect MPs, MPs vote, the law changes. That is not the case with the EU at all.
No, it's not that simple, there's indirection. The MPs are in parties. Even if the MPs want something, if the governing party doesn't want it, it usually won't happen, unless it's too trivial for the leader of the governing party to care about stopping. Often (3 out of the last 4 parliaments) what the governing party wants will change partway through, because it will change its leader, without going back to the voters at all.
Having indirection is fine, and sometimes a good idea, it doesn't mean the system isn't democratic. The EU system also has indirection, because there are national governments in between. That may or may not be a good system - it might be better to have less indirection, with a strong European Parliament and a directly elected leader, or it might be better to keep the indirection and get rid of the parliament altogether, but the indirection doesn't make or unmake the democracy.
It is simple - if the MPs vote, regardless of parties, then it happens. If the MPs don't, then it doesn't. If the voters don't like it, they can vote for new MPs.
The EU is not the same. Neither MPs nor MEPs have the power to change the law in the same way.
What you're describing is nothing like the actual working of British democracy. But for the sake of argument let's go with it.
Switzerland has cantons in between the voters and the laws, to pass a law you need some minimum agreement at the level of the cantons. Is Switzerland not a democracy?
The further removed you get from voter to law change, the less democratic it is.
The EU is much more removed than your cantons example.
A month old. So why release outdated figures now???
Rasmussen had just a 2% Biden lead a few days ago, there has been no major change since mid August bar the conventions which if anything gave Trump more bounce
The 538 and RCP poll of polls continue to show basically no movement, with Biden on 50-51% and Trump on 43-44%.
Hillary was also clearly ahead in 2016 at this stage too, just both Biden and Trump are a little higher with Biden maybe having a slightly bigger lead than Hillary but not greatly more
10,000 cases today in France, hardly any in Sweden. Which country has mandatory mask wearing ?
The one with the big tourism industry.
There are very few tourists in France. Just look throughout Europe where mask wearing is mandatory, cases are climbing hugely.
How anyone can defend mask wearing now is beyond me. Countries need to get back to social distancing, people feel too protected in masks and don’t distance.
There was a reason that the WHO didn’t recommend masks at the start of the pandemic. They don’t work because wearing one changes peoples behaviour and as they only offer very limited protection infections are rising. Forget laboratory tests of masks, look at the real world evidence. Sweden no masks very low cases, everywhere else with masks very high cases.
We realise you have a hard on for masks.
But the reality is that throughout this process, the empirical evidence for mask wearing has grown and grown. As in peer reviewed, scientific papers.
Now. You can choose to believe that Spain's spike in CV-19 cases was due to mask wearing rather than (say) re-opening nightclubs. But all that demonstrates is that you don't really care about the academic research, or indeed the data.
Does the data data support 7 year olds compulsorily wearing masks to school? Or people scowling at each other if they don’t wear them walking outside on the street?
Whether you like to admit it or not, there’s a social trade off to wearing face coverings. There are approx 2.8m deaths per year in the US and your paper cites 33k lives saved between June and Oct if 95% of people wear masks in public. So that’s saving excess deaths worth perhaps a week or two over the year?
Is that worth it really? Given the vast bulk of the lives saved are lives that would likely be lost this year or next anyway?
Is there evidence yet on what living in such a clinical germ free fashion is doing to immune systems, particularly of the young?
What if the Disease X of the next decade is a rhinovirus. It’s not impossible, until SARS coronaviruses were widely seen as a mere nuisance. But we’ve deprived a generation from acquiring natural immunity against the killer rhinovirus, because they spent their childhood avoiding all germs at all cost.
Not everyone that hates lockdowns, masks and the like is ignorant and thinks covid is caused by 5G, that it’s harmless or invented by Bill Gates. We are just looking with a slightly wider perspective at what we’re giving up now, and what we might be risking both socially, economically and medically in the years ahead.
So Biden has a less than 5.5% lead in Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina and Arizona and Trump leads in Ohio. And of course Silver wrongly had an 85% chance Hillary would win in 2016 too just over a week before polling day.
If Trump wins all those states and holds his 2016 states he wins the EC
So Biden has a less than 5.5% lead in Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina and Arizona and Trump leads in Ohio. And of course Silver wrongly had an 85% chance Hillary would win in 2016 too just over a week before polling day.
If Trump wins all those states and holds his 2016 states he wins the EC
How can you say he had that wrong a week before? A 15% chance is still a chance and quite a decent one at that.
So Biden has a less than 5.5% lead in Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina and Arizona and Trump leads in Ohio. And of course Silver wrongly had an 85% chance Hillary would win in 2016 too just over a week before polling day.
If Trump wins all those states and holds his 2016 states he wins the EC
How can you say he had that wrong a week before? A 15% chance is still a chance and quite a decent one at that.
Trump won, if he failed to predict Trump would win the EC he got it wrong, he may not have got it massively wrong but he was still wrong
10,000 cases today in France, hardly any in Sweden. Which country has mandatory mask wearing ?
The one with the big tourism industry.
There are very few tourists in France. Just look throughout Europe where mask wearing is mandatory, cases are climbing hugely.
How anyone can defend mask wearing now is beyond me. Countries need to get back to social distancing, people feel too protected in masks and don’t distance.
There was a reason that the WHO didn’t recommend masks at the start of the pandemic. They don’t work because wearing one changes peoples behaviour and as they only offer very limited protection infections are rising. Forget laboratory tests of masks, look at the real world evidence. Sweden no masks very low cases, everywhere else with masks very high cases.
We realise you have a hard on for masks.
But the reality is that throughout this process, the empirical evidence for mask wearing has grown and grown. As in peer reviewed, scientific papers.
Now. You can choose to believe that Spain's spike in CV-19 cases was due to mask wearing rather than (say) re-opening nightclubs. But all that demonstrates is that you don't really care about the academic research, or indeed the data.
Does the data data support 7 year olds compulsorily wearing masks to school? Or people scowling at each other if they don’t wear them walking outside on the street?
Whether you like to admit it or not, there’s a social trade off to wearing face coverings. There are approx 2.8m deaths per year in the US and your paper cites 33k lives saved between June and Oct if 95% of people wear masks in public. So that’s saving excess deaths worth perhaps a week or two over the year?
Is that worth it really? Given the vast bulk of the lives saved are lives that would likely be lost this year or next anyway?
Is there evidence yet on what living in such a clinical germ free fashion is doing to immune systems, particularly of the young?
What if the Disease X of the next decade is a rhinovirus. It’s not impossible, until SARS coronaviruses were widely seen as a mere nuisance. But we’ve deprived a generation from acquiring natural immunity against the killer rhinovirus, because they spent their childhood avoiding all germs at all cost.
Not everyone that hates lockdowns, masks and the like is ignorant and thinks covid is caused by 5G, that it’s harmless or invented by Bill Gates. We are just looking with a slightly wider perspective at what we’re giving up now, and what we might be risking both socially, economically and medically in the years ahead.
I hate masks and lockdowns. They are bad economically, socially, and for mental and physical health. Masks impair communication. They are uncomfortable. I would love not to wear them.
And I completely accept that this is a series of trade offs.
The reality is that we accept a small number of temporary inconveniences to avoid a lot of people dying, a long lasting de facto lockdown (which is what's happened in Arizona, Georgia and Sweden), and large numbers of people with serious lingering issues.
So Biden has a less than 5.5% lead in Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina and Arizona and Trump leads in Ohio. And of course Silver wrongly had an 85% chance Hillary would win in 2016 too just over a week before polling day.
If Trump wins all those states and holds his 2016 states he wins the EC
How can you say he had that wrong a week before? A 15% chance is still a chance and quite a decent one at that.
Trump won, if he failed to predict Trump would win the EC he got it wrong, he may not have got it massively wrong but he was still wrong
So Biden has a less than 5.5% lead in Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina and Arizona and Trump leads in Ohio. And of course Silver wrongly had an 85% chance Hillary would win in 2016 too just over a week before polling day.
If Trump wins all those states and holds his 2016 states he wins the EC
How can you say he had that wrong a week before? A 15% chance is still a chance and quite a decent one at that.
Trump won, if he failed to predict Trump would win the EC he got it wrong, he may not have got it massively wrong but he was still wrong
They gave him a 30% chance of winning in the final prediction. If you don't understand that then you have zero understanding of odds and statistical analysis. If they'd given him a 1 percent chance of winning i'd agree with you but they didn't and never did. They consistently said Trump is the underdog but he has a path.
So Biden has a less than 5.5% lead in Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina and Arizona and Trump leads in Ohio. And of course Silver wrongly had an 85% chance Hillary would win in 2016 too just over a week before polling day.
If Trump wins all those states and holds his 2016 states he wins the EC
Of course he does.
We don't disagree.
But right now, Biden is polling over 50% in the national polling. If he manages that, then - using the 538 numbers you posted - then he's going to be a 75% or so chance of the Presidency.
10,000 cases today in France, hardly any in Sweden. Which country has mandatory mask wearing ?
Maybe this is proof that Sumption, Hitchens, Toadmeister, etc, were right all along.
I was wondering what the consensus was on the Swedish approach now the dust has settled a little. It was ridiculed on here through most of our lockdown
Compare the deaths per million in sweden with its comparable neighbours' death rates.
The problem is that this is the wrong metric to use in the middle of an ongoing pandemic.
As far as I can see, most of the available evidence says that Sweden took a big upfront hit in terms of the death-toll, and has now pretty much reached herd immunity. Thus they have very few current cases and no increasing trend.
They may have made the wrong or right decision based on the data at the time to do this, if Neil Ferguson et-al had been correct about it needing 60% of the population to have had it to reach immunity, they would have had a huge deathtoll. As it is, it seems that 25-30% is enough for immunity (as evidenced by the fact that where-ever this virus crops up, it goes wild till it hits about 25% of the population, then starts fading away), so in hindsight they have lucked out to having the correct strategy.
This is all fairly straightforward to see in lots of publicly available date to people who can both read graphs and add up, unfortunately such people are badly under-represented in most governments. It explains a good deal (e.g. why London doesn't have much evidence for a second wave, and Manchester does - London was well on it's way to 25% by the time lockdown occurred, Manchester wasn't), and it fits pretty well with almost all the observable facts. (The lack of antibodies in populations you would expect to have them is a bit odd, but it looks increasingly likely that the explanation is that it's fairly common for the body to shift mild Covid infections via other immune responses without generating antibodies - we only test for anti-bodies because it's much easier than say fishing for T-cells)
The logical thing for us to do now is to dump most of the restrictions and follow the Swedish example - six months of life as normal apart from shielding for the vulnerable, and this would be over and done with.
Instead, our politicians are obviously intent on doubling down on failure, with no apparent endgame in sight, and perhaps even worse, almost no-one attempting to keep them to account. I've heard countless interviews where ministers have been accused of not locking down hard enough or fast enough, but hardly heard a single question asking "how exactly do you plan to get out of this mess?" or "is the increasing deathtoll for other untreated diseases not going to dwarf the Covid total?"
10,000 cases today in France, hardly any in Sweden. Which country has mandatory mask wearing ?
The one with the big tourism industry.
There are very few tourists in France. Just look throughout Europe where mask wearing is mandatory, cases are climbing hugely.
How anyone can defend mask wearing now is beyond me. Countries need to get back to social distancing, people feel too protected in masks and don’t distance.
There was a reason that the WHO didn’t recommend masks at the start of the pandemic. They don’t work because wearing one changes peoples behaviour and as they only offer very limited protection infections are rising. Forget laboratory tests of masks, look at the real world evidence. Sweden no masks very low cases, everywhere else with masks very high cases.
We realise you have a hard on for masks.
But the reality is that throughout this process, the empirical evidence for mask wearing has grown and grown. As in peer reviewed, scientific papers.
Now. You can choose to believe that Spain's spike in CV-19 cases was due to mask wearing rather than (say) re-opening nightclubs. But all that demonstrates is that you don't really care about the academic research, or indeed the data.
Does the data data support 7 year olds compulsorily wearing masks to school? Or people scowling at each other if they don’t wear them walking outside on the street?
Whether you like to admit it or not, there’s a social trade off to wearing face coverings. There are approx 2.8m deaths per year in the US and your paper cites 33k lives saved between June and Oct if 95% of people wear masks in public. So that’s saving excess deaths worth perhaps a week or two over the year?
Is that worth it really? Given the vast bulk of the lives saved are lives that would likely be lost this year or next anyway?
Is there evidence yet on what living in such a clinical germ free fashion is doing to immune systems, particularly of the young?
What if the Disease X of the next decade is a rhinovirus. It’s not impossible, until SARS coronaviruses were widely seen as a mere nuisance. But we’ve deprived a generation from acquiring natural immunity against the killer rhinovirus, because they spent their childhood avoiding all germs at all cost.
Not everyone that hates lockdowns, masks and the like is ignorant and thinks covid is caused by 5G, that it’s harmless or invented by Bill Gates. We are just looking with a slightly wider perspective at what we’re giving up now, and what we might be risking both socially, economically and medically in the years ahead.
I hate masks and lockdowns. They are bad economically, socially, and for mental and physical health. Masks impair communication. They are uncomfortable. I would love not to wear them.
And I completely accept that this is a series of trade offs.
The reality is that we accept a small number of temporary inconveniences to avoid a lot of people dying, a long lasting de facto lockdown (which is what's happened in Arizona, Georgia and Sweden), and large numbers of people with serious lingering issues.
#LongCovid is the final refuge of corona disaster mongers. I’m yet to see the compelling evidence that shows it justifies the ongoing restrictions. In fact the most recent studies indicate that more than half of the worst cases of those with lingering symptoms fully recover within 90 days. And this number might improve further.
I don’t wish to downplay that some younger people are going to have a rough time after being infected. There are some that will. Maybe even me. But I question whether this outweighs the aggregate health impact of continued lockdowns (both direct, and indirect from weaker long term economic growth).
10,000 cases today in France, hardly any in Sweden. Which country has mandatory mask wearing ?
The one with the big tourism industry.
There are very few tourists in France. Just look throughout Europe where mask wearing is mandatory, cases are climbing hugely.
How anyone can defend mask wearing now is beyond me. Countries need to get back to social distancing, people feel too protected in masks and don’t distance.
There was a reason that the WHO didn’t recommend masks at the start of the pandemic. They don’t work because wearing one changes peoples behaviour and as they only offer very limited protection infections are rising. Forget laboratory tests of masks, look at the real world evidence. Sweden no masks very low cases, everywhere else with masks very high cases.
We realise you have a hard on for masks.
But the reality is that throughout this process, the empirical evidence for mask wearing has grown and grown. As in peer reviewed, scientific papers.
Now. You can choose to believe that Spain's spike in CV-19 cases was due to mask wearing rather than (say) re-opening nightclubs. But all that demonstrates is that you don't really care about the academic research, or indeed the data.
Does the data data support 7 year olds compulsorily wearing masks to school? Or people scowling at each other if they don’t wear them walking outside on the street?
Whether you like to admit it or not, there’s a social trade off to wearing face coverings. There are approx 2.8m deaths per year in the US and your paper cites 33k lives saved between June and Oct if 95% of people wear masks in public. So that’s saving excess deaths worth perhaps a week or two over the year?
Is that worth it really? Given the vast bulk of the lives saved are lives that would likely be lost this year or next anyway?
Is there evidence yet on what living in such a clinical germ free fashion is doing to immune systems, particularly of the young?
What if the Disease X of the next decade is a rhinovirus. It’s not impossible, until SARS coronaviruses were widely seen as a mere nuisance. But we’ve deprived a generation from acquiring natural immunity against the killer rhinovirus, because they spent their childhood avoiding all germs at all cost.
Not everyone that hates lockdowns, masks and the like is ignorant and thinks covid is caused by 5G, that it’s harmless or invented by Bill Gates. We are just looking with a slightly wider perspective at what we’re giving up now, and what we might be risking both socially, economically and medically in the years ahead.
I hate masks and lockdowns. They are bad economically, socially, and for mental and physical health. Masks impair communication. They are uncomfortable. I would love not to wear them.
And I completely accept that this is a series of trade offs.
The reality is that we accept a small number of temporary inconveniences to avoid a lot of people dying, a long lasting de facto lockdown (which is what's happened in Arizona, Georgia and Sweden), and large numbers of people with serious lingering issues.
#LongCovid is the final refuge of corona disaster mongers. I’m yet to see the compelling evidence that shows it justifies the ongoing restrictions. In fact the most recent studies indicate that more than half of the worst cases of those with lingering symptoms fully recover within 90 days. And this number might improve further.
I don’t wish to downplay that some younger people are going to have a rough time after being infected. There are some that will. Maybe even me. But I question whether this outweighs the aggregate health impact of continued lockdowns (both direct, and indirect from weaker long term economic growth).
Here's the thing: this is something that needs a reasoned debate, but it also needs data.
And the "longcovid" story is not a new one invented by fearmongers. SeanT was reporting on long term side effects back in February. I know a number of people who have not fully recovered from it.
My view is that we should not seek "zero Covid", but that we should seek to manage it at a low level until a vaccine is available. This means we should ban the highest risk activities (nightclubs, karaoke clubs, concerts, indoor sporting events), and require people to wear masks on things like public transport.
Doing that, I believe, is enough to keep R at a relatively low level, while avoiding it running completely out of control.
The other thing that I think you missed is that places without formal lockdowns still have de facto ones. Sweden's economic performance is Q2 - if the PMIs are correct - will be the worst in Europe, and its unemployment continues to climb. If people are scared, they don't go out. It may not be a formal lockdown, but people aren't going about their normal life - instead working from home has become de facto.
My business is in Arizona. It was one of the the first to reopen in the US (which given I'm in the business of selling auto insurance, and I want people to get out and drive and buy new cars). But Arizona has been a bit of a disaster zone. Not i terms of deaths, but in terms of economic activity. Shopping malls are still deserted. Restaraunts are still closing. Driving activity and new auto purchases are down worse than in California.
So I think you've created a bit of a false dichotemy - between places that are thriving because there are no lockdowns, and places that are suffering because they have them.
So Biden has a less than 5.5% lead in Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina and Arizona and Trump leads in Ohio. And of course Silver wrongly had an 85% chance Hillary would win in 2016 too just over a week before polling day.
If Trump wins all those states and holds his 2016 states he wins the EC
How can you say he had that wrong a week before? A 15% chance is still a chance and quite a decent one at that.
Trump won, if he failed to predict Trump would win the EC he got it wrong, he may not have got it massively wrong but he was still wrong
You don't understand probability.
All he does is make probability assessments based on the poll average but if the poll average is wrong, as it was at the state level particularly in the Midwest in 2016, then he is also wrong
10,000 cases today in France, hardly any in Sweden. Which country has mandatory mask wearing ?
Maybe this is proof that Sumption, Hitchens, Toadmeister, etc, were right all along.
I was wondering what the consensus was on the Swedish approach now the dust has settled a little. It was ridiculed on here through most of our lockdown
Compare the deaths per million in sweden with its comparable neighbours' death rates.
The problem is that this is the wrong metric to use in the middle of an ongoing pandemic.
As far as I can see, most of the available evidence says that Sweden took a big upfront hit in terms of the death-toll, and has now pretty much reached herd immunity. Thus they have very few current cases and no increasing trend.
They may have made the wrong or right decision based on the data at the time to do this, if Neil Ferguson et-al had been correct about it needing 60% of the population to have had it to reach immunity, they would have had a huge deathtoll. As it is, it seems that 25-30% is enough for immunity (as evidenced by the fact that where-ever this virus crops up, it goes wild till it hits about 25% of the population, then starts fading away), so in hindsight they have lucked out to having the correct strategy.
This is all fairly straightforward to see in lots of publicly available date to people who can both read graphs and add up, unfortunately such people are badly under-represented in most governments. It explains a good deal (e.g. why London doesn't have much evidence for a second wave, and Manchester does - London was well on it's way to 25% by the time lockdown occurred, Manchester wasn't), and it fits pretty well with almost all the observable facts. (The lack of antibodies in populations you would expect to have them is a bit odd, but it looks increasingly likely that the explanation is that it's fairly common for the body to shift mild Covid infections via other immune responses without generating antibodies - we only test for anti-bodies because it's much easier than say fishing for T-cells)
The logical thing for us to do now is to dump most of the restrictions and follow the Swedish example - six months of life as normal apart from shielding for the vulnerable, and this would be over and done with.
Instead, our politicians are obviously intent on doubling down on failure, with no apparent endgame in sight, and perhaps even worse, almost no-one attempting to keep them to account. I've heard countless interviews where ministers have been accused of not locking down hard enough or fast enough, but hardly heard a single question asking "how exactly do you plan to get out of this mess?" or "is the increasing deathtoll for other untreated diseases not going to dwarf the Covid total?"
The reason that the virus stops at 20-25% is that as it goes wild, people stay home. Lockdowns happen because they hear ambulances and are scared.
So Biden has a less than 5.5% lead in Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina and Arizona and Trump leads in Ohio. And of course Silver wrongly had an 85% chance Hillary would win in 2016 too just over a week before polling day.
If Trump wins all those states and holds his 2016 states he wins the EC
How can you say he had that wrong a week before? A 15% chance is still a chance and quite a decent one at that.
Trump won, if he failed to predict Trump would win the EC he got it wrong, he may not have got it massively wrong but he was still wrong
They gave him a 30% chance of winning in the final prediction. If you don't understand that then you have zero understanding of odds and statistical analysis. If they'd given him a 1 percent chance of winning i'd agree with you but they didn't and never did. They consistently said Trump is the underdog but he has a path.
So what, whether they said he had a 1% chance or a 30% chance they still said it was more likely than not he would lose, he won, so on balance they were wrong
So Biden has a less than 5.5% lead in Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina and Arizona and Trump leads in Ohio. And of course Silver wrongly had an 85% chance Hillary would win in 2016 too just over a week before polling day.
If Trump wins all those states and holds his 2016 states he wins the EC
Of course he does.
We don't disagree.
But right now, Biden is polling over 50% in the national polling. If he manages that, then - using the 538 numbers you posted - then he's going to be a 75% or so chance of the Presidency.
I have just posted a poll with Biden on just 43%, Rasmussen this week had Biden on 48%, the Hill has Biden on 47%, Emerson on 49%.
He might average just above 50% but there are plenty of polls showing him under 50% nationally still
The reality is that we accept a small number of temporary inconveniences to avoid a lot of people dying, a long lasting de facto lockdown (which is what's happened in Arizona, Georgia and Sweden), and large numbers of people with serious lingering issues.
I don't know about Arizona or Georgia, but Sweden is much less locked down than the UK, and crucially it's almost entirely voluntary - individuals can chose to take a level of risk they feel comfortable with. That rather different from here where Boris is for instance threatening me with the police for the terrible outrage of seeing my godson who happens to be in a family of six.
10,000 cases today in France, hardly any in Sweden. Which country has mandatory mask wearing ?
Maybe this is proof that Sumption, Hitchens, Toadmeister, etc, were right all along.
I was wondering what the consensus was on the Swedish approach now the dust has settled a little. It was ridiculed on here through most of our lockdown
Compare the deaths per million in sweden with its comparable neighbours' death rates.
The problem is that this is the wrong metric to use in the middle of an ongoing pandemic.
As far as I can see, most of the available evidence says that Sweden took a big upfront hit in terms of the death-toll, and has now pretty much reached herd immunity. Thus they have very few current cases and no increasing trend.
They may have made the wrong or right decision based on the data at the time to do this, if Neil Ferguson et-al had been correct about it needing 60% of the population to have had it to reach immunity, they would have had a huge deathtoll. As it is, it seems that 25-30% is enough for immunity (as evidenced by the fact that where-ever this virus crops up, it goes wild till it hits about 25% of the population, then starts fading away), so in hindsight they have lucked out to having the correct strategy.
This is all fairly straightforward to see in lots of publicly available date to people who can both read graphs and add up, unfortunately such people are badly under-represented in most governments. It explains a good deal (e.g. why London doesn't have much evidence for a second wave, and Manchester does - London was well on it's way to 25% by the time lockdown occurred, Manchester wasn't), and it fits pretty well with almost all the observable facts. (The lack of antibodies in populations you would expect to have them is a bit odd, but it looks increasingly likely that the explanation is that it's fairly common for the body to shift mild Covid infections via other immune responses without generating antibodies - we only test for anti-bodies because it's much easier than say fishing for T-cells)
The logical thing for us to do now is to dump most of the restrictions and follow the Swedish example - six months of life as normal apart from shielding for the vulnerable, and this would be over and done with.
Instead, our politicians are obviously intent on doubling down on failure, with no apparent endgame in sight, and perhaps even worse, almost no-one attempting to keep them to account. I've heard countless interviews where ministers have been accused of not locking down hard enough or fast enough, but hardly heard a single question asking "how exactly do you plan to get out of this mess?" or "is the increasing deathtoll for other untreated diseases not going to dwarf the Covid total?"
The reason that the virus stops at 20-25% is that as it goes wild, people stay home. Lockdowns happen because they hear ambulances and are scared.
So why does London have so few cases now, compared to the North, other than that we Locked down when there was high prevalence in London and relatively little in the North?
So Biden has a less than 5.5% lead in Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina and Arizona and Trump leads in Ohio. And of course Silver wrongly had an 85% chance Hillary would win in 2016 too just over a week before polling day.
If Trump wins all those states and holds his 2016 states he wins the EC
Of course he does.
We don't disagree.
But right now, Biden is polling over 50% in the national polling. If he manages that, then - using the 538 numbers you posted - then he's going to be a 75% or so chance of the Presidency.
I have just posted a poll with Biden on just 43%, Rasmussen this week had Biden on 48%, the Hill has Biden on 47%, Emerson on 49%.
He might average just above 50% but there are plenty of polls showing him under 50% nationally still
You just posted a stale poll, nearly a month out of date.
Why was did pollster keep his/her light under a bushel? Could it be that it was done for internal consumption by {fill in the blank} and then released to give a bit of aid & comfort to {fill in the blank}?
IF this scenario is true, then suspect paymaster was an independent expenditure / super-PAC on behalf of Trumpsky or RNC.
10,000 cases today in France, hardly any in Sweden. Which country has mandatory mask wearing ?
Maybe this is proof that Sumption, Hitchens, Toadmeister, etc, were right all along.
I was wondering what the consensus was on the Swedish approach now the dust has settled a little. It was ridiculed on here through most of our lockdown
Compare the deaths per million in sweden with its comparable neighbours' death rates.
The problem is that this is the wrong metric to use in the middle of an ongoing pandemic.
As far as I can see, most of the available evidence says that Sweden took a big upfront hit in terms of the death-toll, and has now pretty much reached herd immunity. Thus they have very few current cases and no increasing trend.
They may have made the wrong or right decision based on the data at the time to do this, if Neil Ferguson et-al had been correct about it needing 60% of the population to have had it to reach immunity, they would have had a huge deathtoll. As it is, it seems that 25-30% is enough for immunity (as evidenced by the fact that where-ever this virus crops up, it goes wild till it hits about 25% of the population, then starts fading away), so in hindsight they have lucked out to having the correct strategy.
This is all fairly straightforward to see in lots of publicly available date to people who can both read graphs and add up, unfortunately such people are badly under-represented in most governments. It explains a good deal (e.g. why London doesn't have much evidence for a second wave, and Manchester does - London was well on it's way to 25% by the time lockdown occurred, Manchester wasn't), and it fits pretty well with almost all the observable facts. (The lack of antibodies in populations you would expect to have them is a bit odd, but it looks increasingly likely that the explanation is that it's fairly common for the body to shift mild Covid infections via other immune responses without generating antibodies - we only test for anti-bodies because it's much easier than say fishing for T-cells)
The logical thing for us to do now is to dump most of the restrictions and follow the Swedish example - six months of life as normal apart from shielding for the vulnerable, and this would be over and done with.
Instead, our politicians are obviously intent on doubling down on failure, with no apparent endgame in sight, and perhaps even worse, almost no-one attempting to keep them to account. I've heard countless interviews where ministers have been accused of not locking down hard enough or fast enough, but hardly heard a single question asking "how exactly do you plan to get out of this mess?" or "is the increasing deathtoll for other untreated diseases not going to dwarf the Covid total?"
The reason that the virus stops at 20-25% is that as it goes wild, people stay home. Lockdowns happen because they hear ambulances and are scared.
So why does London have so few cases now, compared to the North, other than that we Locked down when there was high prevalence in London and relatively little in the North?
A nice objective way to compare the responses - crucially what people actually do, rather than what the government tells them they should do - is to look at the Apple Mobility data.
Put in London, then try comparing that to somewhere like Bradford, and you can see how much bigger the ongoing change in behaviour in London is.
The transit data is probably also a reasonable proxy for other high-risk behaviour, although you need to be a bit careful comparing places with different climates.
OK, let's accept for the sake of argument that the French Socialists have nothing to do with the Spanish Socialists and the Dutch Liberals have nothing to do with the German Liberals.
Do voters in Northern Ireland not have a democracy?
No, not really.
Every Norn Iron MP could fit in a minibus. Even if every single one of them agreed on something they wanted changed, their 18 votes would count for little.
Wales, Scotland and England at least have Labour and Conservative MPs so they have a chance to influence things, but none of the mainland parties organise in NI.
10,000 cases today in France, hardly any in Sweden. Which country has mandatory mask wearing ?
Maybe this is proof that Sumption, Hitchens, Toadmeister, etc, were right all along.
I was wondering what the consensus was on the Swedish approach now the dust has settled a little. It was ridiculed on here through most of our lockdown
Compare the deaths per million in sweden with its comparable neighbours' death rates.
The problem is that this is the wrong metric to use in the middle of an ongoing pandemic.
As far as I can see, most of the available evidence says that Sweden took a big upfront hit in terms of the death-toll, and has now pretty much reached herd immunity. Thus they have very few current cases and no increasing trend.
They may have made the wrong or right decision based on the data at the time to do this, if Neil Ferguson et-al had been correct about it needing 60% of the population to have had it to reach immunity, they would have had a huge deathtoll. As it is, it seems that 25-30% is enough for immunity (as evidenced by the fact that where-ever this virus crops up, it goes wild till it hits about 25% of the population, then starts fading away), so in hindsight they have lucked out to having the correct strategy.
This is all fairly straightforward to see in lots of publicly available date to people who can both read graphs and add up, unfortunately such people are badly under-represented in most governments. It explains a good deal (e.g. why London doesn't have much evidence for a second wave, and Manchester does - London was well on it's way to 25% by the time lockdown occurred, Manchester wasn't), and it fits pretty well with almost all the observable facts. (The lack of antibodies in populations you would expect to have them is a bit odd, but it looks increasingly likely that the explanation is that it's fairly common for the body to shift mild Covid infections via other immune responses without generating antibodies - we only test for anti-bodies because it's much easier than say fishing for T-cells)
The logical thing for us to do now is to dump most of the restrictions and follow the Swedish example - six months of life as normal apart from shielding for the vulnerable, and this would be over and done with.
Instead, our politicians are obviously intent on doubling down on failure, with no apparent endgame in sight, and perhaps even worse, almost no-one attempting to keep them to account. I've heard countless interviews where ministers have been accused of not locking down hard enough or fast enough, but hardly heard a single question asking "how exactly do you plan to get out of this mess?" or "is the increasing deathtoll for other untreated diseases not going to dwarf the Covid total?"
The reason that the virus stops at 20-25% is that as it goes wild, people stay home. Lockdowns happen because they hear ambulances and are scared.
So why does London have so few cases now, compared to the North, other than that we Locked down when there was high prevalence in London and relatively little in the North?
A nice objective way to compare the responses - crucially what people actually do, rather than what the government tells them they should do - is to look at the Apple Mobility data.
Put in London, then try comparing that to somewhere like Bradford, and you can see how much bigger the ongoing change in behaviour in London is.
The transit data is probably also a reasonable proxy for other high-risk behaviour, although you need to be a bit careful comparing places with different climates.
That's fascinating data. Paris, for example, is seeing public transport usage running at 32% above baseline! London, by contrast has it at -19%, Stockholm is at +1%.
What a mess in the hand egg...two "national anthems", one team refuses to come out for.either, fans booing when both teams finally on the field to link arms as a sign of unity.
Greetings fellow insomniacs, overseas Brexiteers and Russian trolls!
Sweden is not so different to other EU countries as it is sometimes made out to be.
Schools stayed open, but post aged 16 and Universities are heavily distance learning. There is extensive working from home, smaller households, bans on public gatherings, and no policy to create herd immunity. This twitter thread is worth reading in its entirety.
Whether formal or informal measures are used, people do not blithely go about normal business in the middle of a pandemic. I suspect that in Sweden much of the current lull is due to the outdoor summer living that is part of the Nordic lifestyle, and dispersion to summer homes.
There is no magic bullet or formula that preserves an economy from impact. The closest appears to be Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and China itself.
Greetings fellow insomniacs, overseas Brexiteers and Russian trolls!
Sweden is not so different to other EU countries as it is sometimes made out to be.
Schools stayed open, but post aged 16 and Universities are heavily distance learning. There is extensive working from home, smaller households, bans on public gatherings, and no policy to create herd immunity. This twitter thread is worth reading in its entirety.
Whether formal or informal measures are used, people do not blithely go about normal business in the middle of a pandemic. I suspect that in Sweden much of the current lull is due to the outdoor summer living that is part of the Nordic lifestyle, and dispersion to summer homes.
There is no magic bullet or formula that preserves an economy from impact. The closest appears to be Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and China itself.
I think the point that @moonshine and @theProle are making, though, is that it is better for individuals to make the decisions. So, sure, the overall experience might be no different, but in Sweden people are allowed to make up their own minds.
And I really get that. I don't 100% agree, because I think that a few small mandatory changes (no karaoke bars) can make a massive difference. But I get it.
Great article @AlastairMeeks, though I think that you miss out a few of the sub-tribes of Brexit voters, in particular those who actively oppose Free Trade and want a national policy of onshoring and protective tariffs. The sub-tribe of immigrants who wanted easier access for their friends and family to move to the UK too. I have seen this in Indian doctors, Filipino nurses and Bangladeshi curry house owners.
It was never a coherent coalition, but the marketing to different groups with fundamentally opposed objectives was Cummings masterstroke to win. It is inevitable that the Leave coalition will fall apart fairly quickly when Brexit is felt to be done (it doesn't feel at present as if we have left yet, even though we have officially Brexited)
In many ways the Leave coalition will suffer the same problems and fate of my own Lib Dem party post 2010. By gaining power, a choice had to be made that pisses off the majority of supporters, with little sign of that being reconciled even a decade later. We have gained an incoherent future, not lancing the boil so much as rubbing salt in the wounds.
I do hope we see @AlastairMeeks back below the line. I miss his wit and insights.
Greetings fellow insomniacs, overseas Brexiteers and Russian trolls!
Sweden is not so different to other EU countries as it is sometimes made out to be.
Schools stayed open, but post aged 16 and Universities are heavily distance learning. There is extensive working from home, smaller households, bans on public gatherings, and no policy to create herd immunity. This twitter thread is worth reading in its entirety.
Whether formal or informal measures are used, people do not blithely go about normal business in the middle of a pandemic. I suspect that in Sweden much of the current lull is due to the outdoor summer living that is part of the Nordic lifestyle, and dispersion to summer homes.
There is no magic bullet or formula that preserves an economy from impact. The closest appears to be Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and China itself.
I think the point that @moonshine and @theProle are making, though, is that it is better for individuals to make the decisions. So, sure, the overall experience might be no different, but in Sweden people are allowed to make up their own minds.
And I really get that. I don't 100% agree, because I think that a few small mandatory changes (no karaoke bars) can make a massive difference. But I get it.
The problem though is that those freedoms impact on others freedoms. Sweden is a polite society where social cohesion and solidarity are prised.
I see varying degrees of compliance in Leicester, but vote with my feet by not patronising places that acquiesce to rule breaking customers and staff.
Most of the measures to restrict spread are fairly modest. Reduced crowding and face masks are much better than places being closed.
The problem in my own workplace is that for cost control reasons, British Hospitals are designed as high volume, crowded places. My dept is running at 50% capacity due to social distancing and PPE.
I think Sweden is just riding the same rollercoaster as the rest of us. Currently it looks quiet, but it did here and Italy a month ago too.
Greetings fellow insomniacs, overseas Brexiteers and Russian trolls!
Sweden is not so different to other EU countries as it is sometimes made out to be.
Schools stayed open, but post aged 16 and Universities are heavily distance learning. There is extensive working from home, smaller households, bans on public gatherings, and no policy to create herd immunity. This twitter thread is worth reading in its entirety.
Whether formal or informal measures are used, people do not blithely go about normal business in the middle of a pandemic. I suspect that in Sweden much of the current lull is due to the outdoor summer living that is part of the Nordic lifestyle, and dispersion to summer homes.
There is no magic bullet or formula that preserves an economy from impact. The closest appears to be Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and China itself.
I think the point that @moonshine and @theProle are making, though, is that it is better for individuals to make the decisions. So, sure, the overall experience might be no different, but in Sweden people are allowed to make up their own minds.
And I really get that. I don't 100% agree, because I think that a few small mandatory changes (no karaoke bars) can make a massive difference. But I get it.
The problem though is that those freedoms impact on others freedoms. Sweden is a polite society where social cohesion and solidarity are prised.
I see varying degrees of compliance in Leicester, but vote with my feet by not patronising places that acquiesce to rule breaking customers and staff.
Most of the measures to restrict spread are fairly modest. Reduced crowding and face masks are much better than places being closed.
The problem in my own workplace is that for cost control reasons, British Hospitals are designed as high volume, crowded places. My dept is running at 50% capacity due to social distancing and PPE.
I think Sweden is just riding the same rollercoaster as the rest of us. Currently it looks quiet, but it did here and Italy a month ago too.
Well, the summer holidays just ended in Sweden, and I suspect that a fair few Swedes also went to Spain for the summer holidays, so you may well be right.
Solidarity against anti-semitism. Some fash were highlighting Jewish-sounding names by putting the brackets around them so voluntarily doing it to one’s own name is a sort of “no, I’m Spartacus!” response.
An interesting piece from the CDC. I can only speculate as to why our own world beating Track and Trace system has not published something on the issue. I am tempted by an FoI request.
Greetings fellow insomniacs, overseas Brexiteers and Russian trolls!
Sweden is not so different to other EU countries as it is sometimes made out to be.
Schools stayed open, but post aged 16 and Universities are heavily distance learning. There is extensive working from home, smaller households, bans on public gatherings, and no policy to create herd immunity. This twitter thread is worth reading in its entirety.
Whether formal or informal measures are used, people do not blithely go about normal business in the middle of a pandemic. I suspect that in Sweden much of the current lull is due to the outdoor summer living that is part of the Nordic lifestyle, and dispersion to summer homes.
There is no magic bullet or formula that preserves an economy from impact. The closest appears to be Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and China itself.
I think the point that @moonshine and @theProle are making, though, is that it is better for individuals to make the decisions. So, sure, the overall experience might be no different, but in Sweden people are allowed to make up their own minds.
And I really get that. I don't 100% agree, because I think that a few small mandatory changes (no karaoke bars) can make a massive difference. But I get it.
Yes, the path of least resistance is probably to do forced *business* closures (fairly compensated) for the highest risk places, but leave individual behaviour unlegislated.
During the high-effort periods in Japan they've mostly been asking businesses to close rather than recommending them (although I think "ask" contains varying degrees of concealed coercion); The problem with this is that the responsible places all get driven out of business, and only the scumbags survive.
So Biden has a less than 5.5% lead in Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina and Arizona and Trump leads in Ohio. And of course Silver wrongly had an 85% chance Hillary would win in 2016 too just over a week before polling day.
If Trump wins all those states and holds his 2016 states he wins the EC
How can you say he had that wrong a week before? A 15% chance is still a chance and quite a decent one at that.
Trump won, if he failed to predict Trump would win the EC he got it wrong, he may not have got it massively wrong but he was still wrong
They gave him a 30% chance of winning in the final prediction. If you don't understand that then you have zero understanding of odds and statistical analysis. If they'd given him a 1 percent chance of winning i'd agree with you but they didn't and never did. They consistently said Trump is the underdog but he has a path.
So what, whether they said he had a 1% chance or a 30% chance they still said it was more likely than not he would lose, he won, so on balance they were wrong
So lets get this straight. You're at the horse races, and the a horse at 7-1 comes in beating the favourite. You then go up to the bookmaker and say "well you've screwed that up. That horse should've been favourite because it's just won"?!
So Biden has a less than 5.5% lead in Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina and Arizona and Trump leads in Ohio. And of course Silver wrongly had an 85% chance Hillary would win in 2016 too just over a week before polling day.
If Trump wins all those states and holds his 2016 states he wins the EC
How can you say he had that wrong a week before? A 15% chance is still a chance and quite a decent one at that.
Trump won, if he failed to predict Trump would win the EC he got it wrong, he may not have got it massively wrong but he was still wrong
They gave him a 30% chance of winning in the final prediction. If you don't understand that then you have zero understanding of odds and statistical analysis. If they'd given him a 1 percent chance of winning i'd agree with you but they didn't and never did. They consistently said Trump is the underdog but he has a path.
So what, whether they said he had a 1% chance or a 30% chance they still said it was more likely than not he would lose, he won, so on balance they were wrong
So lets get this straight. You're at the horse races, and the a horse at 7-1 comes in beating the favourite. You then go up to the bookmaker and say "well you've screwed that up. That horse should've been favourite because it's just won"?!
Probability is a really hard concept to understand though. People think of things either as 1 or 0, they happen or they don't. When the successful gambler or trader thinks "this is a two-in-three shot" or a "one-in-twelve".
Superforcasters is a really excellent book about this.
Great predictors always think in terms of likelihoods and are always changing their mind. Terrible predictors have a theory, and look for evidence to support it, never changing their forecasts.
Re Diana Rigg, I've been trying to get round to watching On Her Majesty's Secret Service for about 20 years. They don't show it on TV very often.
It's a very weird film - sort of a mixture of a very camp Bond and a Carry On. I can see why it was the only time they tried that formula.
Yeah, it's hard to say exactly why, but there's always been a lot of resistance to OHMSS...
Lazenby! He really is bad. So bad, that when Bond enters Blofeld's lair incognito as Sir Hilary, he is voiced over by George Baker. Rigg, Savalas, the story and the locations are all fine though
WP says: Critical reviews upon release were mixed, but the film's reputation has improved greatly over time and is now regarded as one of the strongest entries in the series. Along with 2006's Casino Royale, it is often considered one of the film series' most faithful adaptations of an Ian Fleming novel.[3]
An interesting piece from the CDC. I can only speculate as to why our own world beating Track and Trace system has not published something on the issue. I am tempted by an FoI request.
A key point here is that the survey didn’t differentiate between indoor and outdoor dining. Indoor dining - sitting down in an enclosed air conditioned space with lots of others for an extended period of time - has obvious similarities with other known super spreading hotspots like airplanes and cruise ships. Dining outdoors much less so.
10,000 cases today in France, hardly any in Sweden. Which country has mandatory mask wearing ?
Maybe this is proof that Sumption, Hitchens, Toadmeister, etc, were right all along.
I was wondering what the consensus was on the Swedish approach now the dust has settled a little. It was ridiculed on here through most of our lockdown
Compare the deaths per million in sweden with its comparable neighbours' death rates.
The problem is that this is the wrong metric to use in the middle of an ongoing pandemic.
As far as I can see, most of the available evidence says that Sweden took a big upfront hit in terms of the death-toll, and has now pretty much reached herd immunity. Thus they have very few current cases and no increasing trend.
They may have made the wrong or right decision based on the data at the time to do this, if Neil Ferguson et-al had been correct about it needing 60% of the population to have had it to reach immunity, they would have had a huge deathtoll. As it is, it seems that 25-30% is enough for immunity (as evidenced by the fact that where-ever this virus crops up, it goes wild till it hits about 25% of the population, then starts fading away), so in hindsight they have lucked out to having the correct strategy.
This is all fairly straightforward to see in lots of publicly available date to people who can both read graphs and add up, unfortunately such people are badly under-represented in most governments. It explains a good deal (e.g. why London doesn't have much evidence for a second wave, and Manchester does - London was well on it's way to 25% by the time lockdown occurred, Manchester wasn't), and it fits pretty well with almost all the observable facts. (The lack of antibodies in populations you would expect to have them is a bit odd, but it looks increasingly likely that the explanation is that it's fairly common for the body to shift mild Covid infections via other immune responses without generating antibodies - we only test for anti-bodies because it's much easier than say fishing for T-cells)
The logical thing for us to do now is to dump most of the restrictions and follow the Swedish example - six months of life as normal apart from shielding for the vulnerable, and this would be over and done with.
Instead, our politicians are obviously intent on doubling down on failure, with no apparent endgame in sight, and perhaps even worse, almost no-one attempting to keep them to account. I've heard countless interviews where ministers have been accused of not locking down hard enough or fast enough, but hardly heard a single question asking "how exactly do you plan to get out of this mess?" or "is the increasing deathtoll for other untreated diseases not going to dwarf the Covid total?"
The reason that the virus stops at 20-25% is that as it goes wild, people stay home. Lockdowns happen because they hear ambulances and are scared.
An assertion without evidence. At its peak in London, there were plenty of media stories about crowded parks, illegal parties and raves, and the rest.
Great article @AlastairMeeks, though I think that you miss out a few of the sub-tribes of Brexit voters, in particular those who actively oppose Free Trade and want a national policy of onshoring and protective tariffs. The sub-tribe of immigrants who wanted easier access for their friends and family to move to the UK too. I have seen this in Indian doctors, Filipino nurses and Bangladeshi curry house owners.
It was never a coherent coalition, but the marketing to different groups with fundamentally opposed objectives was Cummings masterstroke to win. It is inevitable that the Leave coalition will fall apart fairly quickly when Brexit is felt to be done (it doesn't feel at present as if we have left yet, even though we have officially Brexited)
In many ways the Leave coalition will suffer the same problems and fate of my own Lib Dem party post 2010. By gaining power, a choice had to be made that pisses off the majority of supporters, with little sign of that being reconciled even a decade later. We have gained an incoherent future, not lancing the boil so much as rubbing salt in the wounds.
I do hope we see @AlastairMeeks back below the line. I miss his wit and insights.
Ukrainian church leader who called Covid-19 'God's punishment' for same-sex marriage tests positive for virus
If he'd worked hard to prevent same sex marriages, he would have been spared. CV19 was God's way of punishing him for not fighting hard enough against them.
10,000 cases today in France, hardly any in Sweden. Which country has mandatory mask wearing ?
Maybe this is proof that Sumption, Hitchens, Toadmeister, etc, were right all along.
I was wondering what the consensus was on the Swedish approach now the dust has settled a little. It was ridiculed on here through most of our lockdown
Compare the deaths per million in sweden with its comparable neighbours' death rates.
The problem is that this is the wrong metric to use in the middle of an ongoing pandemic.
As far as I can see, most of the available evidence says that Sweden took a big upfront hit in terms of the death-toll, and has now pretty much reached herd immunity. Thus they have very few current cases and no increasing trend.
They may have made the wrong or right decision based on the data at the time to do this, if Neil Ferguson et-al had been correct about it needing 60% of the population to have had it to reach immunity, they would have had a huge deathtoll. As it is, it seems that 25-30% is enough for immunity (as evidenced by the fact that where-ever this virus crops up, it goes wild till it hits about 25% of the population, then starts fading away), so in hindsight they have lucked out to having the correct strategy.
This is all fairly straightforward to see in lots of publicly available date to people who can both read graphs and add up, unfortunately such people are badly under-represented in most governments. It explains a good deal (e.g. why London doesn't have much evidence for a second wave, and Manchester does - London was well on it's way to 25% by the time lockdown occurred, Manchester wasn't), and it fits pretty well with almost all the observable facts. (The lack of antibodies in populations you would expect to have them is a bit odd, but it looks increasingly likely that the explanation is that it's fairly common for the body to shift mild Covid infections via other immune responses without generating antibodies - we only test for anti-bodies because it's much easier than say fishing for T-cells)
The logical thing for us to do now is to dump most of the restrictions and follow the Swedish example - six months of life as normal apart from shielding for the vulnerable, and this would be over and done with.
Instead, our politicians are obviously intent on doubling down on failure, with no apparent endgame in sight, and perhaps even worse, almost no-one attempting to keep them to account. I've heard countless interviews where ministers have been accused of not locking down hard enough or fast enough, but hardly heard a single question asking "how exactly do you plan to get out of this mess?" or "is the increasing deathtoll for other untreated diseases not going to dwarf the Covid total?"
The reason that the virus stops at 20-25% is that as it goes wild, people stay home. Lockdowns happen because they hear ambulances and are scared.
An assertion without evidence. At its peak in London, there were plenty of media stories about crowded parks, illegal parties and raves, and the rest.
That's a fair comment.
But can I point you to @edmundintokyo's link to the Apple mobility data. Arizona saw had a lockdown that was reversed in early May. Activity - according to Apple - renewed as people went back about their day-to-day business.
But then as CV19 cases rose, it dropped again. Indeed, public transport usage in Arizona is doing worse now than in California.
People react to increased risk. If you hear sirens, you stay home.
An interesting piece from the CDC. I can only speculate as to why our own world beating Track and Trace system has not published something on the issue. I am tempted by an FoI request.
A key point here is that the survey didn’t differentiate between indoor and outdoor dining. Indoor dining - sitting down in an enclosed air conditioned space with lots of others for an extended period of time - has obvious similarities with other known super spreading hotspots like airplanes and cruise ships. Dining outdoors much less so.
Plenty of outdoor crowding causes the spread to spike: funerals, football matches, Cheltenham festival etc.
Just as dangerous and I won't go near either indoor or outdoor dining.
We are likely to be on No Deal WTO terms by January, agreed.
However ironically free trade Leavers may find their best hope of reaching their EEA promised land lies with a PM Starmer after the next election who would surely accept an EEA style trade deal with the EU, Boris' coalition would see that as a betrayal so the Tories are now committed to hard Brexit for a generation
If the will of the people turns towards a less extreme relationship with the EU that is what the next government will strive for. Cummings master plan can be unpicked quite quickly once power has been transferred to the grown-ups.
Therein lies the beauty of Parliamentary sovereignty. If you don't like something, you can vote in a new lot and they can change the law.
Question is, if you don't like an EU law, how do you change it? Who do you vote for?
The democratic deficit at the heart of the EU hasn't gone away.
You can't vote in a new lot, because you only control one MP. The best you can do is vote in a new representative for your particular area, and hope that other people in other areas also vote in like-minded people, and they get together and change the law.
This also works for EU laws.
It does not.
In the UK with have UK parties debating the UK issues on our UK news channels and getting watched and then voted on by the voters. We also have a good voting system that ensures every area of the UK is represented by their most popular party in that area. Our MPs get together and can pass, change or repeal any law. Change of government happens at the ballot box.
In the EU none of that is true. There are no real EU parties - yes there exists EU labels that badge on existing national parties but its not the same thing. The EU news isn't debated on EU news channels. They also have a dodgy voting system that takes power away from the voters and towards post-election political horsetrading. MEPs lack the power to pass, change or repeal any law they want to.
OK, let's accept for the sake of argument that the French Socialists have nothing to do with the Spanish Socialists and the Dutch Liberals have nothing to do with the German Liberals.
Do voters in Northern Ireland not have a democracy?
They do, though they're definitely unique to the rest of the UK.
But if the voters of Northern Ireland dislike any UK law, lets say the NI Protocol of the EU Withdrawal Act as an example, and then the MPs representing Northern Ireland constituencies work with a majority of MPs across the UK and vote to repeal the law then the law is gone. That is democracy.
If the voters of Northern Ireland want a new law and then convince a majority of MPs from across the country to back it then it becomes the law. That is democracy.
Does the same thing happen with MEPs? If a majority of MEPs vote to remove a law does it go? Can an MEP introduce a proposed new law and see it become the law because a majority of MEPs backed it?
No, because law changes aren't simply decided by the Parliament. The European Parliament is not sovereign like ours is.
How do you feel about the Internal Market bill giving Ministers the power to change/override U.K. law without reference to Parliament and without possibility of judicial review?
It is subject to UK law and if Parliament isn't happy with it then Parliament can override it and take the power it has given to Ministers back off them.
That is highly debatable. Perhaps some legal experts might like to comment. Once Parliament has given powers to ministers to act unilaterally it becomes very difficult to take them back. Not least because the Executive controls the legislative timetable and would have no interest in allowing it.
And without the possibility of judicial review there is also no ability for the courts to rule that ministers are acting contrary to Parliaments intention when ceding the powers.
It’s an Enabling Act in all but name. A massive power grab to the detriment of Parliament under the cover of “delivering Brexit and safeguarding the Union”.
Just a reminder, Philip claims to be a libertarian...
An interesting piece from the CDC. I can only speculate as to why our own world beating Track and Trace system has not published something on the issue. I am tempted by an FoI request.
A key point here is that the survey didn’t differentiate between indoor and outdoor dining. Indoor dining - sitting down in an enclosed air conditioned space with lots of others for an extended period of time - has obvious similarities with other known super spreading hotspots like airplanes and cruise ships. Dining outdoors much less so.
Plenty of outdoor crowding causes the spread to spike: funerals, football matches, Cheltenham festival etc.
Just as dangerous and I won't go near either indoor or outdoor dining.
Those examples, of course, include people spending time in crowded enclosed spaces. In the same way you can get COVID on the motorway - in the service stations.
Greetings fellow insomniacs, overseas Brexiteers and Russian trolls!
Sweden is not so different to other EU countries as it is sometimes made out to be.
Schools stayed open, but post aged 16 and Universities are heavily distance learning. There is extensive working from home, smaller households, bans on public gatherings, and no policy to create herd immunity. This twitter thread is worth reading in its entirety.
Whether formal or informal measures are used, people do not blithely go about normal business in the middle of a pandemic. I suspect that in Sweden much of the current lull is due to the outdoor summer living that is part of the Nordic lifestyle, and dispersion to summer homes.
There is no magic bullet or formula that preserves an economy from impact. The closest appears to be Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and China itself.
I think the point that @moonshine and @theProle are making, though, is that it is better for individuals to make the decisions. So, sure, the overall experience might be no different, but in Sweden people are allowed to make up their own minds.
And I really get that. I don't 100% agree, because I think that a few small mandatory changes (no karaoke bars) can make a massive difference. But I get it.
The problem though is that those freedoms impact on others freedoms. Sweden is a polite society where social cohesion and solidarity are prised.
I see varying degrees of compliance in Leicester, but vote with my feet by not patronising places that acquiesce to rule breaking customers and staff.
Most of the measures to restrict spread are fairly modest. Reduced crowding and face masks are much better than places being closed.
The problem in my own workplace is that for cost control reasons, British Hospitals are designed as high volume, crowded places. My dept is running at 50% capacity due to social distancing and PPE...
That is true of many state schools, too. Which are back to running at more or less full capacity. We’ll discover fairly soon whether that is, as Boris assures us, ‘completely safe’.
So Biden has a less than 5.5% lead in Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina and Arizona and Trump leads in Ohio. And of course Silver wrongly had an 85% chance Hillary would win in 2016 too just over a week before polling day.
If Trump wins all those states and holds his 2016 states he wins the EC
How can you say he had that wrong a week before? A 15% chance is still a chance and quite a decent one at that.
Trump won, if he failed to predict Trump would win the EC he got it wrong, he may not have got it massively wrong but he was still wrong
They gave him a 30% chance of winning in the final prediction. If you don't understand that then you have zero understanding of odds and statistical analysis. If they'd given him a 1 percent chance of winning i'd agree with you but they didn't and never did. They consistently said Trump is the underdog but he has a path.
So what, whether they said he had a 1% chance or a 30% chance they still said it was more likely than not he would lose, he won, so on balance they were wrong
How on earth can you post on a betting site many times each day for years, and have not yet understood that a 30% probability comes in quite often?
That is really a very ignorant post for this forum.
Greetings fellow insomniacs, overseas Brexiteers and Russian trolls!
Sweden is not so different to other EU countries as it is sometimes made out to be.
Schools stayed open, but post aged 16 and Universities are heavily distance learning. There is extensive working from home, smaller households, bans on public gatherings, and no policy to create herd immunity. This twitter thread is worth reading in its entirety.
Whether formal or informal measures are used, people do not blithely go about normal business in the middle of a pandemic. I suspect that in Sweden much of the current lull is due to the outdoor summer living that is part of the Nordic lifestyle, and dispersion to summer homes.
There is no magic bullet or formula that preserves an economy from impact. The closest appears to be Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and China itself.
Does Sweden not also have a surprisingly high proportion of single person households ? It is hard making fair comparisons between countries particular policies, as the confounding factors are numerous.
Greetings fellow insomniacs, overseas Brexiteers and Russian trolls!
Sweden is not so different to other EU countries as it is sometimes made out to be.
Schools stayed open, but post aged 16 and Universities are heavily distance learning. There is extensive working from home, smaller households, bans on public gatherings, and no policy to create herd immunity. This twitter thread is worth reading in its entirety.
Whether formal or informal measures are used, people do not blithely go about normal business in the middle of a pandemic. I suspect that in Sweden much of the current lull is due to the outdoor summer living that is part of the Nordic lifestyle, and dispersion to summer homes.
There is no magic bullet or formula that preserves an economy from impact. The closest appears to be Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and China itself.
I think the point that @moonshine and @theProle are making, though, is that it is better for individuals to make the decisions. So, sure, the overall experience might be no different, but in Sweden people are allowed to make up their own minds.
And I really get that. I don't 100% agree, because I think that a few small mandatory changes (no karaoke bars) can make a massive difference. But I get it.
The problem though is that those freedoms impact on others freedoms. Sweden is a polite society where social cohesion and solidarity are prised.
I see varying degrees of compliance in Leicester, but vote with my feet by not patronising places that acquiesce to rule breaking customers and staff.
Most of the measures to restrict spread are fairly modest. Reduced crowding and face masks are much better than places being closed.
The problem in my own workplace is that for cost control reasons, British Hospitals are designed as high volume, crowded places. My dept is running at 50% capacity due to social distancing and PPE...
That is true of many state schools, too. Which are back to running at more or less full capacity. We’ll discover fairly soon whether that is, as Boris assures us, ‘completely safe’.
Though we are not aware of any cases acquired by patients or staff in our department. The PPE, social distancing and mask policy seems to work.
Assuming of course that our world beating test and trace system would notify us!
Greetings fellow insomniacs, overseas Brexiteers and Russian trolls!
Sweden is not so different to other EU countries as it is sometimes made out to be.
Schools stayed open, but post aged 16 and Universities are heavily distance learning. There is extensive working from home, smaller households, bans on public gatherings, and no policy to create herd immunity. This twitter thread is worth reading in its entirety.
Whether formal or informal measures are used, people do not blithely go about normal business in the middle of a pandemic. I suspect that in Sweden much of the current lull is due to the outdoor summer living that is part of the Nordic lifestyle, and dispersion to summer homes.
There is no magic bullet or formula that preserves an economy from impact. The closest appears to be Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and China itself.
Does Sweden not also have a surprisingly high proportion of single person households ? It is hard making fair comparisons between countries particular policies, as the confounding factors are numerous.
40% single occupancy, or so I have read. It seems Swedes Socially Distance naturally!
I made the point earlier in the week that this place has regressed from being a balanced mix to an overwhelming pro EU, anti Boris abbatoir. No problem with that I'm not pro Boris but it makes for very dull, one sided conversation.
I log on 2 or 3 days later and see more of the same in a header from Alastair Meeks.
Mr Smithson this is your site and your prerogative but you might wonder why the number of posters and contributions has fallen.
An interesting piece from the CDC. I can only speculate as to why our own world beating Track and Trace system has not published something on the issue. I am tempted by an FoI request.
A key point here is that the survey didn’t differentiate between indoor and outdoor dining. Indoor dining - sitting down in an enclosed air conditioned space with lots of others for an extended period of time - has obvious similarities with other known super spreading hotspots like airplanes and cruise ships. Dining outdoors much less so.
Plenty of outdoor crowding causes the spread to spike: funerals, football matches, Cheltenham festival etc.
Just as dangerous and I won't go near either indoor or outdoor dining.
I think you will find most funerals are indoors, wholly or partly.
There is a massive difference between being packed into a sporting crowd of people all shouting at the top of their voice, and a quiet dinner at the edge of the square.
If you read the article you will see that the study didn't gather this key data
Comments
Yeah, it's hard to say exactly why, but there's always been a lot of resistance to OHMSS...
If you want a new law, and convince a majority of MPs from across the EU to back it, their governments vote for it and it becomes the law.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1333704/coronavirus-latest-lockdown-england-restrictions-boris-johnson-nigel-farage-rule-of-six
(Note: You can get the whole set on Blu-Ray for £50)
However. Labour voters who switched to the Tories are not some sanctified section of the electorate whose views carry extra weight.
Regular Tory voters who are thinking of deserting are just as important.
There are plenty of them on here for a start.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
21,228,096 / 28,291,786 = 75.03%.
Just like here if you convince a majority of Councillors to change the law, it doesn't.
Our law changing is simple: we elect MPs, MPs vote, the law changes. That is not the case with the EU at all.
For you and me it is not quite so simple as just "voting someone out".
I thank you. Good night!
But the reality is that throughout this process, the empirical evidence for mask wearing has grown and grown. As in peer reviewed, scientific papers.
Why don't you read this piece from the University of California which explains the research that caused the CDC to change their advice: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/06/417906/still-confused-about-masks-heres-science-behind-how-face-masks-prevent
Now. You can choose to believe that Spain's spike in CV-19 cases was due to mask wearing rather than (say) re-opening nightclubs. But all that demonstrates is that you don't really care about the academic research, or indeed the data.
Every Norn Iron MP could fit in a minibus. Even if every single one of them agreed on something they wanted changed, their 18 votes would count for little.
Wales, Scotland and England at least have Labour and Conservative MPs so they have a chance to influence things, but none of the mainland parties organise in NI.
So votes for NI parties are generally pointless - which made the DUP's performance over Brexit a once in a life-time thing to remember.
Having indirection is fine, and sometimes a good idea, it doesn't mean the system isn't democratic. The EU system also has indirection, because there are national governments in between. That may or may not be a good system - it might be better to have less indirection, with a strong European Parliament and a directly elected leader, or it might be better to keep the indirection and get rid of the parliament altogether, but the indirection doesn't make or unmake the democracy.
The link goes to a poll of Canadians, not Americans.
The EU is not the same. Neither MPs nor MEPs have the power to change the law in the same way.
That may not be easy, but it is very, very doable.
https://www.ekospolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/tables020920.pdf
And without the possibility of judicial review there is also no ability for the courts to rule that ministers are acting contrary to Parliaments intention when ceding the powers.
It’s an Enabling Act in all but name. A massive power grab to the detriment of Parliament under the cover of “delivering Brexit and safeguarding the Union”.
If the person you want to vote out isn't in your constituency they don't represent you. You don't get to vote out other people's MPs who aren't yours, yeah that's true. Not sure what point you're trying to prove.
Switzerland has cantons in between the voters and the laws, to pass a law you need some minimum agreement at the level of the cantons. Is Switzerland not a democracy?
I'm also slightly confused about how they came to their end numbers. They have Trump winning men by 10%, and Biden winning women by 15%. Now, if an equal number of men and women voted, that would suggest a 2.5% Biden lead.
But they don't. 55% of voters at the alst Presidential election were women, again 45% men.
If the voters change their minds then they change their mind. It happens. It happened across the red wall, it happened in Scotland in 2015. It is possible and if it doesn't happen then that is your neighbours choice. Their vote, their choice.
Time will tell.
The EU is much more removed than your cantons example.
Whether you like to admit it or not, there’s a social trade off to wearing face coverings. There are approx 2.8m deaths per year in the US and your paper cites 33k lives saved between June and Oct if 95% of people wear masks in public. So that’s saving excess deaths worth perhaps a week or two over the year?
Is that worth it really? Given the vast bulk of the lives saved are lives that would likely be lost this year or next anyway?
Is there evidence yet on what living in such a clinical germ free fashion is doing to immune systems, particularly of the young?
What if the Disease X of the next decade is a rhinovirus. It’s not impossible, until SARS coronaviruses were widely seen as a mere nuisance. But we’ve deprived a generation from acquiring natural immunity against the killer rhinovirus, because they spent their childhood avoiding all germs at all cost.
Not everyone that hates lockdowns, masks and the like is ignorant and thinks covid is caused by 5G, that it’s harmless or invented by Bill Gates. We are just looking with a slightly wider perspective at what we’re giving up now, and what we might be risking both socially, economically and medically in the years ahead.
If Trump wins all those states and holds his 2016 states he wins the EC
And I completely accept that this is a series of trade offs.
But CV19 is not just about the deaths of a few old people. It also causes long lasting negative health issues. See https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/09/evidence-slowly-building-for-long-term-heart-problems-post-covid-19/ or https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-long-term-effects/art-20490351#:~:text=COVID-19 symptoms can sometimes,completely within a few weeks. or https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30701-5/fulltext
The reality is that we accept a small number of temporary inconveniences to avoid a lot of people dying, a long lasting de facto lockdown (which is what's happened in Arizona, Georgia and Sweden), and large numbers of people with serious lingering issues.
We don't disagree.
But right now, Biden is polling over 50% in the national polling. If he manages that, then - using the 538 numbers you posted - then he's going to be a 75% or so chance of the Presidency.
As far as I can see, most of the available evidence says that Sweden took a big upfront hit in terms of the death-toll, and has now pretty much reached herd immunity. Thus they have very few current cases and no increasing trend.
They may have made the wrong or right decision based on the data at the time to do this, if Neil Ferguson et-al had been correct about it needing 60% of the population to have had it to reach immunity, they would have had a huge deathtoll. As it is, it seems that 25-30% is enough for immunity (as evidenced by the fact that where-ever this virus crops up, it goes wild till it hits about 25% of the population, then starts fading away), so in hindsight they have lucked out to having the correct strategy.
This is all fairly straightforward to see in lots of publicly available date to people who can both read graphs and add up, unfortunately such people are badly under-represented in most governments. It explains a good deal (e.g. why London doesn't have much evidence for a second wave, and Manchester does - London was well on it's way to 25% by the time lockdown occurred, Manchester wasn't), and it fits pretty well with almost all the observable facts. (The lack of antibodies in populations you would expect to have them is a bit odd, but it looks increasingly likely that the explanation is that it's fairly common for the body to shift mild Covid infections via other immune responses without generating antibodies - we only test for anti-bodies because it's much easier than say fishing for T-cells)
The logical thing for us to do now is to dump most of the restrictions and follow the Swedish example - six months of life as normal apart from shielding for the vulnerable, and this would be over and done with.
Instead, our politicians are obviously intent on doubling down on failure, with no apparent endgame in sight, and perhaps even worse, almost no-one attempting to keep them to account. I've heard countless interviews where ministers have been accused of not locking down hard enough or fast enough, but hardly heard a single question asking "how exactly do you plan to get out of this mess?" or "is the increasing deathtoll for other untreated diseases not going to dwarf the Covid total?"
I don’t wish to downplay that some younger people are going to have a rough time after being infected. There are some that will. Maybe even me. But I question whether this outweighs the aggregate health impact of continued lockdowns (both direct, and indirect from weaker long term economic growth).
And the "longcovid" story is not a new one invented by fearmongers. SeanT was reporting on long term side effects back in February. I know a number of people who have not fully recovered from it.
My view is that we should not seek "zero Covid", but that we should seek to manage it at a low level until a vaccine is available. This means we should ban the highest risk activities (nightclubs, karaoke clubs, concerts, indoor sporting events), and require people to wear masks on things like public transport.
Doing that, I believe, is enough to keep R at a relatively low level, while avoiding it running completely out of control.
The other thing that I think you missed is that places without formal lockdowns still have de facto ones. Sweden's economic performance is Q2 - if the PMIs are correct - will be the worst in Europe, and its unemployment continues to climb. If people are scared, they don't go out. It may not be a formal lockdown, but people aren't going about their normal life - instead working from home has become de facto.
My business is in Arizona. It was one of the the first to reopen in the US (which given I'm in the business of selling auto insurance, and I want people to get out and drive and buy new cars). But Arizona has been a bit of a disaster zone. Not i terms of deaths, but in terms of economic activity. Shopping malls are still deserted. Restaraunts are still closing. Driving activity and new auto purchases are down worse than in California.
So I think you've created a bit of a false dichotemy - between places that are thriving because there are no lockdowns, and places that are suffering because they have them.
He might average just above 50% but there are plenty of polls showing him under 50% nationally still
Why was did pollster keep his/her light under a bushel? Could it be that it was done for internal consumption by {fill in the blank} and then released to give a bit of aid & comfort to {fill in the blank}?
IF this scenario is true, then suspect paymaster was an independent expenditure / super-PAC on behalf of Trumpsky or RNC.
https://covid19.apple.com/mobility
Put in London, then try comparing that to somewhere like Bradford, and you can see how much bigger the ongoing change in behaviour in London is.
The transit data is probably also a reasonable proxy for other high-risk behaviour, although you need to be a bit careful comparing places with different climates.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-54108648
FFS, the different countries in the UK are still playing silly buggers. Scotland an under 12 doesn't count for the 6, so Wales goes under 11s...
Sweden is not so different to other EU countries as it is sometimes made out to be.
Schools stayed open, but post aged 16 and Universities are heavily distance learning. There is extensive working from home, smaller households, bans on public gatherings, and no policy to create herd immunity. This twitter thread is worth reading in its entirety.
https://twitter.com/thehowie/status/1304123040750477313?s=09
Whether formal or informal measures are used, people do not blithely go about normal business in the middle of a pandemic. I suspect that in Sweden much of the current lull is due to the outdoor summer living that is part of the Nordic lifestyle, and dispersion to summer homes.
There is no magic bullet or formula that preserves an economy from impact. The closest appears to be Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and China itself.
And I really get that. I don't 100% agree, because I think that a few small mandatory changes (no karaoke bars) can make a massive difference. But I get it.
It was never a coherent coalition, but the marketing to different groups with fundamentally opposed objectives was Cummings masterstroke to win. It is inevitable that the Leave coalition will fall apart fairly quickly when Brexit is felt to be done (it doesn't feel at present as if we have left yet, even though we have officially Brexited)
In many ways the Leave coalition will suffer the same problems and fate of my own Lib Dem party post 2010. By gaining power, a choice had to be made that pisses off the majority of supporters, with little sign of that being reconciled even a decade later. We have gained an incoherent future, not lancing the boil so much as rubbing salt in the wounds.
I do hope we see @AlastairMeeks back below the line. I miss his wit and insights.
I see varying degrees of compliance in Leicester, but vote with my feet by not patronising places that acquiesce to rule breaking customers and staff.
Most of the measures to restrict spread are fairly modest. Reduced crowding and face masks are much better than places being closed.
The problem in my own workplace is that for cost control reasons, British Hospitals are designed as high volume, crowded places. My dept is running at 50% capacity due to social distancing and PPE.
I think Sweden is just riding the same rollercoaster as the rest of us. Currently it looks quiet, but it did here and Italy a month ago too.
We'll see in the next couple of weeks.
https://twitter.com/foxinsoxuk/status/1304254529215647750?s=19
During the high-effort periods in Japan they've mostly been asking businesses to close rather than recommending them (although I think "ask" contains varying degrees of concealed coercion); The problem with this is that the responsible places all get driven out of business, and only the scumbags survive.
Superforcasters is a really excellent book about this.
Great predictors always think in terms of likelihoods and are always changing their mind. Terrible predictors have a theory, and look for evidence to support it, never changing their forecasts.
But can I point you to @edmundintokyo's link to the Apple mobility data. Arizona saw had a lockdown that was reversed in early May. Activity - according to Apple - renewed as people went back about their day-to-day business.
But then as CV19 cases rose, it dropped again. Indeed, public transport usage in Arizona is doing worse now than in California.
People react to increased risk. If you hear sirens, you stay home.
Just as dangerous and I won't go near either indoor or outdoor dining.
We’ll discover fairly soon whether that is, as Boris assures us, ‘completely safe’.
That is really a very ignorant post for this forum.
It is hard making fair comparisons between countries particular policies, as the confounding factors are numerous.
Assuming of course that our world beating test and trace system would notify us!
I log on 2 or 3 days later and see more of the same in a header from Alastair Meeks.
Mr Smithson this is your site and your prerogative but you might wonder why the number of posters and contributions has fallen.
There is a massive difference between being packed into a sporting crowd of people all shouting at the top of their voice, and a quiet dinner at the edge of the square.
If you read the article you will see that the study didn't gather this key data