Daughter has just noted that the government has made things significantly worse for pubs and restaurants than in the first lockdown in one respect.
Even if you have a licence to sell as an off-licence, you cannot sell alcohol as a takeaway. So all the beer and other drinks which pubs have cannot now be sold and that stock will be wasted.
Why? During the last lockdown Daughter - at some expense - got such a licence so she could sell alcohol with her takeaway meals. Now she can’t. What on earth is the reason for doing that? It’s pure spite - especially as supermarkets will be able to sell alcohol.
Letters on their way to our MP - Boris’s PPS as it happens - and to Tim Farron.
Yes, that was noted on here last night and it doesn't seem logical to me. You can do takeaways, but not including your main product. What a mess.
In terms of R it's hardly going to make much of a difference either way. It's a sign that government is too focused on the minutiae of lockdown rules to pay enough attention to other ways of reducing transmission of the virus.
The current restrictions remind me of Darling’s infamous budget, where he tinkered pointlessly around the edges with vat and car sales but actually increased the fuel taxes where reductions would have made a meaningful difference.
That was because Gordon Brown had a pathological aversion to tax cuts as a political and economic strategy, unless they benefited the middle class by screwing over the poor.
What’s Johnson’s excuse for closing golf courses and banning pubs from serving takeaway alcohol but keeping universities open?
A new poll for the New York Times shows Biden with a clear lead in the battleground states of Florida (+4), Pennsylvania (+6), Wisconsin (+11) and Arizona (+6):
Daughter has just noted that the government has made things significantly worse for pubs and restaurants than in the first lockdown in one respect.
Even if you have a licence to sell as an off-licence, you cannot sell alcohol as a takeaway. So all the beer and other drinks which pubs have cannot now be sold and that stock will be wasted.
Why? During the last lockdown Daughter - at some expense - got such a licence so she could sell alcohol with her takeaway meals. Now she can’t. What on earth is the reason for doing that? It’s pure spite - especially as supermarkets will be able to sell alcohol.
Letters on their way to our MP - Boris’s PPS as it happens - and to Tim Farron.
It's probably stupidity, rather than spite, but equally unacceptable.
See shutting golf courses....safer than going to the park.
I'm guessing that's because of the 19th hole problems
That's fine, you just say club house bar has to be be shut and probably close changing rooms. That is what lots of other sports clubs had to do initially. And for golf, you don't need either, you can easily change your shoes in the car park.
I actually asked some questions about this, in another context.
The police pointed out that the sell-over-the-wall stuff was being massively abused in certain areas. Huge street parties just outside various bars/pubs. Not control on selling etc.
The problem was that the behaviour was socially stratified. The local cricket club kept order and everyone behaved. As ddi the local pub (the kind of place that has a mini-theatre attached).
The less. salubrious places in the poorer neighbourhoods locally. Carnage.
The police didn't wan to recommend pulling licenses - they would be straight into a world of fun. This Is London Poor means a higher proportion of ethnic minorities. You can see where that goes, rapidly.
So, I presume this time round they are simply banning all of it.
Question for PB boffins: how close was Clinton to winning?
Not close enough! The Electoral College was a comfortable win for Trump. Hillary ignored the rust belt, and the rust belt states punished her, not by much, but by enough.
It was not remotely a comfortable win for Trump. It was the thinnest of margins. To call it comfortable misunderstands the EC.
304 to 227 as I recall.
306-232 with seven faithless electors, the most since 1872.
Question for PB boffins: how close was Clinton to winning?
Not close enough! The Electoral College was a comfortable win for Trump. Hillary ignored the rust belt, and the rust belt states punished her, not by much, but by enough.
It was not remotely a comfortable win for Trump. It was the thinnest of margins. To call it comfortable misunderstands the EC.
304 to 227 as I recall.
Which isn't comfortable. Only a tiny margin flips that.
To look at 304 to 227 and call it comfortable misunderstands the Electoral College. The numbers flip in blocs they don't flip individually
It's rather amusing watching all the Democrat bed wetters clutching their pearls, pulling up their skirts and running for the hills at any point of divergence from the narrative of a Biden win. It rather reminds me of Labour supporters prior to the 1997 GE. Scared by the the polling miss and the shock victory of John Major in 1992 they didn't believe the evidence of their own eyes until the landslide started to filter through on election night.
My view is that Biden is heading for a comfortable EC win - 322 - 216 - Biden sweeps the rust belt and flips AZ, NC NE 2, ME 2 and edges GA for the historic surprise of the night. Trump holds the battlegrounds of FL, TX, OH and IA :
Look at the horseshit confidence intervals on Slide 4 and 5....you are telling me that your model has f##k all idea about the level of hospital admissions or deaths for the next few days.
Hmmm. Do you think these were the graphs produced for ministers back in September, updated for actuals but not projections...? That's surely the only thing that can explain those confidence intervals...?
I think that must be the explanation.
How woeful. I don't like to rubbish work when I have not seen the details, but this looks worse & worse.
The other thing we should really see from these models is not just a mean and the massive (I presume 95% confidence interval) extrema, but we should be seeing a contour type plot of how the probability density spreads out (it won't or shouldn't be linear). Or perhaps are the models aren't that sophisticated, when they should be.
From the comments I have read on here, I assume some of you don't think its appropriate for armed militias in paramilitary gear and ski masks to march around the street with machine guns intimidating voters. What is wrong with you? Can't you respect their 2nd Amendment rights? It seems Perfectly Reasonable and Civilised to let people buy that kind of lethal hardware and threaten passers by with it.
Question for PB boffins: how close was Clinton to winning?
Not close enough! The Electoral College was a comfortable win for Trump. Hillary ignored the rust belt, and the rust belt states punished her, not by much, but by enough.
It was not remotely a comfortable win for Trump. It was the thinnest of margins. To call it comfortable misunderstands the EC.
304 to 227 as I recall.
306-232 with seven faithless electors, the most since 1872.
I think Biden will cross 350. By how much will be the interesting part. That still doesn't mean I'm attracted to the 317 buy on Spreadex, for the reasons just given by Phillip Thompson
I know many people who have caught the virus and suffered from it even if they have recovered.
Is there anyone in this country that doesn't?
I actually don't. I know I am rural and an introvert, but I don't personally know anyone who knows they definitely have had it. Not even amongst my FB friends. Not at my place of worship. Not in my village. Not at work. Almost everyone I know knows someone who has had it. And several who've died from it. But not me.
Fair enough. I'm surprised with that especially with you also being in the Northwest.
Yeah. It surprised me too. It hadn't occurred to me. And I'm in the NE. That said I can't think of anyone I know who doesn't know somebody, so maybe I'm just a hugely fortunate outlier.
Take That were the band of my youth, Take That and The Rolling Stones are the bands I've seen live the most.
I'll never forget the summer of 1995, I was a little bit stressed waiting for my GCSE results and Robbie leaving Take That didn't help.
As I've said before I do wish that "celebrities" would learn to shut up about stuff unrelated to their particular talents. I am a massive Roger Waters music fan. But he is an absolute tosser every time he gives us his opinions about Palestine. I have no interest in what he thinks about Israel or what JK Rowling thinks about gender or what Jeremy Clarkson thinks about anything. Shut up already.
Tbf, Clarkson is only a celebrity because he spouts his opinions on everything.
Sunak has been commendably quick at extending the 80% furlough scheme. If lockdown continues though he is going to have to extend it still further. This is a trap for the government because I simply do not see how a one month lockdown will solve anything.
But it is worth noting that by making the decision to extend 80% furlough so late & the cut-off date for claims 30/10, a lot of employees who might have been kept on by businesses will already have lost their jobs.
The government’s failure to think or act more than 2/3 days ahead doesn’t just cost lives. It also costs jobs.
Couldn’t someone buy the government a calendar with all the key upcoming events put in it: you know stuff like term starting, term ending, dates by when decisions need to be made etc. All these entirely foreseeable events seem to come as a complete surprise to them.
Well, I'm not convinced that the tiered regional approach was failing, so perhaps the government will just be able to claim victory on 2nd December, albeit at substantial economic cost. I suppose the one advantage of a one month lockdown is that one can spread the number of deaths more evenly, rather than see a sudden spike.
All we need now for the farce to be complete is for new cases to fall next week before the lockdown begins.
It's going to be quite amusing if R goes below 1 within a couple of weeks.
No it wouldn't, the scientists would absolutely claim it was the lockdown that did it. I'm sure if cases keep falling this week they'll try and claim it as part of the lockdown because it was announced yesterday. They are as dishonest as the politicians.
They'd try. But i note that the Government's current official line for the lifting of the lockdown is R falling below 1.
And then they'd say "well we can't lift the rules because the R would go above 1 if we do" and we're in a permanent half life. Never underestimate the level of dishonesty that the politicians and scientists will sink to. They will lie to our faces to make themselves look correct even if they destroy the economy in the process. They face none of the consequences of their decisions.
That's my concern, too.
Tons of valid concerns but the big picture is that the projections from those with the data show a clear consensus that if a tighter regime is not implemented what we will see within weeks is the NHS collapsing and tens of thousands of people dying, of Covid and not Covid, many of them for lack of access to treatment. A calamity.
So faced with this you can only go one of two ways -
Take the recommended action to prevent the calamity, OR
Hold steady and see if the calamity happens. Hope the models are proved wrong.
You're falling into the exact trap the government has set, they're using the NHS as a shield for their incompetence. By saying "yeah but the NHS" it instantly silences any criticism of the policy. We shouldn't be in this position but through incompetence and cronyism we're about to have another lockdown. Don't let them get away with it.
One should always be sceptical about claims of the NHS being "overwhelmed". Given such claims are made almost every winter. The issue is the extent to which capacity can we scaled up, or adjusted through cancellations of non-emergency treatment to cope.
As somebody said - the NHS exists to save lives. We do not strive to save lives to save the NHS.
Weren't the Nightingale hospitals completely empty at the peak last time around?
The Nightingale hospitals were not full hospitals - and never could be.
They only had facilities for treating one thing (COVID) and not doing intensive care (mostly) on that.
They were to be manned by pulling in everyone, medical student, student nurses, retirees etc.
Quite simply, they are a slightly better alternative to dumping incoming patients in the street because the hospitals filled up - see Italy.
Daughter has just noted that the government has made things significantly worse for pubs and restaurants than in the first lockdown in one respect.
Even if you have a licence to sell as an off-licence, you cannot sell alcohol as a takeaway. So all the beer and other drinks which pubs have cannot now be sold and that stock will be wasted.
Why? During the last lockdown Daughter - at some expense - got such a licence so she could sell alcohol with her takeaway meals. Now she can’t. What on earth is the reason for doing that? It’s pure spite - especially as supermarkets will be able to sell alcohol.
Letters on their way to our MP - Boris’s PPS as it happens - and to Tim Farron.
Yes, that was noted on here last night and it doesn't seem logical to me. You can do takeaways, but not including your main product. What a mess.
In terms of R it's hardly going to make much of a difference either way. It's a sign that government is too focused on the minutiae of lockdown rules to pay enough attention to other ways of reducing transmission of the virus.
The current restrictions remind me of Darling’s infamous budget, where he tinkered pointlessly around the edges with vat and car sales but actually increased the fuel taxes where reductions would have made a meaningful difference.
That was because Gordon Brown had a pathological aversion to tax cuts as a political and economic strategy, unless they benefited the middle class by screwing over the poor.
What’s Johnson’s excuse for closing golf courses and banning pubs from serving takeaway alcohol but keeping universities open?
The sign of a civilised country is that the golf courses are shut. And the universities are open.
Trump would do the reverse.
I always remember using the public footpath that crosses Harlech golf course to the Morfa & being upbraided by some fat slob of a golfer that I was disturbing his shot. The footpath has been there for many hundred of years, long before the golf club.
From the comments I have read on here, I assume some of you don't think its appropriate for armed militias in paramilitary gear and ski masks to march around the street with machine guns intimidating voters. What is wrong with you? Can't you respect their 2nd Amendment rights? It seems Perfectly Reasonable and Civilised to let people buy that kind of lethal hardware and threaten passers by with it.
Daughter has just noted that the government has made things significantly worse for pubs and restaurants than in the first lockdown in one respect.
Even if you have a licence to sell as an off-licence, you cannot sell alcohol as a takeaway. So all the beer and other drinks which pubs have cannot now be sold and that stock will be wasted.
Why? During the last lockdown Daughter - at some expense - got such a licence so she could sell alcohol with her takeaway meals. Now she can’t. What on earth is the reason for doing that? It’s pure spite - especially as supermarkets will be able to sell alcohol.
Letters on their way to our MP - Boris’s PPS as it happens - and to Tim Farron.
"So all the beer and other drinks which pubs have cannot now be sold and that stock will be wasted." Why "wasted"? Most bottled or canned drinks have a life of 9-12 months or more. Spirits have a much longer shelf life.
Some people put coke in a single malt. Now that IS wasted!
In Joe Biden I don;'t think I have ever seen a major political candidate who has more appeal at the polls and less appeal on the ground.
Everybody loves Joe at the ballot box, apparently, but his rallies are, literally, dozens of people. With Harris, its smaller than that. Almost like a fringe party.
Question for PB boffins: how close was Clinton to winning?
Not close enough! The Electoral College was a comfortable win for Trump. Hillary ignored the rust belt, and the rust belt states punished her, not by much, but by enough.
It was not remotely a comfortable win for Trump. It was the thinnest of margins. To call it comfortable misunderstands the EC.
304 to 227 as I recall.
Hardly seems the point when, in theory, dozens of EC votes hang by a thread of a few thousands votes. People may well have won the presidency with the same or fewer EC votes, but been more comfortably placed for re-election because their hold on those votes was by a larger margin where it counted.
Daughter has just noted that the government has made things significantly worse for pubs and restaurants than in the first lockdown in one respect.
Even if you have a licence to sell as an off-licence, you cannot sell alcohol as a takeaway. So all the beer and other drinks which pubs have cannot now be sold and that stock will be wasted.
Why? During the last lockdown Daughter - at some expense - got such a licence so she could sell alcohol with her takeaway meals. Now she can’t. What on earth is the reason for doing that? It’s pure spite - especially as supermarkets will be able to sell alcohol.
Letters on their way to our MP - Boris’s PPS as it happens - and to Tim Farron.
Yes, that was noted on here last night and it doesn't seem logical to me. You can do takeaways, but not including your main product. What a mess.
In terms of R it's hardly going to make much of a difference either way. It's a sign that government is too focused on the minutiae of lockdown rules to pay enough attention to other ways of reducing transmission of the virus.
The current restrictions remind me of Darling’s infamous budget, where he tinkered pointlessly around the edges with vat and car sales but actually increased the fuel taxes where reductions would have made a meaningful difference.
That was because Gordon Brown had a pathological aversion to tax cuts as a political and economic strategy, unless they benefited the middle class by screwing over the poor.
What’s Johnson’s excuse for closing golf courses and banning pubs from serving takeaway alcohol but keeping universities open?
The sign of a civilised country is that the golf courses are shut. And the universities are open.
Trump would do the reverse.
I always remember using the public footpath that crosses Harlech golf course to the Morfa & being upbraided by some fat slob of a golfer that I was disturbing his shot. The footpath has been there for many hundred of years, long before the golf club.
You're of the 'good walk spoiled' persuasion then?!
I know many people who have caught the virus and suffered from it even if they have recovered.
Is there anyone in this country that doesn't?
I actually don't. I know I am rural and an introvert, but I don't personally know anyone who knows they definitely have had it. Not even amongst my FB friends. Not at my place of worship. Not in my village. Not at work. Almost everyone I know knows someone who has had it. And several who've died from it. But not me.
Fair enough. I'm surprised with that especially with you also being in the Northwest.
I have several acquaintances who had it mildly - tested etc. Several more *think* they had it.
I had one relative who died in the Peruvian outbreak.
In the wider context of friends of friends, the school groups etc - no one has mentioned any deaths there.
Daughter has just noted that the government has made things significantly worse for pubs and restaurants than in the first lockdown in one respect.
Even if you have a licence to sell as an off-licence, you cannot sell alcohol as a takeaway. So all the beer and other drinks which pubs have cannot now be sold and that stock will be wasted.
Why? During the last lockdown Daughter - at some expense - got such a licence so she could sell alcohol with her takeaway meals. Now she can’t. What on earth is the reason for doing that? It’s pure spite - especially as supermarkets will be able to sell alcohol.
Letters on their way to our MP - Boris’s PPS as it happens - and to Tim Farron.
Yes, that was noted on here last night and it doesn't seem logical to me. You can do takeaways, but not including your main product. What a mess.
In terms of R it's hardly going to make much of a difference either way. It's a sign that government is too focused on the minutiae of lockdown rules to pay enough attention to other ways of reducing transmission of the virus.
And it was also not what was done last time. So someone decided to put that bit in what government produced last night. It was not simply a cut and paste job. They made the deliberate decision to stop those with a off-licence selling their product on a takeaway basis. They made a deliberate decision to favour supermarkets who can sell alcohol over other businesses, particularly those whose main business this is.
Feels like spite to me not just stupidity. It is a kick in the teeth. I cannot begin to tell you how furious and upset Daughter is. Every little thing she has been trying to do to save her business, all the work she has put in for the last 2 years, her employees, her suppliers is being undermined.
Sunak has been commendably quick at extending the 80% furlough scheme. If lockdown continues though he is going to have to extend it still further. This is a trap for the government because I simply do not see how a one month lockdown will solve anything.
But it is worth noting that by making the decision to extend 80% furlough so late & the cut-off date for claims 30/10, a lot of employees who might have been kept on by businesses will already have lost their jobs.
The government’s failure to think or act more than 2/3 days ahead doesn’t just cost lives. It also costs jobs.
Couldn’t someone buy the government a calendar with all the key upcoming events put in it: you know stuff like term starting, term ending, dates by when decisions need to be made etc. All these entirely foreseeable events seem to come as a complete surprise to them.
Well, I'm not convinced that the tiered regional approach was failing, so perhaps the government will just be able to claim victory on 2nd December, albeit at substantial economic cost. I suppose the one advantage of a one month lockdown is that one can spread the number of deaths more evenly, rather than see a sudden spike.
All we need now for the farce to be complete is for new cases to fall next week before the lockdown begins.
It's going to be quite amusing if R goes below 1 within a couple of weeks.
No it wouldn't, the scientists would absolutely claim it was the lockdown that did it. I'm sure if cases keep falling this week they'll try and claim it as part of the lockdown because it was announced yesterday. They are as dishonest as the politicians.
They'd try. But i note that the Government's current official line for the lifting of the lockdown is R falling below 1.
And then they'd say "well we can't lift the rules because the R would go above 1 if we do" and we're in a permanent half life. Never underestimate the level of dishonesty that the politicians and scientists will sink to. They will lie to our faces to make themselves look correct even if they destroy the economy in the process. They face none of the consequences of their decisions.
That's my concern, too.
Tons of valid concerns but the big picture is that the projections from those with the data show a clear consensus that if a tighter regime is not implemented what we will see within weeks is the NHS collapsing and tens of thousands of people dying, of Covid and not Covid, many of them for lack of access to treatment. A calamity.
So faced with this you can only go one of two ways -
Take the recommended action to prevent the calamity, OR
Hold steady and see if the calamity happens. Hope the models are proved wrong.
You're falling into the exact trap the government has set, they're using the NHS as a shield for their incompetence. By saying "yeah but the NHS" it instantly silences any criticism of the policy. We shouldn't be in this position but through incompetence and cronyism we're about to have another lockdown. Don't let them get away with it.
One should always be sceptical about claims of the NHS being "overwhelmed". Given such claims are made almost every winter. The issue is the extent to which capacity can we scaled up, or adjusted through cancellations of non-emergency treatment to cope.
As somebody said - the NHS exists to save lives. We do not strive to save lives to save the NHS.
Weren't the Nightingale hospitals completely empty at the peak last time around?
The Nightingale hospitals were not full hospitals - and never could be.
They only had facilities for treating one thing (COVID) and not doing intensive care (mostly) on that.
They were to be manned by pulling in everyone, medical student, student nurses, retirees etc.
Quite simply, they are a slightly better alternative to dumping incoming patients in the street because the hospitals filled up - see Italy.
Google triage and the origins of the term....
The government had seven months to improve that situation.
I know many people who have caught the virus and suffered from it even if they have recovered.
Is there anyone in this country that doesn't?
I actually don't. I know I am rural and an introvert, but I don't personally know anyone who knows they definitely have had it. Not even amongst my FB friends. Not at my place of worship. Not in my village. Not at work. Almost everyone I know knows someone who has had it. And several who've died from it. But not me.
Fair enough. I'm surprised with that especially with you also being in the Northwest.
I have several acquaintances who had it mildly - tested etc. Several more *think* they had it.
I had one relative who died in the Peruvian outbreak.
In the wider context of friends of friends, the school groups etc - no one has mentioned any deaths there.
The deaths represent 0.1% of the population....
I know people who have died from it e.g. a friend's wife who was in intensive care for c. 3 weeks but succumbed. Another friend's father who went down very fast with it. I know others who have been really unwell and several who apparently have 'Long Covid' which is in some ways the most pernicious aspect of a pernicious disease.
And I still don't think Boris Johnson looks at all well.
Daughter has just noted that the government has made things significantly worse for pubs and restaurants than in the first lockdown in one respect.
Even if you have a licence to sell as an off-licence, you cannot sell alcohol as a takeaway. So all the beer and other drinks which pubs have cannot now be sold and that stock will be wasted.
Why? During the last lockdown Daughter - at some expense - got such a licence so she could sell alcohol with her takeaway meals. Now she can’t. What on earth is the reason for doing that? It’s pure spite - especially as supermarkets will be able to sell alcohol.
Letters on their way to our MP - Boris’s PPS as it happens - and to Tim Farron.
"So all the beer and other drinks which pubs have cannot now be sold and that stock will be wasted." Why "wasted"? Most bottled or canned drinks have a life of 9-12 months or more. Spirits have a much longer shelf life.
Some people put coke in a single malt. Now that IS wasted!
Daughter has just noted that the government has made things significantly worse for pubs and restaurants than in the first lockdown in one respect.
Even if you have a licence to sell as an off-licence, you cannot sell alcohol as a takeaway. So all the beer and other drinks which pubs have cannot now be sold and that stock will be wasted.
Why? During the last lockdown Daughter - at some expense - got such a licence so she could sell alcohol with her takeaway meals. Now she can’t. What on earth is the reason for doing that? It’s pure spite - especially as supermarkets will be able to sell alcohol.
Letters on their way to our MP - Boris’s PPS as it happens - and to Tim Farron.
It's probably stupidity, rather than spite, but equally unacceptable.
See shutting golf courses....safer than going to the park.
I'm guessing that's because of the 19th hole problems
That's fine, you just say club house bar has to be be shut and probably close changing rooms. That is what lots of other sports clubs had to do initially. And for golf, you don't need either, you can easily change your shoes in the car park.
I actually asked some questions about this, in another context.
The police pointed out that the sell-over-the-wall stuff was being massively abused in certain areas. Huge street parties just outside various bars/pubs. Not control on selling etc.
The problem was that the behaviour was socially stratified. The local cricket club kept order and everyone behaved. As ddi the local pub (the kind of place that has a mini-theatre attached).
The less. salubrious places in the poorer neighbourhoods locally. Carnage.
The police didn't wan to recommend pulling licenses - they would be straight into a world of fun. This Is London Poor means a higher proportion of ethnic minorities. You can see where that goes, rapidly.
So, I presume this time round they are simply banning all of it.
But that is what licence conditions are for and the police, for crying out loud.
Daughter has just noted that the government has made things significantly worse for pubs and restaurants than in the first lockdown in one respect.
Even if you have a licence to sell as an off-licence, you cannot sell alcohol as a takeaway. So all the beer and other drinks which pubs have cannot now be sold and that stock will be wasted.
Why? During the last lockdown Daughter - at some expense - got such a licence so she could sell alcohol with her takeaway meals. Now she can’t. What on earth is the reason for doing that? It’s pure spite - especially as supermarkets will be able to sell alcohol.
Letters on their way to our MP - Boris’s PPS as it happens - and to Tim Farron.
"So all the beer and other drinks which pubs have cannot now be sold and that stock will be wasted." Why "wasted"? Most bottled or canned drinks have a life of 9-12 months or more. Spirits have a much longer shelf life.
You want to watch the gin. Oils in the botanicals can go rancid. Whisky, brandy, vodka all good.
Sunak has been commendably quick at extending the 80% furlough scheme. If lockdown continues though he is going to have to extend it still further. This is a trap for the government because I simply do not see how a one month lockdown will solve anything.
But it is worth noting that by making the decision to extend 80% furlough so late & the cut-off date for claims 30/10, a lot of employees who might have been kept on by businesses will already have lost their jobs.
The government’s failure to think or act more than 2/3 days ahead doesn’t just cost lives. It also costs jobs.
Couldn’t someone buy the government a calendar with all the key upcoming events put in it: you know stuff like term starting, term ending, dates by when decisions need to be made etc. All these entirely foreseeable events seem to come as a complete surprise to them.
Well, I'm not convinced that the tiered regional approach was failing, so perhaps the government will just be able to claim victory on 2nd December, albeit at substantial economic cost. I suppose the one advantage of a one month lockdown is that one can spread the number of deaths more evenly, rather than see a sudden spike.
All we need now for the farce to be complete is for new cases to fall next week before the lockdown begins.
It's going to be quite amusing if R goes below 1 within a couple of weeks.
No it wouldn't, the scientists would absolutely claim it was the lockdown that did it. I'm sure if cases keep falling this week they'll try and claim it as part of the lockdown because it was announced yesterday. They are as dishonest as the politicians.
They'd try. But i note that the Government's current official line for the lifting of the lockdown is R falling below 1.
And then they'd say "well we can't lift the rules because the R would go above 1 if we do" and we're in a permanent half life. Never underestimate the level of dishonesty that the politicians and scientists will sink to. They will lie to our faces to make themselves look correct even if they destroy the economy in the process. They face none of the consequences of their decisions.
That's my concern, too.
Tons of valid concerns but the big picture is that the projections from those with the data show a clear consensus that if a tighter regime is not implemented what we will see within weeks is the NHS collapsing and tens of thousands of people dying, of Covid and not Covid, many of them for lack of access to treatment. A calamity.
So faced with this you can only go one of two ways -
Take the recommended action to prevent the calamity, OR
Hold steady and see if the calamity happens. Hope the models are proved wrong.
Or three - do two, then panic and go for one anyway.
Yep. Which is what has happened.
But my point is, those opining that this is the wrong decision are - although they never put it like this for obvious reasons - arguing that we should just cross our fingers and hope the models are wrong.
The models are certainly wrong.
"All models are wrong, but some are useful" (George Box)
The only question is whether the models are a useful guide for our future actions.
That is a much, much more open question than you appear to think.
Anyone acquainted with model building -- so no UK politician or journalist -- knows that is a very reasonable question to ask.
Of course they're wrong. But HOW wrong? The only way to find out is to not act on them and see what happens. If the NHS does collapse by Christmas we will have verified them. If it doesn't - not even close - we will have disproved them. This is what people who oppose taking action are arguing for. Don't act, see what happens, hope the models are not just wrong but VERY wrong.
Look at the horseshit confidence intervals on Slide 4 and 5....you are telling me that your model has f##k all idea about the level of hospital admissions or deaths for the next few days.
Hmmm. Do you think these were the graphs produced for ministers back in September, updated for actuals but not projections...? That's surely the only thing that can explain those confidence intervals...?
I think that must be the explanation.
How woeful. I don't like to rubbish work when I have not seen the details, but this looks worse & worse.
Look at the horseshit confidence intervals on Slide 4 and 5....you are telling me that your model has f##k all idea about the level of hospital admissions or deaths for the next few days.
Hmmm. Do you think these were the graphs produced for ministers back in September, updated for actuals but not projections...? That's surely the only thing that can explain those confidence intervals...?
I think that must be the explanation.
How woeful. I don't like to rubbish work when I have not seen the details, but this looks worse & worse.
REACT and ONS are not models - they are "polling" for COVID with tests. Yes, they are using this data to try and build models. But the data provided is from actual tests.
The reason for the large error bars is the number of infections found - if you test 86,000 people, with infection at a rate, say, of 200 per 100K, you will expect to find 172 positives.
Take That were the band of my youth, Take That and The Rolling Stones are the bands I've seen live the most.
I'll never forget the summer of 1995, I was a little bit stressed waiting for my GCSE results and Robbie leaving Take That didn't help.
As I've said before I do wish that "celebrities" would learn to shut up about stuff unrelated to their particular talents. I am a massive Roger Waters music fan. But he is an absolute tosser every time he gives us his opinions about Palestine. I have no interest in what he thinks about Israel or what JK Rowling thinks about gender or what Jeremy Clarkson thinks about anything. Shut up already.
The problem isn't that celebrities share their opinions, it's that they often have the unearned confidence of many people about how much they know about things, and no one they know personally will tell them if they are being stupid. Then they take the true fact that celebrities can amplify a useful message, and come to think it is their duty to educate people.
Sunak has been commendably quick at extending the 80% furlough scheme. If lockdown continues though he is going to have to extend it still further. This is a trap for the government because I simply do not see how a one month lockdown will solve anything.
But it is worth noting that by making the decision to extend 80% furlough so late & the cut-off date for claims 30/10, a lot of employees who might have been kept on by businesses will already have lost their jobs.
The government’s failure to think or act more than 2/3 days ahead doesn’t just cost lives. It also costs jobs.
Couldn’t someone buy the government a calendar with all the key upcoming events put in it: you know stuff like term starting, term ending, dates by when decisions need to be made etc. All these entirely foreseeable events seem to come as a complete surprise to them.
Well, I'm not convinced that the tiered regional approach was failing, so perhaps the government will just be able to claim victory on 2nd December, albeit at substantial economic cost. I suppose the one advantage of a one month lockdown is that one can spread the number of deaths more evenly, rather than see a sudden spike.
All we need now for the farce to be complete is for new cases to fall next week before the lockdown begins.
It's going to be quite amusing if R goes below 1 within a couple of weeks.
No it wouldn't, the scientists would absolutely claim it was the lockdown that did it. I'm sure if cases keep falling this week they'll try and claim it as part of the lockdown because it was announced yesterday. They are as dishonest as the politicians.
They'd try. But i note that the Government's current official line for the lifting of the lockdown is R falling below 1.
And then they'd say "well we can't lift the rules because the R would go above 1 if we do" and we're in a permanent half life. Never underestimate the level of dishonesty that the politicians and scientists will sink to. They will lie to our faces to make themselves look correct even if they destroy the economy in the process. They face none of the consequences of their decisions.
That's my concern, too.
Tons of valid concerns but the big picture is that the projections from those with the data show a clear consensus that if a tighter regime is not implemented what we will see within weeks is the NHS collapsing and tens of thousands of people dying, of Covid and not Covid, many of them for lack of access to treatment. A calamity.
So faced with this you can only go one of two ways -
Take the recommended action to prevent the calamity, OR
Hold steady and see if the calamity happens. Hope the models are proved wrong.
Or three - do two, then panic and go for one anyway.
Yep. Which is what has happened.
But my point is, those opining that this is the wrong decision are - although they never put it like this for obvious reasons - arguing that we should just cross our fingers and hope the models are wrong.
The models are certainly wrong.
"All models are wrong, but some are useful" (George Box)
The only question is whether the models are a useful guide for our future actions.
That is a much, much more open question than you appear to think.
Anyone acquainted with model building -- so no UK politician or journalist -- knows that is a very reasonable question to ask.
Of course they're wrong. But HOW wrong? The only way to find out is to not act on them and see what happens. If the NHS does collapse by Christmas we will have verified them. If it doesn't - not even close - we will have disproved them. This is what people who oppose taking action are arguing for. Don't act, see what happens, hope the models are not just wrong but VERY wrong.
The following is not a model. Yes, the last 3-5 days are incomplete, as ever.
The following estimates for daily infection are based on actual testing performed in the community
Given the above, we have a trajectory. What will cause it to change?
Those new New York Times polls in swing states put Joe Biden in as strong a position going into an election as any Presidential candidate since 2008 when Obama won 365 Electoral College votes.
That's the magnitude of his current polling, no matter what HYUFD says to the contrary.
I also can't help but smile at the serendipity of fate. At the very moment that the likes of Steve Baker and his ERG right-wingers are whingeing in parliament, the world will be coming to terms with a crushing Joe Biden victory over Donald Trump.
The delicious increasing irrelevance of Brexiteers on the global stage.
I also can't help but smile at the crushing serendipity of fate. At the very moment that the likes of Steve Baker and his ERG right-wingers are whingeing in parliament, the world will be coming to terms with a crushing Joe Biden victory over Donald Trump.
The delicious increasing irrelevance of Brexiteers on the global stage.
There's a really good question here: how does the US get unfucked (politically)?
"Populism seems to be in decline everywhere, its appeal is mostly proportional to the length of time since it was last tried."
A typical liberal globalist response which views it as an aberration. It's just as I predicted: those that say this have learned nothing.
You will get populism again (be it of the far-left or far-right variety) unless mainstream parties address the root concerns that drive it - namely, concerns about economic stagnation, intergenerational inequality and mass migration.
I didn't say it had gone for good, it's always been there and it comes and goes. However I think you'd better predict which it will do based on the correlation "length of time since last time it was tried, and intensity with which you tried it" than based on "economic stagnation, intergenerational inequality and mass migration".
Populism never "works" because it proposes simple solutions to complex problems. However, voters vote them in when they're talking about the complex problems that other moderate politicians are ignoring.
So, the correct response is to both give them enough rope *and* to then park your tanks on their lawn.
Far too many seem to think the answer is just the former.
People switch to populists when they see the existing elites as self-serving (and let's face it, many Western elites are).
And, they then patronise or insult voters who share those concerns on top (bigots, racists, idiots etc.) which makes some want to burn their house down.
We are currently governed by an elite where appointment to any post seems to depend on who you went to school with or who you are married to or your loyalty to the leader, rather than any competence or expertise.
It is an elite which has prioritised giving its friends and relations and those who donate to it lucrative posts and contracts.
It is an elite which seems to think that insulting those who do their job is good governance.
It is an elite which has done everything it can to avoid any sort of Parliamentary scrutiny.
It is an elite which seems to think that anyone opposing it is some sort of traitor or enemy and its outriders in the press are very free with such accusations, on the basis of no evidence.
Beams and motes, beams and motes ......
This righteous indignation stuff is really rather tedious. Yes, the Government is crap, Boris is awful etc. and you know I agree.
So, what is the point in continually reposting it with this "beams and motes" stuff as if I somehow don't get it?
It's just not very interesting and it adds little to the debate.
I'm interested in the future of Western democracy and civilisation here and how we defend and fix it.
Insightful posts please.
The point you are missing is that in your berating of the liberal elites you fail to notice that those who claim to be fixing the problems those liberal elites have ignored are behaving in much the same way. So they are not fixing anything, they are making matters much worse and will help damage Western democracy and civilisation further. See for instance the concerns being expressed about the young losing faith in democracy.
My concern with the current government is that they appear to me to have little real attachment to democracy or the practices and principles which underpin and sustain it. So their continuation in power will likely, IMO, harm rather than help repair Western democracy and civilisation.
In your continuing attacks on liberal elites you are missing this important point, it seems to me, and the very real danger that Western democracy faces from those who are now in power who are using discontent with those liberal elites and their failings to aggrandise themselves rather than solve those problems.
One small anecdote: a good friend voted for Brexit because he felt that it was time for a shake up. It was a 51/49 decision for him. He now regrets it largely because of the way it has been handled since. But what has really turned him against this government is its cronyism and Cummings. It really pisses him off.
Don’t underestimate the effect of slow-burning anger at stuff like this. You may think of it as simply “righteous indignation”. For others it can determine their vote.
Daughter has just noted that the government has made things significantly worse for pubs and restaurants than in the first lockdown in one respect.
Even if you have a licence to sell as an off-licence, you cannot sell alcohol as a takeaway. So all the beer and other drinks which pubs have cannot now be sold and that stock will be wasted.
Why? During the last lockdown Daughter - at some expense - got such a licence so she could sell alcohol with her takeaway meals. Now she can’t. What on earth is the reason for doing that? It’s pure spite - especially as supermarkets will be able to sell alcohol.
Letters on their way to our MP - Boris’s PPS as it happens - and to Tim Farron.
Yes, that was noted on here last night and it doesn't seem logical to me. You can do takeaways, but not including your main product. What a mess.
In terms of R it's hardly going to make much of a difference either way. It's a sign that government is too focused on the minutiae of lockdown rules to pay enough attention to other ways of reducing transmission of the virus.
And it was also not what was done last time. So someone decided to put that bit in what government produced last night. It was not simply a cut and paste job. They made the deliberate decision to stop those with a off-licence selling their product on a takeaway basis. They made a deliberate decision to favour supermarkets who can sell alcohol over other businesses, particularly those whose main business this is.
Feels like spite to me not just stupidity. It is a kick in the teeth. I cannot begin to tell you how furious and upset Daughter is. Every little thing she has been trying to do to save her business, all the work she has put in for the last 2 years, her employees, her suppliers is being undermined.
Just a thought, Mrs Cyclefree... Are you still going to vote Tory?
Daughter has just noted that the government has made things significantly worse for pubs and restaurants than in the first lockdown in one respect.
Even if you have a licence to sell as an off-licence, you cannot sell alcohol as a takeaway. So all the beer and other drinks which pubs have cannot now be sold and that stock will be wasted.
Why? During the last lockdown Daughter - at some expense - got such a licence so she could sell alcohol with her takeaway meals. Now she can’t. What on earth is the reason for doing that? It’s pure spite - especially as supermarkets will be able to sell alcohol.
Letters on their way to our MP - Boris’s PPS as it happens - and to Tim Farron.
It's probably stupidity, rather than spite, but equally unacceptable.
See shutting golf courses....safer than going to the park.
I'm guessing that's because of the 19th hole problems
That's fine, you just say club house bar has to be be shut and probably close changing rooms. That is what lots of other sports clubs had to do initially. And for golf, you don't need either, you can easily change your shoes in the car park.
I actually asked some questions about this, in another context.
The police pointed out that the sell-over-the-wall stuff was being massively abused in certain areas. Huge street parties just outside various bars/pubs. Not control on selling etc.
The problem was that the behaviour was socially stratified. The local cricket club kept order and everyone behaved. As ddi the local pub (the kind of place that has a mini-theatre attached).
The less. salubrious places in the poorer neighbourhoods locally. Carnage.
The police didn't wan to recommend pulling licenses - they would be straight into a world of fun. This Is London Poor means a higher proportion of ethnic minorities. You can see where that goes, rapidly.
So, I presume this time round they are simply banning all of it.
But that is what licence conditions are for and the police, for crying out loud.
The problem that the Police do not want to touch, with a bargepole, is that behaviour is socially stratified.
Yes, you have the horsey hooligans etc. but in reality this is a tiny tiny minority, even among the rich as a group.
So the Savoy can setup an out door cocktail bar (say) for the super rich. Almost certainly no problems.
Meanwhile you are closing pubs in the poor parts of town.
Cue cries of "one law etc"
This is what I was told by a local member of the licensing committee - there was trouble, but getting anyone to recommend pulling licenses depended on the intestinal fortitude of the people involved.
There was one senior Plod who was old school, a complete bastard, but he is due to retire this year. So he was going round shutting places left and right. Because any complaint will come through after he is on his pension, and would be NFA'd.
Look at the horseshit confidence intervals on Slide 4 and 5....you are telling me that your model has f##k all idea about the level of hospital admissions or deaths for the next few days.
Hmmm. Do you think these were the graphs produced for ministers back in September, updated for actuals but not projections...? That's surely the only thing that can explain those confidence intervals...?
I think that must be the explanation.
How woeful. I don't like to rubbish work when I have not seen the details, but this looks worse & worse.
Look at the horseshit confidence intervals on Slide 4 and 5....you are telling me that your model has f##k all idea about the level of hospital admissions or deaths for the next few days.
Hmmm. Do you think these were the graphs produced for ministers back in September, updated for actuals but not projections...? That's surely the only thing that can explain those confidence intervals...?
I think that must be the explanation.
How woeful. I don't like to rubbish work when I have not seen the details, but this looks worse & worse.
REACT and ONS are not models - they are "polling" for COVID with tests. Yes, they are using this data to try and build models. But the data provided is from actual tests.
The reason for the large error bars is the number of infections found - if you test 86,000 people, with infection at a rate, say, of 200 per 100K, you will expect to find 172 positives.
But, what is the explanation for the peculiar shape of the confidence limit that FrancisUrquhart pointed to?
The confidence limits come from a model. The data alone do not give you CLs.
'Another, Chris, dressed all in black, says he tries to pick up possible stray crossings that officials may not have spotted.
"If I do my job - what I call my job - like the Home Guard, if I can stop the migrants when they get off the boat then I can hold them there until the Border Force arrive," he says. "I don't want them getting off the boats and just disappearing, so I offer them water, cigarettes, anything to keep them there. And I'll pick the dodgy ones out and say to the Coast Guard or whoever, 'There's this one that you should be careful of.' And they do listen to me, but it's really the person that drives the boat that they want."'
One other thing that struck me from the latest announcement. No special shielding for the extremely at risk. I know there are concerns about locking oldies who live on their own away, but is it wise for 80 year old Maureen to be popping down the shops to get food? The food box system was one of the big successes of the first lockdown.
From the comments I have read on here, I assume some of you don't think its appropriate for armed militias in paramilitary gear and ski masks to march around the street with machine guns intimidating voters. What is wrong with you? Can't you respect their 2nd Amendment rights? It seems Perfectly Reasonable and Civilised to let people buy that kind of lethal hardware and threaten passers by with it.
Sunak has been commendably quick at extending the 80% furlough scheme. If lockdown continues though he is going to have to extend it still further. This is a trap for the government because I simply do not see how a one month lockdown will solve anything.
But it is worth noting that by making the decision to extend 80% furlough so late & the cut-off date for claims 30/10, a lot of employees who might have been kept on by businesses will already have lost their jobs.
The government’s failure to think or act more than 2/3 days ahead doesn’t just cost lives. It also costs jobs.
Couldn’t someone buy the government a calendar with all the key upcoming events put in it: you know stuff like term starting, term ending, dates by when decisions need to be made etc. All these entirely foreseeable events seem to come as a complete surprise to them.
Well, I'm not convinced that the tiered regional approach was failing, so perhaps the government will just be able to claim victory on 2nd December, albeit at substantial economic cost. I suppose the one advantage of a one month lockdown is that one can spread the number of deaths more evenly, rather than see a sudden spike.
All we need now for the farce to be complete is for new cases to fall next week before the lockdown begins.
It's going to be quite amusing if R goes below 1 within a couple of weeks.
No it wouldn't, the scientists would absolutely claim it was the lockdown that did it. I'm sure if cases keep falling this week they'll try and claim it as part of the lockdown because it was announced yesterday. They are as dishonest as the politicians.
They'd try. But i note that the Government's current official line for the lifting of the lockdown is R falling below 1.
And then they'd say "well we can't lift the rules because the R would go above 1 if we do" and we're in a permanent half life. Never underestimate the level of dishonesty that the politicians and scientists will sink to. They will lie to our faces to make themselves look correct even if they destroy the economy in the process. They face none of the consequences of their decisions.
That's my concern, too.
Tons of valid concerns but the big picture is that the projections from those with the data show a clear consensus that if a tighter regime is not implemented what we will see within weeks is the NHS collapsing and tens of thousands of people dying, of Covid and not Covid, many of them for lack of access to treatment. A calamity.
So faced with this you can only go one of two ways -
Take the recommended action to prevent the calamity, OR
Hold steady and see if the calamity happens. Hope the models are proved wrong.
Or three - do two, then panic and go for one anyway.
Yep. Which is what has happened.
But my point is, those opining that this is the wrong decision are - although they never put it like this for obvious reasons - arguing that we should just cross our fingers and hope the models are wrong.
The models are certainly wrong.
"All models are wrong, but some are useful" (George Box)
The only question is whether the models are a useful guide for our future actions.
That is a much, much more open question than you appear to think.
Anyone acquainted with model building -- so no UK politician or journalist -- knows that is a very reasonable question to ask.
Of course they're wrong. But HOW wrong? The only way to find out is to not act on them and see what happens. If the NHS does collapse by Christmas we will have verified them. If it doesn't - not even close - we will have disproved them. This is what people who oppose taking action are arguing for. Don't act, see what happens, hope the models are not just wrong but VERY wrong.
No, no, no. You can tell if the model is wrong by comparing its predictions day by day with the data. You don't have to wait for Christmas to do that.
In fact, you can use the model to hindcast data that you already have. They are plenty of ways to validate the model.
I believe in the next year it is entirely possible Labour sees a double digit lead and Keir leads Johnson/his successor by Blair margins.
I would certainly expect that.
After all, Ed Miliband recorded double digit leads over the Coalition.
Well exactly. I think Keir is doing a decent job too, but that doesn't mean achieving what would indeed be a good lead is some remarkable achievement in itself.
Miliband did well in 2012 in terms of real elections, polls and the Corby by election (albeit not good personal ratings) but then it slowly went wrong after 2013 after he started listening to/getting undermined by Balls and especially 2014 when UKIP and the SNP surged.
Starmer's poll ratings are OK/at the higher end of expectations after the disastrous brexit chasm in 2019 but is still only level pegging with a divisive Johnson in best PM rating as well as polls.
I think Starmer will do OK in 2024 (because the LD-Lab switchers are probably locked in in Con-Lab marginals in a way they were not for Miliband) but will struggle to win more than 40-50 seats from the Tories unless more Tory voters switch to Labour who have not already switched which I don't necessarily think they will.
I think how many seats the Lib Dems win (predominantly in the south of England) in addition to 30-50 for the SNP will probably get will determine whether Starmer will become PM.
Fair play to pulpstar - whom I've always assumed was on the right. This makes for depressing reading and one only hopes that Biden wins and does something about it. Will be hard without the Senate though. What surprises me about the GOP is just how brazen they are. There really appears to be no limit to what they're prepared to do. It really needs some of the old school types to publicly disown the party. I can't imagine George W would ever do it or if he still has credibility but it really is needed.
The other thing to bear in mind is the rest of the world. The USA is the world's most prominent liberal democracy. It's all very well to think Sweden or the Netherlands might be BETTER examples but they aren't going to have the global reach of the US. This kind of behaviour sends a terrible message to the rest of the world about governance.
I think @Pulpstar talks and sympathises right but actually votes centre and centre-left when it comes to the crunch.
There's a really good question here: how does the US get unfucked (politically)?
"Populism seems to be in decline everywhere, its appeal is mostly proportional to the length of time since it was last tried."
A typical liberal globalist response which views it as an aberration. It's just as I predicted: those that say this have learned nothing.
You will get populism again (be it of the far-left or far-right variety) unless mainstream parties address the root concerns that drive it - namely, concerns about economic stagnation, intergenerational inequality and mass migration.
I didn't say it had gone for good, it's always been there and it comes and goes. However I think you'd better predict which it will do based on the correlation "length of time since last time it was tried, and intensity with which you tried it" than based on "economic stagnation, intergenerational inequality and mass migration".
Populism never "works" because it proposes simple solutions to complex problems. However, voters vote them in when they're talking about the complex problems that other moderate politicians are ignoring.
So, the correct response is to both give them enough rope *and* to then park your tanks on their lawn.
Far too many seem to think the answer is just the former.
People switch to populists when they see the existing elites as self-serving (and let's face it, many Western elites are).
And, they then patronise or insult voters who share those concerns on top (bigots, racists, idiots etc.) which makes some want to burn their house down.
We are currently governed by an elite where appointment to any post seems to depend on who you went to school with or who you are married to or your loyalty to the leader, rather than any competence or expertise.
It is an elite which has prioritised giving its friends and relations and those who donate to it lucrative posts and contracts.
It is an elite which seems to think that insulting those who do their job is good governance.
It is an elite which has done everything it can to avoid any sort of Parliamentary scrutiny.
It is an elite which seems to think that anyone opposing it is some sort of traitor or enemy and its outriders in the press are very free with such accusations, on the basis of no evidence.
Beams and motes, beams and motes ......
This righteous indignation stuff is really rather tedious. Yes, the Government is crap, Boris is awful etc. and you know I agree.
So, what is the point in continually reposting it with this "beams and motes" stuff as if I somehow don't get it?
It's just not very interesting and it adds little to the debate.
I'm interested in the future of Western democracy and civilisation here and how we defend and fix it.
Insightful posts please.
The point you are missing is that in your berating of the liberal elites you fail to notice that those who claim to be fixing the problems those liberal elites have ignored are behaving in much the same way. So they are not fixing anything, they are making matters much worse and will help damage Western democracy and civilisation further. See for instance the concerns being expressed about the young losing faith in democracy.
My concern with the current government is that they appear to me to have little real attachment to democracy or the practices and principles which underpin and sustain it. So their continuation in power will likely, IMO, harm rather than help repair Western democracy and civilisation.
In your continuing attacks on liberal elites you are missing this important point, it seems to me, and the very real danger that Western democracy faces from those who are now in power who are using discontent with those liberal elites and their failings to aggrandise themselves rather than solve those problems.
One small anecdote: a good friend voted for Brexit because he felt that it was time for a shake up. It was a 51/49 decision for him. He now regrets it largely because of the way it has been handled since. But what has really turned him against this government is its cronyism and Cummings. It really pisses him off.
Don’t underestimate the effect of slow-burning anger at stuff like this. You may think of it as simply “righteous indignation”. For others it can determine their vote.
As I and many others said on every other occasion he has come back, "he's a busted flush... nobody cares any more".
One day, we'll be right. Maybe.
The last thing we need is Trump's tapeworm back over here cheering on the fascists and jackboots brigade, but I guess it is all part of the decline of Britain.
Split the vote on the right would be good news. Labour has consolidated the left wing vote now
Not when Corbyn and Len have set up a true socialist party.
It will be another CUK. If they can’t get people like me then how do they intend to win?
The reality is that Labour voters and members support Keir and think Corbyn was bad. There simply isn’t enough support for him.
My two brothers and all their friends would join, as would large numbers of the N London Labour Party, you fail to realize that true socialist control of the party is more important than winning elections.
So, the ultimate goal is total control of an unelectable party?
They don't care about electability. Being smug and self-righteous will do.
The self-regarding orgy of Corbyn tribute tweets post-defeat last year was instructive and deeply depressing. It was all about how Corbyn made the tweeter feel about themselves. This didn't just include the ground troops (who often react in that sort of way in all parties in truth) but a lot of newer MPs and so on.
There was very little sense that there are a group of people in whose interest the Labour Party was formed to act, and who they'd let down.
I know there are a lot of Labour members who were Corbyn supporters but quietly feel that way and accept the point - and the election of Starmer suggests there may be quite a few. But the sheer volume of voices of people who didn't give a damn as long as they personally felt righteous was a bit dismal.
Thats just politics though. On the fringes you always get "fruitcakes and loonies" who smell their own farts and think its flowers. They are correct. Therefore everyone else is wrong. And as they are so clever to be right everyone else must be stupid. Its the same with the Daily Mail set who insist anyone on benefits is on crack.
The difference of course is around how left and right organise. The left are happy to infinitely split and argue about which splinter group is pure and how the rest are all traitors. The right are just as happy to go at each other but can usually pull it back together when it comes to elections.
Ok, but a counter view. Winning GEs is very important but there is much more to political involvement than that. Before Covid I went to several LP meetings and for many there their political activism and their sincerely held socialist ideas and values were what their life was about. In addition to the party they were plugged into all sorts of local campaigns and community initiatives etc. This was 24/7 immersion not just voting every 5 years. Made me feel like a dilettante - which relative to them I am - and no way would I feel justified in ticking them off for being "self righteous" or for in some way letting the good people of the country down. If those people on the softer left want a more "electable" party they should get off their butts and get involved. The party belongs to its members not to the floating voters of Middle England or to disaffected centrists and Tories.
The Party exists to become the government. Clause 1 of the Party rulebook. So diverting it off to agitate for a socialist utopia that few will vote for isn't what the members should do regardless of how sincerely they hold their batshit views
Well much of the local activism is (unpaid) helping vulnerable marginalized people fight oppressive vested interests. Nothing batshit about this. And in 2017 more people voted for Labour than they did in 2015 or 2010. Yes, Brexit helped in that one, perhaps as much as it hurt in 2019, but still. My view is Labour can win an election from the Left with smart policies and a leader with wide appeal. The evidence to the contrary is not nearly strong enough to disabuse me of that.
Those new New York Times polls in swing states put Joe Biden in as strong a position going into an election as any Presidential candidate since 2008 when Obama won 365 Electoral College votes.
That's the magnitude of his current polling, no matter what HYUFD says to the contrary.
From the comments I have read on here, I assume some of you don't think its appropriate for armed militias in paramilitary gear and ski masks to march around the street with machine guns intimidating voters. What is wrong with you? Can't you respect their 2nd Amendment rights? It seems Perfectly Reasonable and Civilised to let people buy that kind of lethal hardware and threaten passers by with it.
I know american policing will involve more violence and potential for violence given the society, but if they want to be warriors (leaving aside for a moment the way they are defining warrior there) I don't know why they dont just join the army instead.
Sunak has been commendably quick at extending the 80% furlough scheme. If lockdown continues though he is going to have to extend it still further. This is a trap for the government because I simply do not see how a one month lockdown will solve anything.
But it is worth noting that by making the decision to extend 80% furlough so late & the cut-off date for claims 30/10, a lot of employees who might have been kept on by businesses will already have lost their jobs.
The government’s failure to think or act more than 2/3 days ahead doesn’t just cost lives. It also costs jobs.
Couldn’t someone buy the government a calendar with all the key upcoming events put in it: you know stuff like term starting, term ending, dates by when decisions need to be made etc. All these entirely foreseeable events seem to come as a complete surprise to them.
Well, I'm not convinced that the tiered regional approach was failing, so perhaps the government will just be able to claim victory on 2nd December, albeit at substantial economic cost. I suppose the one advantage of a one month lockdown is that one can spread the number of deaths more evenly, rather than see a sudden spike.
All we need now for the farce to be complete is for new cases to fall next week before the lockdown begins.
It's going to be quite amusing if R goes below 1 within a couple of weeks.
No it wouldn't, the scientists would absolutely claim it was the lockdown that did it. I'm sure if cases keep falling this week they'll try and claim it as part of the lockdown because it was announced yesterday. They are as dishonest as the politicians.
They'd try. But i note that the Government's current official line for the lifting of the lockdown is R falling below 1.
And then they'd say "well we can't lift the rules because the R would go above 1 if we do" and we're in a permanent half life. Never underestimate the level of dishonesty that the politicians and scientists will sink to. They will lie to our faces to make themselves look correct even if they destroy the economy in the process. They face none of the consequences of their decisions.
That's my concern, too.
Tons of valid concerns but the big picture is that the projections from those with the data show a clear consensus that if a tighter regime is not implemented what we will see within weeks is the NHS collapsing and tens of thousands of people dying, of Covid and not Covid, many of them for lack of access to treatment. A calamity.
So faced with this you can only go one of two ways -
Take the recommended action to prevent the calamity, OR
Hold steady and see if the calamity happens. Hope the models are proved wrong.
You're falling into the exact trap the government has set, they're using the NHS as a shield for their incompetence. By saying "yeah but the NHS" it instantly silences any criticism of the policy. We shouldn't be in this position but through incompetence and cronyism we're about to have another lockdown. Don't let them get away with it.
One should always be sceptical about claims of the NHS being "overwhelmed". Given such claims are made almost every winter. The issue is the extent to which capacity can we scaled up, or adjusted through cancellations of non-emergency treatment to cope.
As somebody said - the NHS exists to save lives. We do not strive to save lives to save the NHS.
Weren't the Nightingale hospitals completely empty at the peak last time around?
The Nightingale hospitals were not full hospitals - and never could be.
They only had facilities for treating one thing (COVID) and not doing intensive care (mostly) on that.
They were to be manned by pulling in everyone, medical student, student nurses, retirees etc.
Quite simply, they are a slightly better alternative to dumping incoming patients in the street because the hospitals filled up - see Italy.
Google triage and the origins of the term....
Yes I know they were not supposed to replace normal hospitals, but the fact that there were almost entirely empty showed that the NHS wasn't being overwhelmed at the peak last time.
In Joe Biden I don;'t think I have ever seen a major political candidate who has more appeal at the polls and less appeal on the ground.
Everybody loves Joe at the ballot box, apparently, but his rallies are, literally, dozens of people. With Harris, its smaller than that. Almost like a fringe party.
Its quite uncanny.
Covid passed you by? How can you not be aware of the fact that Biden/Harris are deliberately not putting on large rallies because of the pandemic???
In Joe Biden I don;'t think I have ever seen a major political candidate who has more appeal at the polls and less appeal on the ground.
Everybody loves Joe at the ballot box, apparently, but his rallies are, literally, dozens of people. With Harris, its smaller than that. Almost like a fringe party.
Its quite uncanny.
So based on your 'rally numbers' poll, then Trumps winning the election 90-10, boy those pollsters have some explaining to do wasting all their time crunching numbers instead of counting heads,,,
Look at the horseshit confidence intervals on Slide 4 and 5....you are telling me that your model has f##k all idea about the level of hospital admissions or deaths for the next few days.
Hmmm. Do you think these were the graphs produced for ministers back in September, updated for actuals but not projections...? That's surely the only thing that can explain those confidence intervals...?
I think that must be the explanation.
How woeful. I don't like to rubbish work when I have not seen the details, but this looks worse & worse.
Look at the horseshit confidence intervals on Slide 4 and 5....you are telling me that your model has f##k all idea about the level of hospital admissions or deaths for the next few days.
Hmmm. Do you think these were the graphs produced for ministers back in September, updated for actuals but not projections...? That's surely the only thing that can explain those confidence intervals...?
I think that must be the explanation.
How woeful. I don't like to rubbish work when I have not seen the details, but this looks worse & worse.
REACT and ONS are not models - they are "polling" for COVID with tests. Yes, they are using this data to try and build models. But the data provided is from actual tests.
The reason for the large error bars is the number of infections found - if you test 86,000 people, with infection at a rate, say, of 200 per 100K, you will expect to find 172 positives.
But, what is the explanation for the peculiar shape of the confidence limit that FrancisUrquhart pointed to?
The confidence limits come from a model. The data alone do not give you CLs.
The confidence limits are based on low number of positives - which means a possibility of error. If you know the accuracy of the tests, then it becomes a polling error type situation.
Imagine you were political polling to get the level of support for a party that gets 200 votes in every 100K - maybe.
The error bars on that would be huge - unless your poll was of a million people....
From the comments I have read on here, I assume some of you don't think its appropriate for armed militias in paramilitary gear and ski masks to march around the street with machine guns intimidating voters. What is wrong with you? Can't you respect their 2nd Amendment rights? It seems Perfectly Reasonable and Civilised to let people buy that kind of lethal hardware and threaten passers by with it.
I know american policing will involve more violence and potential for violence given the society, but if they want to be warriors (leaving aside for a moment the way they are defining warrior there) I don't know why they dont just join the army instead.
Utterly deranged comment with loads of upvotes. Says it all really.
How is that deranged? It was simply a witty comment. What does it say when you say it says it all? Just wittily points out that just because you are popular it doesn't mean you are desirable, and to many Trump isn't.
I think you and @contrarian are holding back somewhat. Tells us what you really think about stuff? Give us a broader insight into your political beliefs.
I'll start - I'm a namby-pamby liberal with a libertarian orange booker streak.
Look at the horseshit confidence intervals on Slide 4 and 5....you are telling me that your model has f##k all idea about the level of hospital admissions or deaths for the next few days.
Hmmm. Do you think these were the graphs produced for ministers back in September, updated for actuals but not projections...? That's surely the only thing that can explain those confidence intervals...?
I think that must be the explanation.
How woeful. I don't like to rubbish work when I have not seen the details, but this looks worse & worse.
Look at the horseshit confidence intervals on Slide 4 and 5....you are telling me that your model has f##k all idea about the level of hospital admissions or deaths for the next few days.
Hmmm. Do you think these were the graphs produced for ministers back in September, updated for actuals but not projections...? That's surely the only thing that can explain those confidence intervals...?
I think that must be the explanation.
How woeful. I don't like to rubbish work when I have not seen the details, but this looks worse & worse.
REACT and ONS are not models - they are "polling" for COVID with tests. Yes, they are using this data to try and build models. But the data provided is from actual tests.
The reason for the large error bars is the number of infections found - if you test 86,000 people, with infection at a rate, say, of 200 per 100K, you will expect to find 172 positives.
But, what is the explanation for the peculiar shape of the confidence limit that FrancisUrquhart pointed to?
The confidence limits come from a model. The data alone do not give you CLs.
The confidence limits are based on low number of positives - which means a possibility of error. If you know the accuracy of the tests, then it becomes a polling error type situation.
Imagine you were political polling to get the level of support for a party that gets 200 votes in every 100K - maybe.
The error bars on that would be huge - unless your poll was of a million people....
The slides are pointed to are hospital admission and deaths. Given all we know, we should be able to model these fairly well, even with latent variables / uncertainty over real number of cases vs testing, and in terms of predictions for the forthcoming few days, really well. That was my point.
Sunak has been commendably quick at extending the 80% furlough scheme. If lockdown continues though he is going to have to extend it still further. This is a trap for the government because I simply do not see how a one month lockdown will solve anything.
But it is worth noting that by making the decision to extend 80% furlough so late & the cut-off date for claims 30/10, a lot of employees who might have been kept on by businesses will already have lost their jobs.
The government’s failure to think or act more than 2/3 days ahead doesn’t just cost lives. It also costs jobs.
Couldn’t someone buy the government a calendar with all the key upcoming events put in it: you know stuff like term starting, term ending, dates by when decisions need to be made etc. All these entirely foreseeable events seem to come as a complete surprise to them.
Well, I'm not convinced that the tiered regional approach was failing, so perhaps the government will just be able to claim victory on 2nd December, albeit at substantial economic cost. I suppose the one advantage of a one month lockdown is that one can spread the number of deaths more evenly, rather than see a sudden spike.
All we need now for the farce to be complete is for new cases to fall next week before the lockdown begins.
It's going to be quite amusing if R goes below 1 within a couple of weeks.
No it wouldn't, the scientists would absolutely claim it was the lockdown that did it. I'm sure if cases keep falling this week they'll try and claim it as part of the lockdown because it was announced yesterday. They are as dishonest as the politicians.
They'd try. But i note that the Government's current official line for the lifting of the lockdown is R falling below 1.
And then they'd say "well we can't lift the rules because the R would go above 1 if we do" and we're in a permanent half life. Never underestimate the level of dishonesty that the politicians and scientists will sink to. They will lie to our faces to make themselves look correct even if they destroy the economy in the process. They face none of the consequences of their decisions.
That's my concern, too.
Tons of valid concerns but the big picture is that the projections from those with the data show a clear consensus that if a tighter regime is not implemented what we will see within weeks is the NHS collapsing and tens of thousands of people dying, of Covid and not Covid, many of them for lack of access to treatment. A calamity.
So faced with this you can only go one of two ways -
Take the recommended action to prevent the calamity, OR
Hold steady and see if the calamity happens. Hope the models are proved wrong.
You're falling into the exact trap the government has set, they're using the NHS as a shield for their incompetence. By saying "yeah but the NHS" it instantly silences any criticism of the policy. We shouldn't be in this position but through incompetence and cronyism we're about to have another lockdown. Don't let them get away with it.
One should always be sceptical about claims of the NHS being "overwhelmed". Given such claims are made almost every winter. The issue is the extent to which capacity can we scaled up, or adjusted through cancellations of non-emergency treatment to cope.
As somebody said - the NHS exists to save lives. We do not strive to save lives to save the NHS.
But should we be sufficiently skeptical as to not act on the models?
Depends if the stated reason for action is to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed...
In Joe Biden I don;'t think I have ever seen a major political candidate who has more appeal at the polls and less appeal on the ground.
Everybody loves Joe at the ballot box, apparently, but his rallies are, literally, dozens of people. With Harris, its smaller than that. Almost like a fringe party.
Its quite uncanny.
It's perfectly canny, they have to go from place to place doing events to get local media to cover them, but they don't want big crowds of people because they're opposed to killing voters with covid.
Look at the horseshit confidence intervals on Slide 4 and 5....you are telling me that your model has f##k all idea about the level of hospital admissions or deaths for the next few days.
Hmmm. Do you think these were the graphs produced for ministers back in September, updated for actuals but not projections...? That's surely the only thing that can explain those confidence intervals...?
I think that must be the explanation.
How woeful. I don't like to rubbish work when I have not seen the details, but this looks worse & worse.
Look at the horseshit confidence intervals on Slide 4 and 5....you are telling me that your model has f##k all idea about the level of hospital admissions or deaths for the next few days.
Hmmm. Do you think these were the graphs produced for ministers back in September, updated for actuals but not projections...? That's surely the only thing that can explain those confidence intervals...?
I think that must be the explanation.
How woeful. I don't like to rubbish work when I have not seen the details, but this looks worse & worse.
REACT and ONS are not models - they are "polling" for COVID with tests. Yes, they are using this data to try and build models. But the data provided is from actual tests.
The reason for the large error bars is the number of infections found - if you test 86,000 people, with infection at a rate, say, of 200 per 100K, you will expect to find 172 positives.
But, what is the explanation for the peculiar shape of the confidence limit that FrancisUrquhart pointed to?
The confidence limits come from a model. The data alone do not give you CLs.
The confidence limits are based on low number of positives - which means a possibility of error. If you know the accuracy of the tests, then it becomes a polling error type situation.
Imagine you were political polling to get the level of support for a party that gets 200 votes in every 100K - maybe.
The error bars on that would be huge - unless your poll was of a million people....
Are we talking about the same thing ?
I think it is the peculiar shape of the CLs on slide 4 & 5 of this presentation.
Sunak has been commendably quick at extending the 80% furlough scheme. If lockdown continues though he is going to have to extend it still further. This is a trap for the government because I simply do not see how a one month lockdown will solve anything.
But it is worth noting that by making the decision to extend 80% furlough so late & the cut-off date for claims 30/10, a lot of employees who might have been kept on by businesses will already have lost their jobs.
The government’s failure to think or act more than 2/3 days ahead doesn’t just cost lives. It also costs jobs.
Couldn’t someone buy the government a calendar with all the key upcoming events put in it: you know stuff like term starting, term ending, dates by when decisions need to be made etc. All these entirely foreseeable events seem to come as a complete surprise to them.
Well, I'm not convinced that the tiered regional approach was failing, so perhaps the government will just be able to claim victory on 2nd December, albeit at substantial economic cost. I suppose the one advantage of a one month lockdown is that one can spread the number of deaths more evenly, rather than see a sudden spike.
All we need now for the farce to be complete is for new cases to fall next week before the lockdown begins.
It's going to be quite amusing if R goes below 1 within a couple of weeks.
No it wouldn't, the scientists would absolutely claim it was the lockdown that did it. I'm sure if cases keep falling this week they'll try and claim it as part of the lockdown because it was announced yesterday. They are as dishonest as the politicians.
They'd try. But i note that the Government's current official line for the lifting of the lockdown is R falling below 1.
And then they'd say "well we can't lift the rules because the R would go above 1 if we do" and we're in a permanent half life. Never underestimate the level of dishonesty that the politicians and scientists will sink to. They will lie to our faces to make themselves look correct even if they destroy the economy in the process. They face none of the consequences of their decisions.
That's my concern, too.
Tons of valid concerns but the big picture is that the projections from those with the data show a clear consensus that if a tighter regime is not implemented what we will see within weeks is the NHS collapsing and tens of thousands of people dying, of Covid and not Covid, many of them for lack of access to treatment. A calamity.
So faced with this you can only go one of two ways -
Take the recommended action to prevent the calamity, OR
Hold steady and see if the calamity happens. Hope the models are proved wrong.
Yes, but to be fair we are specifically speculating about a scenario where the R rate drops below 1 in the next couple of weeks (ie. can be attributed, if anything, to the Tier system restrictions and not the Lockdown), in which case the Scientific modelling basis for the lockdown will be shown to be "arguable".
Sorry, missed this post.
So your view is they should have waited another couple of weeks then, is that right?
In Joe Biden I don;'t think I have ever seen a major political candidate who has more appeal at the polls and less appeal on the ground.
Everybody loves Joe at the ballot box, apparently, but his rallies are, literally, dozens of people. With Harris, its smaller than that. Almost like a fringe party.
Its quite uncanny.
It's not uncanny when you realise he is being smart about a global pandemic. How big a rally are you seeing Starmer or Johnson making right now?
Sunak has been commendably quick at extending the 80% furlough scheme. If lockdown continues though he is going to have to extend it still further. This is a trap for the government because I simply do not see how a one month lockdown will solve anything.
But it is worth noting that by making the decision to extend 80% furlough so late & the cut-off date for claims 30/10, a lot of employees who might have been kept on by businesses will already have lost their jobs.
The government’s failure to think or act more than 2/3 days ahead doesn’t just cost lives. It also costs jobs.
Couldn’t someone buy the government a calendar with all the key upcoming events put in it: you know stuff like term starting, term ending, dates by when decisions need to be made etc. All these entirely foreseeable events seem to come as a complete surprise to them.
Well, I'm not convinced that the tiered regional approach was failing, so perhaps the government will just be able to claim victory on 2nd December, albeit at substantial economic cost. I suppose the one advantage of a one month lockdown is that one can spread the number of deaths more evenly, rather than see a sudden spike.
All we need now for the farce to be complete is for new cases to fall next week before the lockdown begins.
It's going to be quite amusing if R goes below 1 within a couple of weeks.
No it wouldn't, the scientists would absolutely claim it was the lockdown that did it. I'm sure if cases keep falling this week they'll try and claim it as part of the lockdown because it was announced yesterday. They are as dishonest as the politicians.
They'd try. But i note that the Government's current official line for the lifting of the lockdown is R falling below 1.
And then they'd say "well we can't lift the rules because the R would go above 1 if we do" and we're in a permanent half life. Never underestimate the level of dishonesty that the politicians and scientists will sink to. They will lie to our faces to make themselves look correct even if they destroy the economy in the process. They face none of the consequences of their decisions.
That's my concern, too.
Tons of valid concerns but the big picture is that the projections from those with the data show a clear consensus that if a tighter regime is not implemented what we will see within weeks is the NHS collapsing and tens of thousands of people dying, of Covid and not Covid, many of them for lack of access to treatment. A calamity.
So faced with this you can only go one of two ways -
Take the recommended action to prevent the calamity, OR
Hold steady and see if the calamity happens. Hope the models are proved wrong.
Yes, but to be fair we are specifically speculating about a scenario where the R rate drops below 1 in the next couple of weeks (ie. can be attributed, if anything, to the Tier system restrictions and not the Lockdown), in which case the Scientific modelling basis for the lockdown will be shown to be "arguable".
Sorry, missed this post.
So your view is they should have waited another couple of weeks then, is that right?
If the Government believed in the Tier system, then yes, they should. There is nothing in the scientific models/graphs presented yesterday, that wasn't available to them 2-3 weeks ago. Because they can't yet be reflecting the impact of the Tier restrictions, except to the extent that data on case numbers has improved somewhat. The only thing that has really changed is France/Germany locking down.
The "up-to-date" figures on hospitalisations and deaths is lagged, representing what was happening weeks and months ago.
Daughter has just noted that the government has made things significantly worse for pubs and restaurants than in the first lockdown in one respect.
Even if you have a licence to sell as an off-licence, you cannot sell alcohol as a takeaway. So all the beer and other drinks which pubs have cannot now be sold and that stock will be wasted.
Why? During the last lockdown Daughter - at some expense - got such a licence so she could sell alcohol with her takeaway meals. Now she can’t. What on earth is the reason for doing that? It’s pure spite - especially as supermarkets will be able to sell alcohol.
Letters on their way to our MP - Boris’s PPS as it happens - and to Tim Farron.
Yes, that was noted on here last night and it doesn't seem logical to me. You can do takeaways, but not including your main product. What a mess.
In terms of R it's hardly going to make much of a difference either way. It's a sign that government is too focused on the minutiae of lockdown rules to pay enough attention to other ways of reducing transmission of the virus.
And it was also not what was done last time. So someone decided to put that bit in what government produced last night. It was not simply a cut and paste job. They made the deliberate decision to stop those with a off-licence selling their product on a takeaway basis. They made a deliberate decision to favour supermarkets who can sell alcohol over other businesses, particularly those whose main business this is.
Feels like spite to me not just stupidity. It is a kick in the teeth. I cannot begin to tell you how furious and upset Daughter is. Every little thing she has been trying to do to save her business, all the work she has put in for the last 2 years, her employees, her suppliers is being undermined.
Just a thought, Mrs Cyclefree... Are you still going to vote Tory?
Not sure why you have me down as a Tory. I vote Lib Dem for want of anything else.
Sunak has been commendably quick at extending the 80% furlough scheme. If lockdown continues though he is going to have to extend it still further. This is a trap for the government because I simply do not see how a one month lockdown will solve anything.
But it is worth noting that by making the decision to extend 80% furlough so late & the cut-off date for claims 30/10, a lot of employees who might have been kept on by businesses will already have lost their jobs.
The government’s failure to think or act more than 2/3 days ahead doesn’t just cost lives. It also costs jobs.
Couldn’t someone buy the government a calendar with all the key upcoming events put in it: you know stuff like term starting, term ending, dates by when decisions need to be made etc. All these entirely foreseeable events seem to come as a complete surprise to them.
Well, I'm not convinced that the tiered regional approach was failing, so perhaps the government will just be able to claim victory on 2nd December, albeit at substantial economic cost. I suppose the one advantage of a one month lockdown is that one can spread the number of deaths more evenly, rather than see a sudden spike.
All we need now for the farce to be complete is for new cases to fall next week before the lockdown begins.
It's going to be quite amusing if R goes below 1 within a couple of weeks.
No it wouldn't, the scientists would absolutely claim it was the lockdown that did it. I'm sure if cases keep falling this week they'll try and claim it as part of the lockdown because it was announced yesterday. They are as dishonest as the politicians.
They'd try. But i note that the Government's current official line for the lifting of the lockdown is R falling below 1.
And then they'd say "well we can't lift the rules because the R would go above 1 if we do" and we're in a permanent half life. Never underestimate the level of dishonesty that the politicians and scientists will sink to. They will lie to our faces to make themselves look correct even if they destroy the economy in the process. They face none of the consequences of their decisions.
That's my concern, too.
Tons of valid concerns but the big picture is that the projections from those with the data show a clear consensus that if a tighter regime is not implemented what we will see within weeks is the NHS collapsing and tens of thousands of people dying, of Covid and not Covid, many of them for lack of access to treatment. A calamity.
So faced with this you can only go one of two ways -
Take the recommended action to prevent the calamity, OR
Hold steady and see if the calamity happens. Hope the models are proved wrong.
Or three - do two, then panic and go for one anyway.
Yep. Which is what has happened.
But my point is, those opining that this is the wrong decision are - although they never put it like this for obvious reasons - arguing that we should just cross our fingers and hope the models are wrong.
The models are certainly wrong.
"All models are wrong, but some are useful" (George Box)
The only question is whether the models are a useful guide for our future actions.
That is a much, much more open question than you appear to think.
Anyone acquainted with model building -- so no UK politician or journalist -- knows that is a very reasonable question to ask.
Of course they're wrong. But HOW wrong? The only way to find out is to not act on them and see what happens. If the NHS does collapse by Christmas we will have verified them. If it doesn't - not even close - we will have disproved them. This is what people who oppose taking action are arguing for. Don't act, see what happens, hope the models are not just wrong but VERY wrong.
No, no, no. You can tell if the model is wrong by comparing its predictions day by day with the data. You don't have to wait for Christmas to do that.
In fact, you can use the model to hindcast data that you already have. They are plenty of ways to validate the model.
Some of that "audit" has happened. A few weeks ago the models said where we would be now if nothing changed. And that is approx where we are. Or a touch worse.
Daughter has just noted that the government has made things significantly worse for pubs and restaurants than in the first lockdown in one respect.
Even if you have a licence to sell as an off-licence, you cannot sell alcohol as a takeaway. So all the beer and other drinks which pubs have cannot now be sold and that stock will be wasted.
Why? During the last lockdown Daughter - at some expense - got such a licence so she could sell alcohol with her takeaway meals. Now she can’t. What on earth is the reason for doing that? It’s pure spite - especially as supermarkets will be able to sell alcohol.
Letters on their way to our MP - Boris’s PPS as it happens - and to Tim Farron.
It's probably stupidity, rather than spite, but equally unacceptable.
See shutting golf courses....safer than going to the park.
I'm guessing that's because of the 19th hole problems
Comments
That was because Gordon Brown had a pathological aversion to tax cuts as a political and economic strategy, unless they benefited the middle class by screwing over the poor.
What’s Johnson’s excuse for closing golf courses and banning pubs from serving takeaway alcohol but keeping universities open?
Wisconsin Biden 52, Trump 41
Arizona Biden 49, Trump 43
Florida Biden 47, Trump 43
Pennsylvania Biden 49, Trump 43
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/01/us/politics/biden-trump-poll-florida-pennsylvania-wisconsin.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage
The police pointed out that the sell-over-the-wall stuff was being massively abused in certain areas. Huge street parties just outside various bars/pubs. Not control on selling etc.
The problem was that the behaviour was socially stratified. The local cricket club kept order and everyone behaved. As ddi the local pub (the kind of place that has a mini-theatre attached).
The less. salubrious places in the poorer neighbourhoods locally. Carnage.
The police didn't wan to recommend pulling licenses - they would be straight into a world of fun. This Is London Poor means a higher proportion of ethnic minorities. You can see where that goes, rapidly.
So, I presume this time round they are simply banning all of it.
To look at 304 to 227 and call it comfortable misunderstands the Electoral College. The numbers flip in blocs they don't flip individually
https://projects.economist.com/us-2020-forecast/president
They only had facilities for treating one thing (COVID) and not doing intensive care (mostly) on that.
They were to be manned by pulling in everyone, medical student, student nurses, retirees etc.
Quite simply, they are a slightly better alternative to dumping incoming patients in the street because the hospitals filled up - see Italy.
Google triage and the origins of the term....
Trump would do the reverse.
I always remember using the public footpath that crosses Harlech golf course to the Morfa & being upbraided by some fat slob of a golfer that I was disturbing his shot. The footpath has been there for many hundred of years, long before the golf club.
https://twitter.com/PaulBrown_UK/status/1322887347076243456?s=20
Everybody loves Joe at the ballot box, apparently, but his rallies are, literally, dozens of people. With Harris, its smaller than that. Almost like a fringe party.
Its quite uncanny.
You're of the 'good walk spoiled' persuasion then?!
I had one relative who died in the Peruvian outbreak.
In the wider context of friends of friends, the school groups etc - no one has mentioned any deaths there.
The deaths represent 0.1% of the population....
Feels like spite to me not just stupidity. It is a kick in the teeth. I cannot begin to tell you how furious and upset Daughter is. Every little thing she has been trying to do to save her business, all the work she has put in for the last 2 years, her employees, her suppliers is being undermined.
Joe Hart probably thinks he is in with a chance.
Why didn't they?
And I still don't think Boris Johnson looks at all well.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2020/11/01/sir-bobby-charlton-diagnosed-dementia/
The reason for the large error bars is the number of infections found - if you test 86,000 people, with infection at a rate, say, of 200 per 100K, you will expect to find 172 positives.
The following estimates for daily infection are based on actual testing performed in the community
Given the above, we have a trajectory. What will cause it to change?
That's the magnitude of his current polling, no matter what HYUFD says to the contrary.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/01/us/politics/biden-trump-poll-florida-pennsylvania-wisconsin.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage
The delicious increasing irrelevance of Brexiteers on the global stage.
Please don't lecture me on things I already know.
Yes, you have the horsey hooligans etc. but in reality this is a tiny tiny minority, even among the rich as a group.
So the Savoy can setup an out door cocktail bar (say) for the super rich. Almost certainly no problems.
Meanwhile you are closing pubs in the poor parts of town.
Cue cries of "one law etc"
This is what I was told by a local member of the licensing committee - there was trouble, but getting anyone to recommend pulling licenses depended on the intestinal fortitude of the people involved.
There was one senior Plod who was old school, a complete bastard, but he is due to retire this year. So he was going round shutting places left and right. Because any complaint will come through after he is on his pension, and would be NFA'd.
The confidence limits come from a model. The data alone do not give you CLs.
https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1322702373790339074?s=20
Big online paedo catcher vibe
'Another, Chris, dressed all in black, says he tries to pick up possible stray crossings that officials may not have spotted.
"If I do my job - what I call my job - like the Home Guard, if I can stop the migrants when they get off the boat then I can hold them there until the Border Force arrive," he says. "I don't want them getting off the boats and just disappearing, so I offer them water, cigarettes, anything to keep them there. And I'll pick the dodgy ones out and say to the Coast Guard or whoever, 'There's this one that you should be careful of.' And they do listen to me, but it's really the person that drives the boat that they want."'
https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1322672206204329984
But I'm supremely confident about this election. The jitters have nothing to do with the facts. They're entirely because of 2016, which this isn't.
In fact, you can use the model to hindcast data that you already have. They are plenty of ways to validate the model.
Starmer's poll ratings are OK/at the higher end of expectations after the disastrous brexit chasm in 2019 but is still only level pegging with a divisive Johnson in best PM rating as well as polls.
I think Starmer will do OK in 2024 (because the LD-Lab switchers are probably locked in in Con-Lab marginals in a way they were not for Miliband) but will struggle to win more than 40-50 seats from the Tories unless more Tory voters switch to Labour who have not already switched which I don't necessarily think they will.
I think how many seats the Lib Dems win (predominantly in the south of England) in addition to 30-50 for the SNP will probably get will determine whether Starmer will become PM.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ce/ElectoralCollege1964.svg/1200px-ElectoralCollege1964.svg.png
Far too many right-wing loons since then ...
Imagine you were political polling to get the level of support for a party that gets 200 votes in every 100K - maybe.
The error bars on that would be huge - unless your poll was of a million people....
NEW THREAD
I think you and @contrarian are holding back somewhat. Tells us what you really think about stuff? Give us a broader insight into your political beliefs.
I'll start - I'm a namby-pamby liberal with a libertarian orange booker streak.
I think it is the peculiar shape of the CLs on slide 4 & 5 of this presentation.
https://tinyurl.com/y6zhqewn
that is puzzling. Why are they sharply truncated on or around 31 Oct 2020 ?
We are talking about the future on these plots, so the confidence limits must come from the interval domain in a posterior distribution.
That requires model+data.
Not a classic race, but it did have its moments.
Michigan Biden 52% Trump 45%
Iowa Trump 47% Biden 46%
Ohio Biden 49% Trump 48%
All 3 look about right to me though I epxected Trump to be up 1 or 2 in Ohio not down 1
More state polls from Emerson later
https://twitter.com/EmersonPolling?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author
So your view is they should have waited another couple of weeks then, is that right?
The "up-to-date" figures on hospitalisations and deaths is lagged, representing what was happening weeks and months ago.