In terms of foreign events linked to US policy, Obama's term was objectively more chaotic than Trump's.
Not true though, is it?
Trump has personally pandered to dictators and shit-talked liberal democratic colleagues. He has certainly left Nato weaker than he found it. We'll set aside judgment of his Iran policy as too soon to tell (I suspect history will look unfavourably), but he has promoted the new Middle East cold(ish) war. His unilateral Syria pullout is a chaotic disaster (I'm all in favour of reduced western interventionism, but when unwinding the situation it's important not to exacerbate it). We'll call his North Korea overtures misguided at best, and again I suspect that his purging of bipartisan / civil service structures has left the less showy parts of DPNK policy (coordinating what-if scenarios with China, liaising with South Korea) in tatters.
It's starting to look to me as though Tier 3 can reduce R to around 1; Tier 2 to around 1.2, and Tier 1 to around 1.3 or 1.4 (when the schools and universities are operating; maybe each decreasing by around 0.2 in half term/holidays)
What we have now, although it's called a "lockdown" is, in reality, a national Tier 4. Which will, hopefully, reduce R to sub-1.0 and actually lower the infection rates to the point where they can be held to 1.0 by the Tiering system. It's obvious that merely holding it at this level is unsustainable - hospitals are overloading, intra-hospital covid infection is far too high, and non-covid operations are being cancelled.
I don't know if ministers can't grasp that, or they fear/know some politicians or media polemicists (Baker himself, Farage, Young, etc) will misrepresent it.
Nearly four million public-sector workers, including soldiers, police officers, teachers and civil servants, face a pay freeze next year to help to repair the nation’s coronavirus-ravaged finances.
Everyone's faced a tough year.
The private sector that funds that lot has been ravaged much harder. So what would you do besides asinine, snide Tweets?
Actually, no - it's varied according to whether we can work effectively from home and whether our clients are OK. My main income is from a charity that continues to employ me full-time (with a pay freeze, but that's OK), and from translation for official bodies that have if anything increased their demand - my income went up and my daily expenses fell. That's not unique or even unusual among white-collar workers. While I give away a reasonable amount, it'd be much better if the German bank proposal of taxing home work and giving a tax break to essential workers or something similar was implemented. This is not an anti-Government point - it would simply be fairer.
Taxing home working seems a crazy idea to me.
Commuting is a terrible waste of time and energy - bad for individuals, bad for the environment, bad for productivity.
Of course taxes will have to rise, but trying to use them as a means of stopping progress is very short-sighted.
I agree to a point, though dont parties often seek to use or argue for using tax to incentivise or prevent various societal developments?
Spoilers suppressed for Andy'ds sake! Thank you very much. So episode 2 in the convent is a flashback, even though shown in parallel with Rolf 5 years later? That's what threw me.
And yes, suspended sentence is right! I did spot FF early on too...
There was a lot of speculation on Danish blogs about a series 2 and the author said he was discussing it, but the last posts about it were last year so I think they've decided to move on. The author says he's thinking of doing a crime-farce next, which sounds like a waste of unique talent to me, but I'll try anything he does.
Yes I think they needed to do more to clarify events happening now vs five years ago.
Sounds like Westworld and The Witcher. Must be a modern trend.
Comments
Trump has personally pandered to dictators and shit-talked liberal democratic colleagues. He has certainly left Nato weaker than he found it. We'll set aside judgment of his Iran policy as too soon to tell (I suspect history will look unfavourably), but he has promoted the new Middle East cold(ish) war. His unilateral Syria pullout is a chaotic disaster (I'm all in favour of reduced western interventionism, but when unwinding the situation it's important not to exacerbate it). We'll call his North Korea overtures misguided at best, and again I suspect that his purging of bipartisan / civil service structures has left the less showy parts of DPNK policy (coordinating what-if scenarios with China, liaising with South Korea) in tatters.
What we have now, although it's called a "lockdown" is, in reality, a national Tier 4. Which will, hopefully, reduce R to sub-1.0 and actually lower the infection rates to the point where they can be held to 1.0 by the Tiering system. It's obvious that merely holding it at this level is unsustainable - hospitals are overloading, intra-hospital covid infection is far too high, and non-covid operations are being cancelled.
I don't know if ministers can't grasp that, or they fear/know some politicians or media polemicists (Baker himself, Farage, Young, etc) will misrepresent it.