Most people in Britain were brought up in a country that offered the faint hope of justice. The police would investigate corruption, if only occasionally. Politicians would dodge and weave but avoid flat-out lies. Political parties had moral standards, however flexible, and if a minister disgraced himself or herself they could resign. Opposition politicians, journalists, satirists, charities and alliances of concerned citizens worked on the assumption that if they exposed wrongdoing there was a chance it would stop.
I don’t wish to romanticise the past. My small point is that we have not always been as shamefully governed as we are governed today. Countries change and not always for the better. Corruptions of public life in Britain that were once challenged now pass unpunished. The old codes that restrained the powerful have proved useless against politicians who say: “We can break them and no one can stop us.” Boris Johnson’s administration now lies as a matter of policy and a matter of course.
Boris is Trump. Both leaders have shown that what we thought were checks and balances, were not; that our constitutional and democratic conventions were just that, conventions. The only mitigating factor is neither Boris nor Trump is consistent or dogmatic, let alone evil, but this cannot be guaranteed of their successors.
“Rulers’ self-restraint is one of the most important – if less formal – ways by which governments control themselves. The belief that there are some limits, generally understood and shared despite political differences, beyond which you do not go because it is not the “done thing”, not the British way, not least because when you are out of power you don’t want to be on the receiving end. It is the “good chaps” theory of government. Coupled with that is a belief that even a democratic system requires checks and balances, that the system of government has a value which should be preserved and endure beyond the needs or desires of those in power at any one time.”
“The British conventions governing democracy and the consensus around them endure for as long as they are understood, believed and accepted. They become vulnerable, their weaknesses exposed when the reasons for them are forgotten or not valued or not understood. What if it is not “good chaps” who are elected? What if they are seen as stultifying by those impatient to effect change and willing to get rid of anything in their way? Or if checks and balances are simply described as obstruction and not seen as having any inherent value? Some do think that a government with a Parliamentary majority should be free to do whatever it wants and can get through Parliament: electoral might is right.”
Everything Cohen describes follows from the fact that we have people in power who think nothing should stand in their way, that, for instance, corruption is fine if done by an elected government or because it is an emergency or a necessity.
And of course the definition of “emergency” or “necessity” becomes ever wider until it becomes the norm and no-one even bothers to call it for what it is.
So if it becomes necessary to pay “middlemen” or “intermediaries” who happen to be the Minister’s neighbour or best friend or golf partner or whatever humongous sums of money to fly in Covid vaccines because the ports are blocked etc no- one will bat an eye lid and many will applaud. We have seen some of that on here already.
But in the real world the "middlemen" tasked with flying in the vaccines isn't "best friends" it is the military.
While for PPE 99.5% of PPE purchased has been consumable and there was a global shortage of availability. Those businesses that stepped into the gap and provided millions of items of PPE should be thanked not condemned.
We paid £12 billion for PPE worth £2 billion the year before. Clearly some people made massively inflated profits by this racketeering. An investigation of who, how authorised and how connected is perfectly fitting. While we are at it, looking at how depleted our pandemic stocks were prior to the outbreak could be usefully incorporated.
Sounds like Philip may have been a middleman given the lengths he goes to support the chicanery and fraud.
No but I've traded with them before. They serve a useful purpose. If I want to buy a product that is manufactured in Italy then I would rather speak to a middleman in the UK that imports the product in the volumes I need than speak to the manufacturer that says I can buy it in bulk if I want to collect it in bulk from their plant in Italy.
Most normal people, in a time of national crisis, would not say to the Government:
"I know a factory in China who has plenty of PPE they can send us. I will tell you ONLY if I get 10% of every order."
They would say:
"I know a factory in China who has plenty of PPE they can send us. Here are their details."
Most normal people aren't middle-men putting buyers in contact with sellers. In the real world, I suspect they would just go to another buyer.
So they are disaster profiteers then? Not something to defend. Should have been illegal really.
I suspect if you did that it would have dried up supply really fast as all those unscrupulous individuals sold it to the next buyer on the list.
Not if they can no longer enter Britain due to fear of arrest.
It would be illegal not to do business with the UK? They are free not to work with whoever they want.
In normal circumstances. Not in times of war and disaster. If I was Health Secretary and my mate sent me a WhatsApp message with details of availability of a ton of PPE, for example, I would expect such information to be provided free of charge, not in return for millions of pounds of kickbacks.
if they were offering services to facilitate it's import, then they could be paid a small nominal rate to cover the cost, again not millions of pounds.
It really is beyond the pale.
If the law was there they wouldn't be doing that in the first place, that was my point.
I'm not saying what they did was illegal. I'm saying it was immoral and not something to celebrate.
I don't disagree with that, I'm just arguing that making it illegal would not actually help improve the supply situation.
@Philip_Thompson seems to be suggesting that these "middlemen" were making our PPE but they weren't, were they? They were simply acting as middlemen as the name suggests.
They should certainly have been able to make a profit if they created avenues to PPE that we would otherwise not have had access to, but not millions of pounds of profit. That's just disaster capitalism.
Defending such behaviour is beyond the pale.
Why not millions of pounds of profit?
What percentage of trade being a profit is OK to you? Hypothetically someone invests in creating a plant that manufacturers PPE and gets a contract for say over £100mn with 98% going to total costs and a 2% margin then is that acceptable or unacceptable in your eyes?
Its the 2% costs and 98% profits that is the issue
Substantial meals are a pre-existing licensing term. It isn't rocket science and isn't new much as it may bemuse media trolls like you.
Fear of Scottish independence sees Scotch Eggs privileged over Cornish Pasties. Cornwall needs to up its separatist game.
Why would Cornwall push separatism? Boris has favoured Cornwall over the rest of England, Cornwall and the Isle of Wight will be the only parts of England to be in Tier 1 by the end of the week.
Come Friday Cornwall is the only part of the UK you can go to a pub and not only eat a Pasty or any other food inside and outside with your mates and family but also have a beer after without any more food
Market forces, dear Mr Hannan!, decolonising the curriculum is what boarding school customers choose.
While the faculty at Boarding schools reflect the demographics of Olde Englande, the places are increasingly taken by overseas pupils from China, Africa, Russia and elsewhere, as well as second generation migrants. It can be quite a hard sell to teach British Imperialism as a good thing to them.
Sunak was Head Boy at Winchester, but that is only in line with how times have changed.
I'm not sure wokery is a great selling point for the sons of the Chinese and Russian oligarchs. Or maybe I have missed that Eton publishes its progressive views of transgenderism in its marketing material in those markets.
Eton is a private business, so know their market. They have an active LBGT society, though presumably as a boys school require people to identify as male. Also a feminist society run by boys!
My kids' co-ed comprehensive has a feminist society. My daughter complains that the boys tend to monopolise it. I see that as an important part of her feminist education.
Boys join feminist societies to show they're "on side" and thereby have a better shot with girls, whom they're also more likely to meet in such societies.
Or if a bit older they can pretend to be a single father.
The entire argument of the "just let us decide our own risk" crowd totally fails to take into account that they're asking to decide everyone else's risk as well. And it's an asymmetric risk profile.
The ones wanting to choose for themselves and others to accept the risk are almost invariably the ones with the least risk. But they almost always look at the "risk of me being infected" and gloss over "the risk of me infecting others," and, in a public health scenario with an infectious pandemic: that is the crucial element.
"The ones wanting to choose for themselves and others to accept the risk are almost invariably the ones with the least risk."
But, that is not always the case. The much harder example is suppose a high risk person wants to meet a low risk person and is fully aware of the risks involved.
Should an old person be allowed to take their chances with the virus if they prefer that to cutting themselves off from society?
If an elderly person (with perhaps not much to live for other than occasional contact with family) really wants to meet their grand-children at Christmas, and is fully aware of the risks that this meeting may kill him or her, should they be allowed to do so?
I think this is not quite so easy to decide. (I am perfectly well aware of the wider public health implications).
That is a more interesting case - and presumably part of the reason support bubbles have been allowed (although of course that only works for granny living by herself, not granny and granddad together). If they're really isolated from everyone else - I assume we're excluding those living in care homes or with carers/medical professionals visiting, otherwise their co-residents or carers and carers' families are also put at risk through their actions - then you can make an argument that it's only their own risk.
Then there's the need for medical care if they do become sick - they potentially infect other elderly people in hospital (they may be admitted for something other than Covid while having Covid, so not isolated) and of course pose some risk to the medical staff and. by extension, their families. They, in that case, also take resources away from others who did not choose to take the risk, who are perhaps sick for other reasons, long term conditions.
I think for those living alone and really isolated, you can make the case (and they can join a support bubble). For those not living alone, I'm not convinced.
The entire argument of the "just let us decide our own risk" crowd totally fails to take into account that they're asking to decide everyone else's risk as well. And it's an asymmetric risk profile.
The ones wanting to choose for themselves and others to accept the risk are almost invariably the ones with the least risk. But they almost always look at the "risk of me being infected" and gloss over "the risk of me infecting others," and, in a public health scenario with an infectious pandemic: that is the crucial element.
"The ones wanting to choose for themselves and others to accept the risk are almost invariably the ones with the least risk."
But, that is not always the case. The much harder example is suppose a high risk person wants to meet a low risk person and is fully aware of the risks involved.
Should an old person be allowed to take their chances with the virus if they prefer that to cutting themselves off from society?
If an elderly person (with perhaps not much to live for other than occasional contact with family) really wants to meet their grand-children at Christmas, and is fully aware of the risks that this meeting may kill him or her, should they be allowed to do so?
I think this is not quite so easy to decide. (I am perfectly well aware of the wider public health implications).
There, I'd be fine - as long as the high-risk person didn't expose any other high-risk people.
I think it can be difficult to have that happen - either they promptly self-isolate fully for a fortnight afterwards and avoid meeting any of their own friends or anyone to whom they could pass it on (especially if they're in a care home, or similar!), or they could end up infecting others. (That's one aspect of the problem with the Great Barrington Declaration route: never mind the question of whether those making the choice to expose themselves have been given an accurate assessment of their personal risk, but the immense difficulties of separating out all the vulnerable are astonishing. It's why, despite virtually every country making real efforts to protect their vulnerable, every country where spread became widespread in the general community saw a lot of infections in their vulnerable as well. Even if successful, you'd need to practically put a lot of people under a far more real "lockdown" than anything we've ever seen - fully isolating them from friends, family, and colleagues and almost every aspect of society. Shopping, takeaways, outside exercise, meeting literally anyone, full-on perpetual quarantine).
It's almost always the onwards spread that's the problem. I mean, it's practically the definition of the difficulty in reducing R.
@Philip_Thompson seems to be suggesting that these "middlemen" were making our PPE but they weren't, were they? They were simply acting as middlemen as the name suggests.
They should certainly have been able to make a profit if they created avenues to PPE that we would otherwise not have had access to, but not millions of pounds of profit. That's just disaster capitalism.
Defending such behaviour is beyond the pale.
Why not millions of pounds of profit?
What percentage of trade being a profit is OK to you? Hypothetically someone invests in creating a plant that manufacturers PPE and gets a contract for say over £100mn with 98% going to total costs and a 2% margin then is that acceptable or unacceptable in your eyes?
Its the 2% costs and 98% profits that is the issue
If that happens then yes that would be a surprise. I doubt it ever happens though.
Most people in Britain were brought up in a country that offered the faint hope of justice. The police would investigate corruption, if only occasionally. Politicians would dodge and weave but avoid flat-out lies. Political parties had moral standards, however flexible, and if a minister disgraced himself or herself they could resign. Opposition politicians, journalists, satirists, charities and alliances of concerned citizens worked on the assumption that if they exposed wrongdoing there was a chance it would stop.
I don’t wish to romanticise the past. My small point is that we have not always been as shamefully governed as we are governed today. Countries change and not always for the better. Corruptions of public life in Britain that were once challenged now pass unpunished. The old codes that restrained the powerful have proved useless against politicians who say: “We can break them and no one can stop us.” Boris Johnson’s administration now lies as a matter of policy and a matter of course.
Boris is Trump. Both leaders have shown that what we thought were checks and balances, were not; that our constitutional and democratic conventions were just that, conventions. The only mitigating factor is neither Boris nor Trump is consistent or dogmatic, let alone evil, but this cannot be guaranteed of their successors.
“Rulers’ self-restraint is one of the most important – if less formal – ways by which governments control themselves. The belief that there are some limits, generally understood and shared despite political differences, beyond which you do not go because it is not the “done thing”, not the British way, not least because when you are out of power you don’t want to be on the receiving end. It is the “good chaps” theory of government. Coupled with that is a belief that even a democratic system requires checks and balances, that the system of government has a value which should be preserved and endure beyond the needs or desires of those in power at any one time.”
“The British conventions governing democracy and the consensus around them endure for as long as they are understood, believed and accepted. They become vulnerable, their weaknesses exposed when the reasons for them are forgotten or not valued or not understood. What if it is not “good chaps” who are elected? What if they are seen as stultifying by those impatient to effect change and willing to get rid of anything in their way? Or if checks and balances are simply described as obstruction and not seen as having any inherent value? Some do think that a government with a Parliamentary majority should be free to do whatever it wants and can get through Parliament: electoral might is right.”
Everything Cohen describes follows from the fact that we have people in power who think nothing should stand in their way, that, for instance, corruption is fine if done by an elected government or because it is an emergency or a necessity.
And of course the definition of “emergency” or “necessity” becomes ever wider until it becomes the norm and no-one even bothers to call it for what it is.
So if it becomes necessary to pay “middlemen” or “intermediaries” who happen to be the Minister’s neighbour or best friend or golf partner or whatever humongous sums of money to fly in Covid vaccines because the ports are blocked etc no- one will bat an eye lid and many will applaud. We have seen some of that on here already.
But in the real world the "middlemen" tasked with flying in the vaccines isn't "best friends" it is the military.
While for PPE 99.5% of PPE purchased has been consumable and there was a global shortage of availability. Those businesses that stepped into the gap and provided millions of items of PPE should be thanked not condemned.
Don’t be silly. The “middlemen” are not those doing any actual work, like the military, but those who turn up whenever there is a desperate buyer, lots of money to be made and little chance of any meaningful scrutiny. They are the flies who appear on shit.
Makes a change from being told "you Jocks were slavers just as bad as us". Which might be convincing if there hadn't been so much genuinely fascinating work put into reassessing the history of Scotland and slavery before woke came along.
The Scots loved the British Empire, so it wasn't Scots being "just as bad as us", they were (and still are) "us". Maybe that is the reason why they are falling out of love with being part of UK now that we spend less time bossing people around the world about?
You can always guarantee some real merde from our resident Scotland hater and absolute bellend extrordinaire.
@Philip_Thompson seems to be suggesting that these "middlemen" were making our PPE but they weren't, were they? They were simply acting as middlemen as the name suggests.
They should certainly have been able to make a profit if they created avenues to PPE that we would otherwise not have had access to, but not millions of pounds of profit. That's just disaster capitalism.
Defending such behaviour is beyond the pale.
Why not millions of pounds of profit?
What percentage of trade being a profit is OK to you? Hypothetically someone invests in creating a plant that manufacturers PPE and gets a contract for say over £100mn with 98% going to total costs and a 2% margin then is that acceptable or unacceptable in your eyes?
WHO are you talking about? We're talking about middlemen, not about people investing in factories. Which is it?
We are not talking about middlemen primarily.
We have gone from 99% imported to 30% imported. That is a dramatic transformation.
As for those engaged in the import business, that has costs too of course it does. And when we were 99% imported of course we needed to import some.
Foxy is criticising middlemen. Not factory owners in the UK. You've completely moved the goalposts.
No I've not as the transformation that has happened in the last few months has been going from 99% imported (pre existing circumstances) which will inevitably involve what you term "middle men" to 30% imported.
How do you propose cutting out middle men and getting the goods from China to the UK? Teleportation spells? Magic portals? Wishful thinking?
If said "middlemen" provided a freight forwarding or logistics service then they could have been paid a nominal sum to cover their costs. War profiteering is wrong. Disaster profiteering is wrong. It's really as simple as that.
So businesses investing in a sector can be paid nominal costs so if they get trade they make no profit, but if they don't get trade they carry all the losses?
Doesn't work that way. Businesses exist to make a profit. The profit motive is a good thing not a bad thing.
Market forces, dear Mr Hannan!, decolonising the curriculum is what boarding school customers choose.
While the faculty at Boarding schools reflect the demographics of Olde Englande, the places are increasingly taken by overseas pupils from China, Africa, Russia and elsewhere, as well as second generation migrants. It can be quite a hard sell to teach British Imperialism as a good thing to them.
Sunak was Head Boy at Winchester, but that is only in line with how times have changed.
I'm not sure wokery is a great selling point for the sons of the Chinese and Russian oligarchs. Or maybe I have missed that Eton publishes its progressive views of transgenderism in its marketing material in those markets.
Eton is a private business, so know their market. They have an active LBGT society, though presumably as a boys school require people to identify as male. Also a feminist society run by boys!
My kids' co-ed comprehensive has a feminist society. My daughter complains that the boys tend to monopolise it. I see that as an important part of her feminist education.
Boys join feminist societies to show they're "on side" and thereby have a better shot with girls, whom they're also more likely to meet in such societies.
Ha ha, you are speaking to someone who chose their college on the basis that it had the most advantageous sex ratio. I know how these things work!
V. true. It was art school or English at uni for me; no contest.
The entire argument of the "just let us decide our own risk" crowd totally fails to take into account that they're asking to decide everyone else's risk as well. And it's an asymmetric risk profile.
The ones wanting to choose for themselves and others to accept the risk are almost invariably the ones with the least risk. But they almost always look at the "risk of me being infected" and gloss over "the risk of me infecting others," and, in a public health scenario with an infectious pandemic: that is the crucial element.
After all, not one person in the UK (with the possible exception of Allison Pearson) has wanted anyone else to be infected, and no-one who has infected someone else has deliberately done so.
Yet over 5 million people have been infected nevertheless in the UK.
Those who did the infecting have indeed, overwhelmingly been okay. To the tune of 96% or so not needing hospitalisation and 99% or so not dying.
Yet 60,000 people who those infectors managed to infect have gone on to die. Given that most of these were in the higher risk categories, it's highly probable that very few of those 60,000 made the choice to face exposure and risk; instead others made the choice for them - and they ended up dying.
Nearly quarter of a million of the people those infectors did infect have been so sick they were hospitalised. A lot of those needing assistance to merely breathe.
At least a third of a million people face long-term consequences with what has been termed "long covid," many of these suffering organ damage.
Too many of those people infected - the third of a million with long covid, the quarter of a million so sick they were hospitalised, and the 60,000+ dead - had not made a decision to face higher risk.
They had that decision made for them.
By people whose own risk was low, and who did not fully think through the cost to others.
Another excellent post from Andy. Very thought-provoking - deserves a similarly thoughtful response to engage with his view (which is so widely held). So I`ll give it a go.
I`ve said before that lockdown skeptics should avoid tangling with the science and stick to principles only. For example, they should say that they don`t hold anyone else responsible for their own health; one`s own health is one`s own responsibility. This is the elephant in the room. It always has been. The opposition should come from philosophy not from scientific illiteracy, deliberate misinterpretation and mischief. Back in March I said here that at his briefings Johnson should have been flanked by a healthcare scientist, an economist and a philosopher - not just solely the former.
This is the bit I`m struggling with. Andy`s post reveals himself as a strong utilitarian. A moral framework that I don`t hold. I believe that good and bad acts come from intentions not consequences. Therefore you cannot apportion blame to someone who passes on a virus without even knowing that they had it themselves. Andy himself points out that no one has deliberately infected another person with Covid as far as we know (unlike what happened in small numbers with HIV). And, of course, an infection is not imprinted with the signature of the person it came from.
I think people who know me in real life would say that I`m as thoughtful and polite and caring and gentle as they come. But I don`t accept responsibility for other people`s health outside of my closest family. Of course I wish no one ill, but it is not my responsibility. I can`t get away from this. Utilitarians are not going to guilt-trip me into thinking otherwise. We need to stop blaming each other for things. This year has been ugly.
The vaccines are great news. But will they get us out? Only partial I think. The virus will still be present. As far as I know, a vaccine will protect that particular person from symptoms but will not prevent that person from spreading it to others. Covid is not, therefore, going away. And, of course, not everyone will agree to be vaccinated. Social-distancing will still be a thing. Covid will still be here. We still have to learn to live with it. Sorry.
This is bleak outlook - though doesn`t match @Black_Rook levels of bleakness. I`m betting that those holding a utilitarian outlook (which lends itself more to totalitarianism than liberalism I think) who are also risk-averse, and probably financially comfortable in themselves, will still have no intention of learning to live with Covid and will selfishly continue to chide, bully and rebuke the rest of us, who just want to live their lives in the ways we choose in a precious liberal society. For me, the selfishness is on the other side.
If you don`t agree, at least give me the courtesy of being honest.
Thank you for a well thought-out reply, and the up-front compliment.
I have no idea whether or not I am a utilitarian; I'm not really up on moral philosophy. I usually see myself as a liberal: everyone should have the right to pilot their own life in whatever way they can.
But the freedom to swing one's fist ends at someone else's face.
I did highlight that no-one has intentionally infected others. But that others have been infected nevertheless - and at a staggering scale. That actions, in a global pandemic, have huge externalities (in economics terms). If I exercise my freedom and, in doing so, knowingly impair the freedoms of many others to live their lives, that's illiberal of me. I'll have taken away all the choices they could have made in future and made them for them.
If I take some actions that could knowingly hurt others, I am at fault. If I refuse a set of actions that exist to protect others, I am at fault. Of course, as The Good Place covers, virtually every action we can take or refrain from taking will have knock-on consequences and we can't prevent all negative outcomes - but we can look at ones where we know the negative outcomes are huge. Normal actions, where the harm theoretically caused is either hugely unlikely, or very limited in scope, or limited in effect - that's all of life, almost. We blunder through as best we can.
This, though, is nowhere near normal life.
The restrictions we did put successfully kicked the can down the road. Not only do we have vaccines that will be going into people's arms within days, we have vastly improved our treatments and the prognosis of people who are ill. We will continue to do so. There is hope. And there are also indications that some vaccines at least will either prevent spread or hugely reduce spread. We're not in a static scenario; the potential outcomes are improving day by day.
The "lockdown sceptics" and those of the Toby Young side that argue the libertarian case do always seem to gloss over the spreading-the-disease onwards aspect. Mary Mallon certainly had her personal freedoms hugely curtailed - but doing so stopped her from taking a load of life choices away from others. Totalitarianism is usually seen as people having choices imposed upon them rather than being able to make them themselves. Surely taking actions that can be reasonably seen to, en masse, take a lot of choices away from others (when killed or disabled by anothers choices, a lot of potential choices evaporate) isn't truly a liberal course of action?
(I'm also not sure that "risk-averse" sums me up. I've been accused of the opposite in the past, with the skydiving and the microlighting, but that could simply be a different category of risk. I'd say I'm risk averse when my risk-taking could affect my family or others; I really don't think "totalitarian" applies to me, but I could be wrong there as well).
Thanks for that. I don`t think were are far off from agreeing with each other. I usually agree with your posts on other things.
You say "If I exercise my freedom and, in doing so, knowingly impair the freedoms of many others to live their lives, that's illiberal of me" and "If I take some actions that could knowingly hurt others, I am at fault" - I couldn`t agree more with both of those statements - I`m a liberal - but note that this, for me, is different when you take out the word "knowingly". That is what my post was about.
Most people in Britain were brought up in a country that offered the faint hope of justice. The police would investigate corruption, if only occasionally. Politicians would dodge and weave but avoid flat-out lies. Political parties had moral standards, however flexible, and if a minister disgraced himself or herself they could resign. Opposition politicians, journalists, satirists, charities and alliances of concerned citizens worked on the assumption that if they exposed wrongdoing there was a chance it would stop.
I don’t wish to romanticise the past. My small point is that we have not always been as shamefully governed as we are governed today. Countries change and not always for the better. Corruptions of public life in Britain that were once challenged now pass unpunished. The old codes that restrained the powerful have proved useless against politicians who say: “We can break them and no one can stop us.” Boris Johnson’s administration now lies as a matter of policy and a matter of course.
Boris is Trump. Both leaders have shown that what we thought were checks and balances, were not; that our constitutional and democratic conventions were just that, conventions. The only mitigating factor is neither Boris nor Trump is consistent or dogmatic, let alone evil, but this cannot be guaranteed of their successors.
“Rulers’ self-restraint is one of the most important – if less formal – ways by which governments control themselves. The belief that there are some limits, generally understood and shared despite political differences, beyond which you do not go because it is not the “done thing”, not the British way, not least because when you are out of power you don’t want to be on the receiving end. It is the “good chaps” theory of government. Coupled with that is a belief that even a democratic system requires checks and balances, that the system of government has a value which should be preserved and endure beyond the needs or desires of those in power at any one time.”
“The British conventions governing democracy and the consensus around them endure for as long as they are understood, believed and accepted. They become vulnerable, their weaknesses exposed when the reasons for them are forgotten or not valued or not understood. What if it is not “good chaps” who are elected? What if they are seen as stultifying by those impatient to effect change and willing to get rid of anything in their way? Or if checks and balances are simply described as obstruction and not seen as having any inherent value? Some do think that a government with a Parliamentary majority should be free to do whatever it wants and can get through Parliament: electoral might is right.”
Everything Cohen describes follows from the fact that we have people in power who think nothing should stand in their way, that, for instance, corruption is fine if done by an elected government or because it is an emergency or a necessity.
And of course the definition of “emergency” or “necessity” becomes ever wider until it becomes the norm and no-one even bothers to call it for what it is.
So if it becomes necessary to pay “middlemen” or “intermediaries” who happen to be the Minister’s neighbour or best friend or golf partner or whatever humongous sums of money to fly in Covid vaccines because the ports are blocked etc no- one will bat an eye lid and many will applaud. We have seen some of that on here already.
But in the real world the "middlemen" tasked with flying in the vaccines isn't "best friends" it is the military.
While for PPE 99.5% of PPE purchased has been consumable and there was a global shortage of availability. Those businesses that stepped into the gap and provided millions of items of PPE should be thanked not condemned.
Don’t be silly. The “middlemen” are not those doing any actual work, like the military, but those who turn up whenever there is a desperate buyer, lots of money to be made and little chance of any meaningful scrutiny. They are the flies who appear on shit.
They've always existed, and always will. Think of the spivs of the 1940s.
The relevant equilibrium is between making money and losing the respect of your fellows.
Most people in Britain were brought up in a country that offered the faint hope of justice. The police would investigate corruption, if only occasionally. Politicians would dodge and weave but avoid flat-out lies. Political parties had moral standards, however flexible, and if a minister disgraced himself or herself they could resign. Opposition politicians, journalists, satirists, charities and alliances of concerned citizens worked on the assumption that if they exposed wrongdoing there was a chance it would stop.
I don’t wish to romanticise the past. My small point is that we have not always been as shamefully governed as we are governed today. Countries change and not always for the better. Corruptions of public life in Britain that were once challenged now pass unpunished. The old codes that restrained the powerful have proved useless against politicians who say: “We can break them and no one can stop us.” Boris Johnson’s administration now lies as a matter of policy and a matter of course.
Boris is Trump. Both leaders have shown that what we thought were checks and balances, were not; that our constitutional and democratic conventions were just that, conventions. The only mitigating factor is neither Boris nor Trump is consistent or dogmatic, let alone evil, but this cannot be guaranteed of their successors.
“Rulers’ self-restraint is one of the most important – if less formal – ways by which governments control themselves. The belief that there are some limits, generally understood and shared despite political differences, beyond which you do not go because it is not the “done thing”, not the British way, not least because when you are out of power you don’t want to be on the receiving end. It is the “good chaps” theory of government. Coupled with that is a belief that even a democratic system requires checks and balances, that the system of government has a value which should be preserved and endure beyond the needs or desires of those in power at any one time.”
“The British conventions governing democracy and the consensus around them endure for as long as they are understood, believed and accepted. They become vulnerable, their weaknesses exposed when the reasons for them are forgotten or not valued or not understood. What if it is not “good chaps” who are elected? What if they are seen as stultifying by those impatient to effect change and willing to get rid of anything in their way? Or if checks and balances are simply described as obstruction and not seen as having any inherent value? Some do think that a government with a Parliamentary majority should be free to do whatever it wants and can get through Parliament: electoral might is right.”
Everything Cohen describes follows from the fact that we have people in power who think nothing should stand in their way, that, for instance, corruption is fine if done by an elected government or because it is an emergency or a necessity.
And of course the definition of “emergency” or “necessity” becomes ever wider until it becomes the norm and no-one even bothers to call it for what it is.
So if it becomes necessary to pay “middlemen” or “intermediaries” who happen to be the Minister’s neighbour or best friend or golf partner or whatever humongous sums of money to fly in Covid vaccines because the ports are blocked etc no- one will bat an eye lid and many will applaud. We have seen some of that on here already.
But in the real world the "middlemen" tasked with flying in the vaccines isn't "best friends" it is the military.
While for PPE 99.5% of PPE purchased has been consumable and there was a global shortage of availability. Those businesses that stepped into the gap and provided millions of items of PPE should be thanked not condemned.
Don’t be silly. The “middlemen” are not those doing any actual work, like the military, but those who turn up whenever there is a desperate buyer, lots of money to be made and little chance of any meaningful scrutiny. They are the flies who appear on shit.
Well if they haven't done any work they won't have provided any goods so shouldn't be paid so there's no problem.
@Philip_Thompson seems to be suggesting that these "middlemen" were making our PPE but they weren't, were they? They were simply acting as middlemen as the name suggests.
They should certainly have been able to make a profit if they created avenues to PPE that we would otherwise not have had access to, but not millions of pounds of profit. That's just disaster capitalism.
Defending such behaviour is beyond the pale.
Why not millions of pounds of profit?
What percentage of trade being a profit is OK to you? Hypothetically someone invests in creating a plant that manufacturers PPE and gets a contract for say over £100mn with 98% going to total costs and a 2% margin then is that acceptable or unacceptable in your eyes?
Except that isn't even close to what's being objected to. Which is no bid contracts for middlemen, effectively backed with the credit of the UK government, and margins around 25%.
Market forces, dear Mr Hannan!, decolonising the curriculum is what boarding school customers choose.
While the faculty at Boarding schools reflect the demographics of Olde Englande, the places are increasingly taken by overseas pupils from China, Africa, Russia and elsewhere, as well as second generation migrants. It can be quite a hard sell to teach British Imperialism as a good thing to them.
Sunak was Head Boy at Winchester, but that is only in line with how times have changed.
I'm not sure wokery is a great selling point for the sons of the Chinese and Russian oligarchs. Or maybe I have missed that Eton publishes its progressive views of transgenderism in its marketing material in those markets.
Eton is a private business, so know their market. They have an active LBGT society, though presumably as a boys school require people to identify as male. Also a feminist society run by boys!
My kids' co-ed comprehensive has a feminist society. My daughter complains that the boys tend to monopolise it. I see that as an important part of her feminist education.
Boys join feminist societies to show they're "on side" and thereby have a better shot with girls, whom they're also more likely to meet in such societies.
Ha ha, you are speaking to someone who chose their college on the basis that it had the most advantageous sex ratio. I know how these things work!
V. true. It was art school or English at uni for me; no contest.
I met my future wife on the first day so the plan worked almost *too* well.
@Philip_Thompson seems to be suggesting that these "middlemen" were making our PPE but they weren't, were they? They were simply acting as middlemen as the name suggests.
They should certainly have been able to make a profit if they created avenues to PPE that we would otherwise not have had access to, but not millions of pounds of profit. That's just disaster capitalism.
Defending such behaviour is beyond the pale.
Why not millions of pounds of profit?
What percentage of trade being a profit is OK to you? Hypothetically someone invests in creating a plant that manufacturers PPE and gets a contract for say over £100mn with 98% going to total costs and a 2% margin then is that acceptable or unacceptable in your eyes?
Except that isn't even close to what's being objected to. Which is no bid contracts for middlemen, effectively backed with the credit of the UK government, and margins around 25%.
If those middlemen have been able to supply goods at the price quoted then job done. Why didn't others go in quoting 25% less if it was so easy?
All this scotch egg talk has got me really looking forward to christmas eve. We're getting a seafood tasting menu takeaway from a fancy restaurant with quail egg minced prawn and panko breadcrumb scotch eggs as one of the starters. I don't think one of those would be enough to justify a drink out.
@Philip_Thompson seems to be suggesting that these "middlemen" were making our PPE but they weren't, were they? They were simply acting as middlemen as the name suggests.
They should certainly have been able to make a profit if they created avenues to PPE that we would otherwise not have had access to, but not millions of pounds of profit. That's just disaster capitalism.
Defending such behaviour is beyond the pale.
Why not millions of pounds of profit?
What percentage of trade being a profit is OK to you? Hypothetically someone invests in creating a plant that manufacturers PPE and gets a contract for say over £100mn with 98% going to total costs and a 2% margin then is that acceptable or unacceptable in your eyes?
Except that isn't even close to what's being objected to. Which is no bid contracts for middlemen, effectively backed with the credit of the UK government, and margins around 25%.
If those middlemen have been able to supply goods at the price quoted then job done. Why didn't others go in quoting 25% less if it was so easy?
Which takes us back to the business of preferential access.
And also to the point that you don't want anyone to look into any of this.
The entire argument of the "just let us decide our own risk" crowd totally fails to take into account that they're asking to decide everyone else's risk as well. And it's an asymmetric risk profile.
The ones wanting to choose for themselves and others to accept the risk are almost invariably the ones with the least risk. But they almost always look at the "risk of me being infected" and gloss over "the risk of me infecting others," and, in a public health scenario with an infectious pandemic: that is the crucial element.
After all, not one person in the UK (with the possible exception of Allison Pearson) has wanted anyone else to be infected, and no-one who has infected someone else has deliberately done so.
Yet over 5 million people have been infected nevertheless in the UK.
Those who did the infecting have indeed, overwhelmingly been okay. To the tune of 96% or so not needing hospitalisation and 99% or so not dying.
Yet 60,000 people who those infectors managed to infect have gone on to die. Given that most of these were in the higher risk categories, it's highly probable that very few of those 60,000 made the choice to face exposure and risk; instead others made the choice for them - and they ended up dying.
Nearly quarter of a million of the people those infectors did infect have been so sick they were hospitalised. A lot of those needing assistance to merely breathe.
At least a third of a million people face long-term consequences with what has been termed "long covid," many of these suffering organ damage.
Too many of those people infected - the third of a million with long covid, the quarter of a million so sick they were hospitalised, and the 60,000+ dead - had not made a decision to face higher risk.
They had that decision made for them.
By people whose own risk was low, and who did not fully think through the cost to others.
Another excellent post from Andy. Very thought-provoking - deserves a similarly thoughtful response to engage with his view (which is so widely held). So I`ll give it a go.
I`ve said before that lockdown skeptics should avoid tangling with the science and stick to principles only. For example, they should say that they don`t hold anyone else responsible for their own health; one`s own health is one`s own responsibility. This is the elephant in the room. It always has been. The opposition should come from philosophy not from scientific illiteracy, deliberate misinterpretation and mischief. Back in March I said here that at his briefings Johnson should have been flanked by a healthcare scientist, an economist and a philosopher - not just solely the former.
This is the bit I`m struggling with. Andy`s post reveals himself as a strong utilitarian. A moral framework that I don`t hold. I believe that good and bad acts come from intentions not consequences. Therefore you cannot apportion blame to someone who passes on a virus without even knowing that they had it themselves. Andy himself points out that no one has deliberately infected another person with Covid as far as we know (unlike what happened in small numbers with HIV). And, of course, an infection is not imprinted with the signature of the person it came from.
I think people who know me in real life would say that I`m as thoughtful and polite and caring and gentle as they come. But I don`t accept responsibility for other people`s health outside of my closest family. Of course I wish no one ill, but it is not my responsibility. I can`t get away from this. Utilitarians are not going to guilt-trip me into thinking otherwise. We need to stop blaming each other for things. This year has been ugly.
The vaccines are great news. But will they get us out? Only partial I think. The virus will still be present. As far as I know, a vaccine will protect that particular person from symptoms but will not prevent that person from spreading it to others. Covid is not, therefore, going away. And, of course, not everyone will agree to be vaccinated. Social-distancing will still be a thing. Covid will still be here. We still have to learn to live with it. Sorry.
This is bleak outlook - though doesn`t match @Black_Rook levels of bleakness. I`m betting that those holding a utilitarian outlook (which lends itself more to totalitarianism than liberalism I think) who are also risk-averse, and probably financially comfortable in themselves, will still have no intention of learning to live with Covid and will selfishly continue to chide, bully and rebuke the rest of us, who just want to live their lives in the ways we choose in a precious liberal society. For me, the selfishness is on the other side.
If you don`t agree, at least give me the courtesy of being honest.
Thank you for a well thought-out reply, and the up-front compliment.
I have no idea whether or not I am a utilitarian; I'm not really up on moral philosophy. I usually see myself as a liberal: everyone should have the right to pilot their own life in whatever way they can.
But the freedom to swing one's fist ends at someone else's face.
I did highlight that no-one has intentionally infected others. But that others have been infected nevertheless - and at a staggering scale. That actions, in a global pandemic, have huge externalities (in economics terms). If I exercise my freedom and, in doing so, knowingly impair the freedoms of many others to live their lives, that's illiberal of me. I'll have taken away all the choices they could have made in future and made them for them.
If I take some actions that could knowingly hurt others, I am at fault. If I refuse a set of actions that exist to protect others, I am at fault. Of course, as The Good Place covers, virtually every action we can take or refrain from taking will have knock-on consequences and we can't prevent all negative outcomes - but we can look at ones where we know the negative outcomes are huge. Normal actions, where the harm theoretically caused is either hugely unlikely, or very limited in scope, or limited in effect - that's all of life, almost. We blunder through as best we can.
This, though, is nowhere near normal life.
The restrictions we did put successfully kicked the can down the road. Not only do we have vaccines that will be going into people's arms within days, we have vastly improved our treatments and the prognosis of people who are ill. We will continue to do so. There is hope. And there are also indications that some vaccines at least will either prevent spread or hugely reduce spread. We're not in a static scenario; the potential outcomes are improving day by day.
The "lockdown sceptics" and those of the Toby Young side that argue the libertarian case do always seem to gloss over the spreading-the-disease onwards aspect. Mary Mallon certainly had her personal freedoms hugely curtailed - but doing so stopped her from taking a load of life choices away from others. Totalitarianism is usually seen as people having choices imposed upon them rather than being able to make them themselves. Surely taking actions that can be reasonably seen to, en masse, take a lot of choices away from others (when killed or disabled by anothers choices, a lot of potential choices evaporate) isn't truly a liberal course of action?
(I'm also not sure that "risk-averse" sums me up. I've been accused of the opposite in the past, with the skydiving and the microlighting, but that could simply be a different category of risk. I'd say I'm risk averse when my risk-taking could affect my family or others; I really don't think "totalitarian" applies to me, but I could be wrong there as well).
Thanks for that. I don`t think were are far off from agreeing with each other. I usually agree with your posts on other things.
You say "If I exercise my freedom and, in doing so, knowingly impair the freedoms of many others to live their lives, that's illiberal of me" and "If I take some actions that could knowingly hurt others, I am at fault" - I couldn`t agree more with both of those statements - I`m a liberal - but note that this, for me, is different when you take out the word "knowingly". That is what my post was about.
Presumably these philosophical quandaries will be rendered largely academic in fairly short order – as the majority of the old and vulnerable will have been vaccinated?
Thereafter, Covid becomes a low-risk illness: it is almost harmless for the healthy under-50s, so once we remove the vulnerable cohort it becomes a much less fraught societal and philosophical challenge.
@Philip_Thompson seems to be suggesting that these "middlemen" were making our PPE but they weren't, were they? They were simply acting as middlemen as the name suggests.
They should certainly have been able to make a profit if they created avenues to PPE that we would otherwise not have had access to, but not millions of pounds of profit. That's just disaster capitalism.
Defending such behaviour is beyond the pale.
Why not millions of pounds of profit?
What percentage of trade being a profit is OK to you? Hypothetically someone invests in creating a plant that manufacturers PPE and gets a contract for say over £100mn with 98% going to total costs and a 2% margin then is that acceptable or unacceptable in your eyes?
WHO are you talking about? We're talking about middlemen, not about people investing in factories. Which is it?
We are not talking about middlemen primarily.
We have gone from 99% imported to 30% imported. That is a dramatic transformation.
As for those engaged in the import business, that has costs too of course it does. And when we were 99% imported of course we needed to import some.
Foxy is criticising middlemen. Not factory owners in the UK. You've completely moved the goalposts.
No I've not as the transformation that has happened in the last few months has been going from 99% imported (pre existing circumstances) which will inevitably involve what you term "middle men" to 30% imported.
How do you propose cutting out middle men and getting the goods from China to the UK? Teleportation spells? Magic portals? Wishful thinking?
If said "middlemen" provided a freight forwarding or logistics service then they could have been paid a nominal sum to cover their costs. War profiteering is wrong. Disaster profiteering is wrong. It's really as simple as that.
So businesses investing in a sector can be paid nominal costs so if they get trade they make no profit, but if they don't get trade they carry all the losses?
Doesn't work that way. Businesses exist to make a profit. The profit motive is a good thing not a bad thing.
We're not talking about investment. We're talking about simple middlemen.
I agree that the profit motive is good but not excessive profiteering in the middle of a national emergency.
@Philip_Thompson seems to be suggesting that these "middlemen" were making our PPE but they weren't, were they? They were simply acting as middlemen as the name suggests.
They should certainly have been able to make a profit if they created avenues to PPE that we would otherwise not have had access to, but not millions of pounds of profit. That's just disaster capitalism.
Defending such behaviour is beyond the pale.
Why not millions of pounds of profit?
What percentage of trade being a profit is OK to you? Hypothetically someone invests in creating a plant that manufacturers PPE and gets a contract for say over £100mn with 98% going to total costs and a 2% margin then is that acceptable or unacceptable in your eyes?
Except that isn't even close to what's being objected to. Which is no bid contracts for middlemen, effectively backed with the credit of the UK government, and margins around 25%.
If those middlemen have been able to supply goods at the price quoted then job done. Why didn't others go in quoting 25% less if it was so easy?
Which takes us back to the business of preferential access.
And also to the point that you don't want anyone to look into any of this.
@Philip has no idea of the corruption which almost inevitably accompanies the use of “intermediaries” or “introducers”. Plus he is confused between an importer who provides a useful service to the provider and buyer and someone who doesn’t but simply claims a large fee for doing nothing. There is also the confusion between a profit margin earned by the manufacturer of goods which are in short supply and a “fee” paid to an introducer which is not the same thing at all.
Scrutiny is essential but is something which no-one in this government (or their cheerleaders and fans) seem to want.
And Rob Ford similarly doesn't reflect on the polling on those who think Brexit a mistake - currently around 50%, along with a large slice of don't knows. I would guess it's at least possible that a slug of economic discomfort might have some impact on the latter category.
Anyway, next year in March and April the government wants to send lots of strangers to peoples’ doors as part of the census. I know because a family member was asked if they would like to do this job.
Yes, really. In the middle of a pandemic, halfway through a vaccination programme (if all goes well) we are meant to open our doors to strangers and those working on this are supposed to put themselves at risk.
Bancel imagines that the Moderna vaccine, given its high efficacy against both mild and severe disease, will have the most impact if given to people at the greatest risk from SARS-CoV-2. “Give it to healthcare workers, give it to the elderly, give it to people with diabetes, overweight, heart disease,” he says. “A 25 year old healthy man? Give him another vaccine.”
@Philip_Thompson seems to be suggesting that these "middlemen" were making our PPE but they weren't, were they? They were simply acting as middlemen as the name suggests.
They should certainly have been able to make a profit if they created avenues to PPE that we would otherwise not have had access to, but not millions of pounds of profit. That's just disaster capitalism.
Defending such behaviour is beyond the pale.
Why not millions of pounds of profit?
What percentage of trade being a profit is OK to you? Hypothetically someone invests in creating a plant that manufacturers PPE and gets a contract for say over £100mn with 98% going to total costs and a 2% margin then is that acceptable or unacceptable in your eyes?
WHO are you talking about? We're talking about middlemen, not about people investing in factories. Which is it?
We are not talking about middlemen primarily.
We have gone from 99% imported to 30% imported. That is a dramatic transformation.
As for those engaged in the import business, that has costs too of course it does. And when we were 99% imported of course we needed to import some.
Foxy is criticising middlemen. Not factory owners in the UK. You've completely moved the goalposts.
No I've not as the transformation that has happened in the last few months has been going from 99% imported (pre existing circumstances) which will inevitably involve what you term "middle men" to 30% imported.
How do you propose cutting out middle men and getting the goods from China to the UK? Teleportation spells? Magic portals? Wishful thinking?
If said "middlemen" provided a freight forwarding or logistics service then they could have been paid a nominal sum to cover their costs. War profiteering is wrong. Disaster profiteering is wrong. It's really as simple as that.
I wonder how much was profit and how much went in 'inducements'.
It might be that the government knew what it would take to get hold of the goods but weren't prepared to do it themselves. Plausible deniability and all that.
It didn't help that legitimate British companies had their production lines commandeered by the Chinese government.
I agree with the Header that he's not helping himself in this regard. Mind you, I don't see how he could without undergoing a procedure which I don't believe is yet available - a complete character and personality transplant. Normally, when a political leader in the democratic world falls, I seek to find something good to say about them and their tenure. This applies as much to politicians of the Right as of the Centre or Left. In fact it applies especially to those on the Right since saying something positive about them virtue signals the objectivity and balance for which I am known. But here, with Donald J Trump, the 45th President of the United States, it is simply not possible. He has been a huge and unremitting disaster for America and the wider world, soup to nuts. There isn't a single positive aspect to his legacy. Worse even than that, he didn't even try to do any good. If I could detect just a shred of benign intention, albeit frustrated in delivery by a lack of intellect or competence, then I would jump avidly on that and highlight it, now he's going. But I can't because there was none. 100% self gratification 0% public service. Amazing. RIP Donald Trump. You made Boris Johnson look like Mahatma Gandhi.
To be fair to Trump in terms of any positives under his administration, the economy grew pre Covid and he has started fewer foreign wars or launched fewer US airstrikes abroad than any US President since Carter (Biden will be more of a hawk against Russia and North Korea and in the Middle East outside Iran than Trump was), however Carter was also the last President to lose after only one term of his party in the White House
He's been less of a disaster than I thought he would be but then I thought there was a real chance he might start a nuclear war so I set the bar pretty low.
I agree with you about the lack of wars. I suspect the reason is that he just didn't understand foreign affairs so didn't meddle. (I believe Obama referred to him having the understanding of international affairs of a thirteen year old, which sounds about right.) When he did, it was to suit his domestic agenda. The Turkish Kurds episode was appalling and the US will be paying for that for decades. His Middle East initiative however seems to have done little harm and may possibly lead to some good when Biden picks up the threads.
I can't give him a pass on the economy. He inherited a very healthy situation. Again, he didn't stuff it up but he did favor the rich corporations and did little to rebuild the country's ailing infrastructure. It was however a case of missed opportunities rather than malfeasance.
The big downside was of course his perversion of the State and undermining of democracy. I remember Nixon and the concerns then that he was subverting democracy and the institutions of State but outside the Socialist Workers Party nobody reallly thought the US was turning into a despotism. For the first time in my long life I really worried that this might happen under Trump, particularly when he first indicated his intention to disregard the election result. I still do think it may have come to pass if the result had been a bit closer. It seems the danger has passed now though, whatever he (and Betfair) may think.
He has been without doubt the worst US President of my lifetime, and quite possibly the worst ever. James Buchanan's long reign as holder of that unwanted title may be about to end.
You don't get 73-74m votes by being the worst President ever.
You're making it sound like the situation Trump inherited from Obama was generally positive. It wasn't. The US was embroiled in conflicts. It had let China run riot. It is also easy to forget how relatively easy the West and Russia could have got into conflict over Crimea and the Ukraine in the mid-2010s. With HRC as President, that could have happened. You'
@Philip_Thompson seems to be suggesting that these "middlemen" were making our PPE but they weren't, were they? They were simply acting as middlemen as the name suggests.
They should certainly have been able to make a profit if they created avenues to PPE that we would otherwise not have had access to, but not millions of pounds of profit. That's just disaster capitalism.
Defending such behaviour is beyond the pale.
Why not millions of pounds of profit?
What percentage of trade being a profit is OK to you? Hypothetically someone invests in creating a plant that manufacturers PPE and gets a contract for say over £100mn with 98% going to total costs and a 2% margin then is that acceptable or unacceptable in your eyes?
Except that isn't even close to what's being objected to. Which is no bid contracts for middlemen, effectively backed with the credit of the UK government, and margins around 25%.
If those middlemen have been able to supply goods at the price quoted then job done. Why didn't others go in quoting 25% less if it was so easy?
Which takes us back to the business of preferential access.
And also to the point that you don't want anyone to look into any of this.
@Philip has no idea of the corruption which almost inevitably accompanies the use of “intermediaries” or “introducers”. Plus he is confused between an importer who provides a useful service to the provider and buyer and someone who doesn’t but simply claims a large fee for doing nothing. There is also the confusion between a profit margin earned by the manufacturer of goods which are in short supply and a “fee” paid to an introducer which is not the same thing at all.
Scrutiny is essential but is something which no-one in this government (or their cheerleaders and fans) seem to want.
I think you are being generous with the word confused. He knows perfectly well, just obfuscating for the sake of an argument.
Anyway, next year in March and April the government wants to send lots of strangers to peoples’ doors as part of the census. I know because a family member was asked if they would like to do this job.
Yes, really. In the middle of a pandemic, halfway through a vaccination programme (if all goes well) we are meant to open our doors to strangers and those working on this are supposed to put themselves at risk.
WTAF?!
Aren't the vast majority of those done online or via post?
Well, point one, they have come to their senses (see the mistake/not mistake polling), point two this is one of those I've jumped off a hundred storey building, I've fallen ninety storeys without issue sort of situations, and point three you are simply losing when you stop making it about how well your project is going and start making it all about the attitude of your opponents to how well your project is going.
Only 369 cases in Scotland today, but: "Nicola Sturgeon begins by saying there has been a technical issue with the reporting systems overnight, meaning today's figures will be slightly lower than expected."
@Philip_Thompson seems to be suggesting that these "middlemen" were making our PPE but they weren't, were they? They were simply acting as middlemen as the name suggests.
They should certainly have been able to make a profit if they created avenues to PPE that we would otherwise not have had access to, but not millions of pounds of profit. That's just disaster capitalism.
Defending such behaviour is beyond the pale.
Why not millions of pounds of profit?
What percentage of trade being a profit is OK to you? Hypothetically someone invests in creating a plant that manufacturers PPE and gets a contract for say over £100mn with 98% going to total costs and a 2% margin then is that acceptable or unacceptable in your eyes?
Except that isn't even close to what's being objected to. Which is no bid contracts for middlemen, effectively backed with the credit of the UK government, and margins around 25%.
If those middlemen have been able to supply goods at the price quoted then job done. Why didn't others go in quoting 25% less if it was so easy?
Which takes us back to the business of preferential access.
And also to the point that you don't want anyone to look into any of this.
@Philip has no idea of the corruption which almost inevitably accompanies the use of “intermediaries” or “introducers”. Plus he is confused between an importer who provides a useful service to the provider and buyer and someone who doesn’t but simply claims a large fee for doing nothing. There is also the confusion between a profit margin earned by the manufacturer of goods which are in short supply and a “fee” paid to an introducer which is not the same thing at all.
Scrutiny is essential but is something which no-one in this government (or their cheerleaders and fans) seem to want.
Agreed. (Though it sometimes seems that Phillip simply doesn't want to know.)
Market forces, dear Mr Hannan!, decolonising the curriculum is what boarding school customers choose.
While the faculty at Boarding schools reflect the demographics of Olde Englande, the places are increasingly taken by overseas pupils from China, Africa, Russia and elsewhere, as well as second generation migrants. It can be quite a hard sell to teach British Imperialism as a good thing to them.
Sunak was Head Boy at Winchester, but that is only in line with how times have changed.
I'm not sure wokery is a great selling point for the sons of the Chinese and Russian oligarchs. Or maybe I have missed that Eton publishes its progressive views of transgenderism in its marketing material in those markets.
Eton is a private business, so know their market. They have an active LBGT society, though presumably as a boys school require people to identify as male. Also a feminist society run by boys!
My kids' co-ed comprehensive has a feminist society. My daughter complains that the boys tend to monopolise it. I see that as an important part of her feminist education.
Boys join feminist societies to show they're "on side" and thereby have a better shot with girls, whom they're also more likely to meet in such societies.
Ha ha, you are speaking to someone who chose their college on the basis that it had the most advantageous sex ratio. I know how these things work!
V. true. It was art school or English at uni for me; no contest.
I met my future wife on the first day so the plan worked almost *too* well.
Why would any pub or restaurant bother opening at all? Unless they have a worthwhile lunchtime business - unlikely - all that does is increase costs and bring in little revenue.
The various governments are simply determined to kill the hospitality sector once and for all, aren’t they?
And no that does not mean I want people taking silly risks (other than going to crowded shops 24 hours a day, apparently) but it does mean that I want a proper support package for those unable to operate.
Anyway, next year in March and April the government wants to send lots of strangers to peoples’ doors as part of the census. I know because a family member was asked if they would like to do this job.
Yes, really. In the middle of a pandemic, halfway through a vaccination programme (if all goes well) we are meant to open our doors to strangers and those working on this are supposed to put themselves at risk.
WTAF?!
I guess the government could ensure all census workers are vaccinated before they start.
They couldn't pay me enough to deal with the inevitable "I refuse to take part in the census because Magna Carta" gang.
All this scotch egg talk has got me really looking forward to christmas eve. We're getting a seafood tasting menu takeaway from a fancy restaurant with quail egg minced prawn and panko breadcrumb scotch eggs as one of the starters. I don't think one of those would be enough to justify a drink out.
You're not the only hungry one. One used to be able to get venison scotch eggs round here, before the current.
@Philip_Thompson seems to be suggesting that these "middlemen" were making our PPE but they weren't, were they? They were simply acting as middlemen as the name suggests.
They should certainly have been able to make a profit if they created avenues to PPE that we would otherwise not have had access to, but not millions of pounds of profit. That's just disaster capitalism.
Defending such behaviour is beyond the pale.
Why not millions of pounds of profit?
What percentage of trade being a profit is OK to you? Hypothetically someone invests in creating a plant that manufacturers PPE and gets a contract for say over £100mn with 98% going to total costs and a 2% margin then is that acceptable or unacceptable in your eyes?
Except that isn't even close to what's being objected to. Which is no bid contracts for middlemen, effectively backed with the credit of the UK government, and margins around 25%.
If those middlemen have been able to supply goods at the price quoted then job done. Why didn't others go in quoting 25% less if it was so easy?
Which takes us back to the business of preferential access.
And also to the point that you don't want anyone to look into any of this.
Preferential access isn't ideal but speed of delivery is essential during a pandemic and people knowing how to navigate the bureaucracy being able to do so faster than those who don't is hardly a surprise. That's why I'd prefer normally that bureaucracy is less involved not more involved and that the market should decide.
And I'm happy for it to be looked into and expect a full inquiry after the pandemic. Just think the whinging so far is much ado about nothing.
Do you know what the similar stat is for the other candidates? I thought they were all effective at stopping serious cases.
In the article. The numbers are very small, so the 'percentages' aren't definitive by any means (including Moderna's '100%'), but Pfizer, for example, had a severe case in the treatment arm.
AZN, as far as I'm aware, has not had any severe cases either. Though the vaccine is (probably) less effective overall.
Anyway, next year in March and April the government wants to send lots of strangers to peoples’ doors as part of the census. I know because a family member was asked if they would like to do this job.
Yes, really. In the middle of a pandemic, halfway through a vaccination programme (if all goes well) we are meant to open our doors to strangers and those working on this are supposed to put themselves at risk.
WTAF?!
I guess the government could ensure all census workers are vaccinated before they start.
They couldn't pay me enough to deal with the inevitable "I refuse to take part in the census because Magna Carta" gang.
That one is easy, tell them you are updating Domesday Boke.
Anyway, next year in March and April the government wants to send lots of strangers to peoples’ doors as part of the census. I know because a family member was asked if they would like to do this job.
Yes, really. In the middle of a pandemic, halfway through a vaccination programme (if all goes well) we are meant to open our doors to strangers and those working on this are supposed to put themselves at risk.
WTAF?!
Aren't the vast majority of those done online or via post?
Bancel imagines that the Moderna vaccine, given its high efficacy against both mild and severe disease, will have the most impact if given to people at the greatest risk from SARS-CoV-2. “Give it to healthcare workers, give it to the elderly, give it to people with diabetes, overweight, heart disease,” he says. “A 25 year old healthy man? Give him another vaccine.”
Yes, that sounds fine. We should be running two vaccine programmes simultaneously, one with the Pfizer vaccine for those mentioned run during the week and one for working age people with the AZ vaccine run on weekends from school halls and other non-specialised venues. We could vaccinate 2-3m of each group per week for a total of 5-6m per week.
If the AZ vaccine has got very high efficacy in the young then that's who should get it, but given we're going to start taking delivery of it in the next few days it means we should run a specific programme for under 55s. Keeping it in the fridge and waiting for the Pfizer vaccine to run out doesn't make any sense.
Well, point one, they have come to their senses (see the mistake/not mistake polling), point two this is one of those I've jumped off a hundred storey building, I've fallen ninety storeys without issue sort of situations, and point three you are simply losing when you stop making it about how well your project is going and start making it all about the attitude of your opponents to how well your project is going.
The only poll that matters is elections and we had one not twelve months ago. It was decisive and went the way I wanted not you.
Why would any pub or restaurant bother opening at all? Unless they have a worthwhile lunchtime business - unlikely - all that does is increase costs and bring in little revenue.
The various governments are simply determined to kill the hospitality sector once and for all, aren’t they?
And no that does not mean I want people taking silly risks (other than going to crowded shops 24 hours a day, apparently) but it does mean that I want a proper support package for those unable to operate.
And no alcohol but supermarket alcohol sales allowed unrestricted
@Philip_Thompson seems to be suggesting that these "middlemen" were making our PPE but they weren't, were they? They were simply acting as middlemen as the name suggests.
They should certainly have been able to make a profit if they created avenues to PPE that we would otherwise not have had access to, but not millions of pounds of profit. That's just disaster capitalism.
Defending such behaviour is beyond the pale.
Why not millions of pounds of profit?
What percentage of trade being a profit is OK to you? Hypothetically someone invests in creating a plant that manufacturers PPE and gets a contract for say over £100mn with 98% going to total costs and a 2% margin then is that acceptable or unacceptable in your eyes?
WHO are you talking about? We're talking about middlemen, not about people investing in factories. Which is it?
We are not talking about middlemen primarily.
We have gone from 99% imported to 30% imported. That is a dramatic transformation.
As for those engaged in the import business, that has costs too of course it does. And when we were 99% imported of course we needed to import some.
Foxy is criticising middlemen. Not factory owners in the UK. You've completely moved the goalposts.
No I've not as the transformation that has happened in the last few months has been going from 99% imported (pre existing circumstances) which will inevitably involve what you term "middle men" to 30% imported.
How do you propose cutting out middle men and getting the goods from China to the UK? Teleportation spells? Magic portals? Wishful thinking?
If said "middlemen" provided a freight forwarding or logistics service then they could have been paid a nominal sum to cover their costs. War profiteering is wrong. Disaster profiteering is wrong. It's really as simple as that.
I wonder how much was profit and how much went in 'inducements'.
It might be that the government knew what it would take to get hold of the goods but weren't prepared to do it themselves. Plausible deniability and all that.
It didn't help that legitimate British companies had their production lines commandeered by the Chinese government.
And the French requisitioned goods too.
If inducements were the price needed to get a hold of the goods and we couldn't get them without paying that price then what alternative was there exactly?
I see a lot of whinging, not so many productive alternatives.
Why would any pub or restaurant bother opening at all? Unless they have a worthwhile lunchtime business - unlikely - all that does is increase costs and bring in little revenue.
The various governments are simply determined to kill the hospitality sector once and for all, aren’t they?
And no that does not mean I want people taking silly risks (other than going to crowded shops 24 hours a day, apparently) but it does mean that I want a proper support package for those unable to operate.
There is some talk of additional assistance for the hospitality trade as a means of pacifying Tory rebels. We'll see what that comes to.
Under the new programme, cinemas, bowling alleys and other indoor entertainment venues will also close, but non-essential retail, hairdressers, gyms and leisure centres can stay open.
Bancel imagines that the Moderna vaccine, given its high efficacy against both mild and severe disease, will have the most impact if given to people at the greatest risk from SARS-CoV-2. “Give it to healthcare workers, give it to the elderly, give it to people with diabetes, overweight, heart disease,” he says. “A 25 year old healthy man? Give him another vaccine.”
Yes, that sounds fine. We should be running two vaccine programmes simultaneously, one with the Pfizer vaccine for those mentioned run during the week and one for working age people with the AZ vaccine run on weekends from school halls and other non-specialised venues. We could vaccinate 2-3m of each group per week for a total of 5-6m per week.
If the AZ vaccine has got very high efficacy in the young then that's who should get it, but given we're going to start taking delivery of it in the next few days it means we should run a specific programme for under 55s. Keeping it in the fridge and waiting for the Pfizer vaccine to run out doesn't make any sense.
First it needs to be approved. Full data haven't been published yet, but fingers crossed.
Bancel imagines that the Moderna vaccine, given its high efficacy against both mild and severe disease, will have the most impact if given to people at the greatest risk from SARS-CoV-2. “Give it to healthcare workers, give it to the elderly, give it to people with diabetes, overweight, heart disease,” he says. “A 25 year old healthy man? Give him another vaccine.”
Yes, that sounds fine. We should be running two vaccine programmes simultaneously, one with the Pfizer vaccine for those mentioned run during the week and one for working age people with the AZ vaccine run on weekends from school halls and other non-specialised venues. We could vaccinate 2-3m of each group per week for a total of 5-6m per week.
If the AZ vaccine has got very high efficacy in the young then that's who should get it, but given we're going to start taking delivery of it in the next few days it means we should run a specific programme for under 55s. Keeping it in the fridge and waiting for the Pfizer vaccine to run out doesn't make any sense.
First it needs to be approved. Full data haven't been published yet, but fingers crossed.
Market forces, dear Mr Hannan!, decolonising the curriculum is what boarding school customers choose.
While the faculty at Boarding schools reflect the demographics of Olde Englande, the places are increasingly taken by overseas pupils from China, Africa, Russia and elsewhere, as well as second generation migrants. It can be quite a hard sell to teach British Imperialism as a good thing to them.
Sunak was Head Boy at Winchester, but that is only in line with how times have changed.
I'm not sure wokery is a great selling point for the sons of the Chinese and Russian oligarchs. Or maybe I have missed that Eton publishes its progressive views of transgenderism in its marketing material in those markets.
Eton is a private business, so know their market. They have an active LBGT society, though presumably as a boys school require people to identify as male. Also a feminist society run by boys!
My kids' co-ed comprehensive has a feminist society. My daughter complains that the boys tend to monopolise it. I see that as an important part of her feminist education.
Boys join feminist societies to show they're "on side" and thereby have a better shot with girls, whom they're also more likely to meet in such societies.
Or if a bit older they can pretend to be a single father.
Is that first one a wise strategy? The biggest survey I have ever seen (by a feminist organisation) had approx 80-85% of women refusing to self-identify as feminist. Fawcett Society - 3-4 years ago. Sample of 5000+ .
They had to pull a "we are a society of hidden feminists" narrative out of their hat.
And Rob Ford similarly doesn't reflect on the polling on those who think Brexit a mistake - currently around 50%, along with a large slice of don't knows. I would guess it's at least possible that a slug of economic discomfort might have some impact on the latter category.
It is possible to believe Brexit is a mistake and that it should be carried out. For some, democracy trumps economics.
@Philip_Thompson seems to be suggesting that these "middlemen" were making our PPE but they weren't, were they? They were simply acting as middlemen as the name suggests.
They should certainly have been able to make a profit if they created avenues to PPE that we would otherwise not have had access to, but not millions of pounds of profit. That's just disaster capitalism.
Defending such behaviour is beyond the pale.
Why not millions of pounds of profit?
What percentage of trade being a profit is OK to you? Hypothetically someone invests in creating a plant that manufacturers PPE and gets a contract for say over £100mn with 98% going to total costs and a 2% margin then is that acceptable or unacceptable in your eyes?
Except that isn't even close to what's being objected to. Which is no bid contracts for middlemen, effectively backed with the credit of the UK government, and margins around 25%.
If those middlemen have been able to supply goods at the price quoted then job done. Why didn't others go in quoting 25% less if it was so easy?
Which takes us back to the business of preferential access.
And also to the point that you don't want anyone to look into any of this.
@Philip has no idea of the corruption which almost inevitably accompanies the use of “intermediaries” or “introducers”. Plus he is confused between an importer who provides a useful service to the provider and buyer and someone who doesn’t but simply claims a large fee for doing nothing. There is also the confusion between a profit margin earned by the manufacturer of goods which are in short supply and a “fee” paid to an introducer which is not the same thing at all.
Scrutiny is essential but is something which no-one in this government (or their cheerleaders and fans) seem to want.
Corruption exists in other countries, yes I get that. Your point being?
If the only way of getting a hold of requisitioned goods is to pay a fee to someone holding them then do you pay the fee or let doctors and nurses die from a lack of PPE?
I have little doubt that some of those who imported the goods paid a bribe to those holding goods to sell it to them so they could sell it to the NHS. Those who did that have provided a necessary service in securing the goods. Simply wishing away the fact that other nations requisitioned everything doesn't make it go away.
Maybe those in China or elsewhere who received the bribes or inducements to sell to us should be investigated and prosecuted - by the Chinese. Paying it shouldn't be condemned it was a needed part of business under the circumstances.
@Philip_Thompson seems to be suggesting that these "middlemen" were making our PPE but they weren't, were they? They were simply acting as middlemen as the name suggests.
They should certainly have been able to make a profit if they created avenues to PPE that we would otherwise not have had access to, but not millions of pounds of profit. That's just disaster capitalism.
Defending such behaviour is beyond the pale.
Why not millions of pounds of profit?
What percentage of trade being a profit is OK to you? Hypothetically someone invests in creating a plant that manufacturers PPE and gets a contract for say over £100mn with 98% going to total costs and a 2% margin then is that acceptable or unacceptable in your eyes?
Except that isn't even close to what's being objected to. Which is no bid contracts for middlemen, effectively backed with the credit of the UK government, and margins around 25%.
If those middlemen have been able to supply goods at the price quoted then job done. Why didn't others go in quoting 25% less if it was so easy?
Which takes us back to the business of preferential access.
And also to the point that you don't want anyone to look into any of this.
Preferential access isn't ideal but speed of delivery is essential during a pandemic and people knowing how to navigate the bureaucracy being able to do so faster than those who don't is hardly a surprise. That's why I'd prefer normally that bureaucracy is less involved not more involved and that the market should decide.
And I'm happy for it to be looked into and expect a full inquiry after the pandemic. Just think the whinging so far is much ado about nothing.
It isn’t. People with experience of investigating frauds (not just me - but other experts working in the same field though not on this forum) have raised concerns. Some of what has happened stinks to high heaven. You ignore this because you don’t want to believe that your beloved government is not whiter than white. You find increasingly implausible excuses and explanations for behaviour which at its worse is a crime.
Not all of it will be. But some may be and defending the indefensible is simply wrong. What is more the concerns relate not just to PPE but to many other aspects of government - the New Town Fund, for instance.
There is a thread which runs through this government - of carelessness with our money, cronyism, corruption, preference for who you know rather than expertise, of one rule for us, one rule for the plebs - and the government’s cheerleaders are making themselves look ridiculous with their “nothing to see here” nonsense.
The unfairness grates too. Businesses like my daughter’s face ruin and closure for want of sums which are not even a rounding error by comparison with the monies lavished on the government’s friends. One day - I hope - there will be a political price to be paid for this.
I hope so anyway. Because if there isn’t Britain will be a very much worse place to live in than it should be.
Am I right in thinking that was also the case in the Oxford trial as well?
Yes.
Assuming it's approved, I'd be far happier to have the AZN vaccine than have to wait another six months for one of the others and possibly get infected in the meantime (and I'm over 55).
The balance of risk would be, I think, pretty strongly in favour of early vaccination.
Bancel imagines that the Moderna vaccine, given its high efficacy against both mild and severe disease, will have the most impact if given to people at the greatest risk from SARS-CoV-2. “Give it to healthcare workers, give it to the elderly, give it to people with diabetes, overweight, heart disease,” he says. “A 25 year old healthy man? Give him another vaccine.”
Yes, that sounds fine. We should be running two vaccine programmes simultaneously, one with the Pfizer vaccine for those mentioned run during the week and one for working age people with the AZ vaccine run on weekends from school halls and other non-specialised venues. We could vaccinate 2-3m of each group per week for a total of 5-6m per week.
If the AZ vaccine has got very high efficacy in the young then that's who should get it, but given we're going to start taking delivery of it in the next few days it means we should run a specific programme for under 55s. Keeping it in the fridge and waiting for the Pfizer vaccine to run out doesn't make any sense.
I agree with all of that except the weekend element.
Surely we can and should run both vaccine programmes simultaneously. No reason on a Monday for instance we can't be vaccinating people using both the Pfizer vaccine and the AZ vaccine. Especially if the vaccines are being distributed through different channels.
Distribution should be going out seven days a week for both programmes. As fast as it gets manufactured we should be distributing it as fast as possible.
Trump performed more Airstrikes in 3 years than Obama did over 8.
This pernicious myth that he de-escalated American intervention abroad is parroted with zero thought or research on here.
Obama launched airstrikes in Libya and Syria where the US was not militarily involved before he took office to defeat Gaddaffi and ISIS as well as airstrikes in Iraq even if he withdrew groundtroops from the latter.
Trump launched no new airstrikes or military action in any country the US was not involved in before as well as reaching out to North Korea's leadership in a way no previous President had done and had better relations with Putin than Bush or Obama had.
First Minister said that the 17-day firebreak lockdown was not a mistake.
He said: “We don’t think we took the wrong decision. The advice was going early would be more effective and that by going early and going deep, 17 days would be adequate.
“It delivered what we wanted it to do.”
You wanted an R rate of 1.4 a couple of weeks after coming out of it?
And Rob Ford similarly doesn't reflect on the polling on those who think Brexit a mistake - currently around 50%, along with a large slice of don't knows. I would guess it's at least possible that a slug of economic discomfort might have some impact on the latter category.
It is possible to believe Brexit is a mistake and that it should be carried out. For some, democracy trumps economics.
Trump performed more Airstrikes in 3 years than Obama did over 8.
This pernicious myth that he de-escalated American intervention abroad is parroted with zero thought or research on here.
Off topic, Joanna Cherry seems to be working herself and her followers up into a frenzy this am via twitter, she'll probably be on 3 figures for tweets and rts by the end of the day. Can we expect a putsch any day now?
And Rob Ford similarly doesn't reflect on the polling on those who think Brexit a mistake - currently around 50%, along with a large slice of don't knows. I would guess it's at least possible that a slug of economic discomfort might have some impact on the latter category.
It is possible to believe Brexit is a mistake and that it should be carried out. For some, democracy trumps economics.
But if the outcome of implementing a democratically made decision turned out to be very different to the expectations that people had when making the decision, would that not be grounds for reconsidering that decision? Must all such decisions be implemented, no matter how terrible and unanticipated the consequences of doing so?
@Philip_Thompson seems to be suggesting that these "middlemen" were making our PPE but they weren't, were they? They were simply acting as middlemen as the name suggests.
They should certainly have been able to make a profit if they created avenues to PPE that we would otherwise not have had access to, but not millions of pounds of profit. That's just disaster capitalism.
Defending such behaviour is beyond the pale.
Why not millions of pounds of profit?
What percentage of trade being a profit is OK to you? Hypothetically someone invests in creating a plant that manufacturers PPE and gets a contract for say over £100mn with 98% going to total costs and a 2% margin then is that acceptable or unacceptable in your eyes?
WHO are you talking about? We're talking about middlemen, not about people investing in factories. Which is it?
We are not talking about middlemen primarily.
We have gone from 99% imported to 30% imported. That is a dramatic transformation.
As for those engaged in the import business, that has costs too of course it does. And when we were 99% imported of course we needed to import some.
Foxy is criticising middlemen. Not factory owners in the UK. You've completely moved the goalposts.
No I've not as the transformation that has happened in the last few months has been going from 99% imported (pre existing circumstances) which will inevitably involve what you term "middle men" to 30% imported.
How do you propose cutting out middle men and getting the goods from China to the UK? Teleportation spells? Magic portals? Wishful thinking?
If said "middlemen" provided a freight forwarding or logistics service then they could have been paid a nominal sum to cover their costs. War profiteering is wrong. Disaster profiteering is wrong. It's really as simple as that.
I wonder how much was profit and how much went in 'inducements'.
It might be that the government knew what it would take to get hold of the goods but weren't prepared to do it themselves. Plausible deniability and all that.
It didn't help that legitimate British companies had their production lines commandeered by the Chinese government.
And the French requisitioned goods too.
If inducements were the price needed to get a hold of the goods and we couldn't get them without paying that price then what alternative was there exactly?
I see a lot of whinging, not so many productive alternatives.
I don't disagree. We could have done everything properly and had no PPE, which would have been much worse.
Those arguing for a bigger stockpiles are forgetting that there was even a furore over the re-certification of old stock. We'd have to have had an active stockpile where stuff was thrown out regularly.
Off topic, Joanna Cherry seems to be working herself and her followers up into a frenzy this am via twitter, she'll probably be on 3 figures for tweets and rts by the end of the day. Can we expect a putsch any day now?
Perhaps she was emboldened by Nippy's desperate showing on Marr yesterday. Is there blood in the water?
First Minister said that the 17-day firebreak lockdown was not a mistake.
He said: “We don’t think we took the wrong decision. The advice was going early would be more effective and that by going early and going deep, 17 days would be adequate.
“It delivered what we wanted it to do.”
You wanted an R rate of 1.4 2 weeks after coming out of it?
Drakeford is in denial
He closes pubs, restaurants and cafes from 6.00pm but stops them selling any alcohol
At the same time supermarket alcohol sales are allowed so as you cannot go to the pub, people will buy alcohol from the supermarkets and meet In each others homes rather than in a covid secure pub or restaurant
Most people in Britain were brought up in a country that offered the faint hope of justice. The police would investigate corruption, if only occasionally. Politicians would dodge and weave but avoid flat-out lies. Political parties had moral standards, however flexible, and if a minister disgraced himself or herself they could resign. Opposition politicians, journalists, satirists, charities and alliances of concerned citizens worked on the assumption that if they exposed wrongdoing there was a chance it would stop.
I don’t wish to romanticise the past. My small point is that we have not always been as shamefully governed as we are governed today. Countries change and not always for the better. Corruptions of public life in Britain that were once challenged now pass unpunished. The old codes that restrained the powerful have proved useless against politicians who say: “We can break them and no one can stop us.” Boris Johnson’s administration now lies as a matter of policy and a matter of course.
Boris is Trump. Both leaders have shown that what we thought were checks and balances, were not; that our constitutional and democratic conventions were just that, conventions. The only mitigating factor is neither Boris nor Trump is consistent or dogmatic, let alone evil, but this cannot be guaranteed of their successors.
“Rulers’ self-restraint is one of the most important – if less formal – ways by which governments control themselves. The belief that there are some limits, generally understood and shared despite political differences, beyond which you do not go because it is not the “done thing”, not the British way, not least because when you are out of power you don’t want to be on the receiving end. It is the “good chaps” theory of government. Coupled with that is a belief that even a democratic system requires checks and balances, that the system of government has a value which should be preserved and endure beyond the needs or desires of those in power at any one time.”
“The British conventions governing democracy and the consensus around them endure for as long as they are understood, believed and accepted. They become vulnerable, their weaknesses exposed when the reasons for them are forgotten or not valued or not understood. What if it is not “good chaps” who are elected? What if they are seen as stultifying by those impatient to effect change and willing to get rid of anything in their way? Or if checks and balances are simply described as obstruction and not seen as having any inherent value? Some do think that a government with a Parliamentary majority should be free to do whatever it wants and can get through Parliament: electoral might is right.”
Everything Cohen describes follows from the fact that we have people in power who think nothing should stand in their way, that, for instance, corruption is fine if done by an elected government or because it is an emergency or a necessity.
And of course the definition of “emergency” or “necessity” becomes ever wider until it becomes the norm and no-one even bothers to call it for what it is.
So if it becomes necessary to pay “middlemen” or “intermediaries” who happen to be the Minister’s neighbour or best friend or golf partner or whatever humongous sums of money to fly in Covid vaccines because the ports are blocked etc no- one will bat an eye lid and many will applaud. We have seen some of that on here already.
But in the real world the "middlemen" tasked with flying in the vaccines isn't "best friends" it is the military.
While for PPE 99.5% of PPE purchased has been consumable and there was a global shortage of availability. Those businesses that stepped into the gap and provided millions of items of PPE should be thanked not condemned.
We paid £12 billion for PPE worth £2 billion the year before. Clearly some people made massively inflated profits by this racketeering. An investigation of who, how authorised and how connected is perfectly fitting. While we are at it, looking at how depleted our pandemic stocks were prior to the outbreak could be usefully incorporated.
Sounds like Philip may have been a middleman given the lengths he goes to support the chicanery and fraud.
No but I've traded with them before. They serve a useful purpose. If I want to buy a product that is manufactured in Italy then I would rather speak to a middleman in the UK that imports the product in the volumes I need than speak to the manufacturer that says I can buy it in bulk if I want to collect it in bulk from their plant in Italy.
Philip, none of these were in the UK, this was not normal business deals. We are talking cowboys , many forwarded via the ministerial hotline , using all sorts of foreign middlemen and chancers , ie jewellery salesman in Florida. All kinds of vultures and no controls whatsoever.
@Philip_Thompson seems to be suggesting that these "middlemen" were making our PPE but they weren't, were they? They were simply acting as middlemen as the name suggests.
They should certainly have been able to make a profit if they created avenues to PPE that we would otherwise not have had access to, but not millions of pounds of profit. That's just disaster capitalism.
Defending such behaviour is beyond the pale.
Why not millions of pounds of profit?
What percentage of trade being a profit is OK to you? Hypothetically someone invests in creating a plant that manufacturers PPE and gets a contract for say over £100mn with 98% going to total costs and a 2% margin then is that acceptable or unacceptable in your eyes?
Except that isn't even close to what's being objected to. Which is no bid contracts for middlemen, effectively backed with the credit of the UK government, and margins around 25%.
If those middlemen have been able to supply goods at the price quoted then job done. Why didn't others go in quoting 25% less if it was so easy?
Which takes us back to the business of preferential access.
And also to the point that you don't want anyone to look into any of this.
@Philip has no idea of the corruption which almost inevitably accompanies the use of “intermediaries” or “introducers”. Plus he is confused between an importer who provides a useful service to the provider and buyer and someone who doesn’t but simply claims a large fee for doing nothing. There is also the confusion between a profit margin earned by the manufacturer of goods which are in short supply and a “fee” paid to an introducer which is not the same thing at all.
Scrutiny is essential but is something which no-one in this government (or their cheerleaders and fans) seem to want.
Corruption exists in other countries, yes I get that. Your point being?
If the only way of getting a hold of requisitioned goods is to pay a fee to someone holding them then do you pay the fee or let doctors and nurses die from a lack of PPE?
I have little doubt that some of those who imported the goods paid a bribe to those holding goods to sell it to them so they could sell it to the NHS. Those who did that have provided a necessary service in securing the goods. Simply wishing away the fact that other nations requisitioned everything doesn't make it go away.
Maybe those in China or elsewhere who received the bribes or inducements to sell to us should be investigated and prosecuted - by the Chinese. Paying it shouldn't be condemned it was a needed part of business under the circumstances.
I know you choose to ignore this but if people in Britain pay bribes or cause bribes to be paid abroad, they commit a criminal offence. See the Bribery Act.
Still, silly me - we have a government that thinks laws don’t matter, that breaking the law in a “specific and limited” way is fine.
So how “limited” and “specific” do you think such law-breaking will remain?
And Rob Ford similarly doesn't reflect on the polling on those who think Brexit a mistake - currently around 50%, along with a large slice of don't knows. I would guess it's at least possible that a slug of economic discomfort might have some impact on the latter category.
It is possible to believe Brexit is a mistake and that it should be carried out. For some, democracy trumps economics.
Many of us Remoaners would accept that without demur.
Do Leavers also accept that a 52/48 win did not justify leaving without regard to the views of those who wished to remain? Personally I would have thought that even if the vote had gone 90/10 to Leave, the Government would still have had an obligation to negotiate the best possible deal on leaving. It is after all obliged to do its best for the whole country, and not just its supporters.
Anyway it's an ill wind that brings no good. I see that the closer we get to the reality of Brexit, the less popular it becomes. No Deal would certainly be worse than a Negotiated Deal in the short term, but you never know. In the long run if we all learned that voting for Stupid has bad consequences it may serve us all better in future.
First Minister said that the 17-day firebreak lockdown was not a mistake.
He said: “We don’t think we took the wrong decision. The advice was going early would be more effective and that by going early and going deep, 17 days would be adequate.
“It delivered what we wanted it to do.”
You wanted an R rate of 1.4 2 weeks after coming out of it?
Drakeford is in denial
He closes pubs, restaurants and cafes from 6.00pm but stops them selling any alcohol
At the same time supermarket alcohol sales are allowed so as you cannot go to the pub, people will buy alcohol from the supermarkets and meet In each others homes rather than in a covid secure pub or restaurant
This policy is idiotic
I am shocked... shocked i tell you...from the man who banned oven glove sales in Tescos to save the high street, then told people if they needed stuff to buy it on Amazon.
Can we now put to bed this idea that a quick and easy couple of weeks break solves yoir covid problems. 2 for 2 in failures.
Trump performed more Airstrikes in 3 years than Obama did over 8.
This pernicious myth that he de-escalated American intervention abroad is parroted with zero thought or research on here.
Off topic, Joanna Cherry seems to be working herself and her followers up into a frenzy this am via twitter, she'll probably be on 3 figures for tweets and rts by the end of the day. Can we expect a putsch any day now?
People seem incredibly silly and keep putting defaming comments about her on twitter. Pretty stupid doing that to a QC, even SNP politician's and officials involved , madness. If the clique in the NEC get cleared out we could well see big changes soon.
@Philip_Thompson seems to be suggesting that these "middlemen" were making our PPE but they weren't, were they? They were simply acting as middlemen as the name suggests.
They should certainly have been able to make a profit if they created avenues to PPE that we would otherwise not have had access to, but not millions of pounds of profit. That's just disaster capitalism.
Defending such behaviour is beyond the pale.
Why not millions of pounds of profit?
What percentage of trade being a profit is OK to you? Hypothetically someone invests in creating a plant that manufacturers PPE and gets a contract for say over £100mn with 98% going to total costs and a 2% margin then is that acceptable or unacceptable in your eyes?
Except that isn't even close to what's being objected to. Which is no bid contracts for middlemen, effectively backed with the credit of the UK government, and margins around 25%.
If those middlemen have been able to supply goods at the price quoted then job done. Why didn't others go in quoting 25% less if it was so easy?
Which takes us back to the business of preferential access.
And also to the point that you don't want anyone to look into any of this.
Preferential access isn't ideal but speed of delivery is essential during a pandemic and people knowing how to navigate the bureaucracy being able to do so faster than those who don't is hardly a surprise. That's why I'd prefer normally that bureaucracy is less involved not more involved and that the market should decide.
And I'm happy for it to be looked into and expect a full inquiry after the pandemic. Just think the whinging so far is much ado about nothing.
It isn’t. People with experience of investigating frauds (not just me - but other experts working in the same field though not on this forum) have raised concerns. Some of what has happened stinks to high heaven. You ignore this because you don’t want to believe that your beloved government is not whiter than white. You find increasingly implausible excuses and explanations for behaviour which at its worse is a crime.
Not all of it will be. But some may be and defending the indefensible is simply wrong. What is more the concerns relate not just to PPE but to many other aspects of government - the New Town Fund, for instance.
There is a thread which runs through this government - of carelessness with our money, cronyism, corruption, preference for who you know rather than expertise, of one rule for us, one rule for the plebs - and the government’s cheerleaders are making themselves look ridiculous with their “nothing to see here” nonsense.
The unfairness grates too. Businesses like my daughter’s face ruin and closure for want of sums which are not even a rounding error by comparison with the monies lavished on the government’s friends. One day - I hope - there will be a political price to be paid for this.
I hope so anyway. Because if there isn’t Britain will be a very much worse place to live in than it should be.
If there's issues outside of PPE then let's hear them instead of constant complaining about acquiring PPE in a bloody pandemic. Considering the fact that only recently people were screaming about the PPE shortage then for acquiring the PPE I would apply the principle quod est necessarium est licitum.
That doesn't apply for other issues. If there are any other issues then let's hear them, that would be far more interesting and damning. Yet for some reason we don't. It's always bloody PPE again and again and again. That says to me that people are scraping the barrel precisely because they can't find legitimate issues to complain about.
I want your daughter's business to succeed. Ensuring an adequate supply of PPE is not counter to your daughter's interests though, if the country has no PPE the virus spreads more and the lockdown gets harder not softer.
“Bounced into it” my arse. It was perfectly obvious that more money would be needed when the government chose to make a decision which, in its consequences, is the same as the decision to close the sector in March.
They just hope to get away with doing nothing by claiming - wrongly - that the grant given in March was meant to cover a year or more of no or little trading.
Trump performed more Airstrikes in 3 years than Obama did over 8.
This pernicious myth that he de-escalated American intervention abroad is parroted with zero thought or research on here.
Obama launched airstrikes in Libya and Syria where the US was not militarily involved before he took office to defeat Gaddaffi and ISIS as well as airstrikes in Iraq even if he withdrew groundtroops from the latter.
Trump launched no new airstrikes or military action in any country the US was not involved in before as well as reaching out to North Korea's leadership in a way no previous President had done and had better relations with Putin than Bush or Obama had.
Well, point one, they have come to their senses (see the mistake/not mistake polling), point two this is one of those I've jumped off a hundred storey building, I've fallen ninety storeys without issue sort of situations, and point three you are simply losing when you stop making it about how well your project is going and start making it all about the attitude of your opponents to how well your project is going.
The only poll that matters is elections and we had one not twelve months ago. It was decisive and went the way I wanted not you.
The way you wanted because you have so little understanding of the consequences of any of the things you want.
Off topic, Joanna Cherry seems to be working herself and her followers up into a frenzy this am via twitter, she'll probably be on 3 figures for tweets and rts by the end of the day. Can we expect a putsch any day now?
Perhaps she was emboldened by Nippy's desperate showing on Marr yesterday. Is there blood in the water?
As I'm sure you would admit privately to the reflection in your bathroom mirror, 'desperate' is very much in the eye of the beholder. When you've got Historywoman, AgentP and what you would hitherto have happily described as Nat zoomers singing from the same hymn sheet...
Not really getting this, that if they bend the rules, will increase spread, which will lead to tougher restrictions, meaning they have to close full stop...Genius.
The entire argument of the "just let us decide our own risk" crowd totally fails to take into account that they're asking to decide everyone else's risk as well. And it's an asymmetric risk profile.
The ones wanting to choose for themselves and others to accept the risk are almost invariably the ones with the least risk. But they almost always look at the "risk of me being infected" and gloss over "the risk of me infecting others," and, in a public health scenario with an infectious pandemic: that is the crucial element.
After all, not one person in the UK (with the possible exception of Allison Pearson) has wanted anyone else to be infected, and no-one who has infected someone else has deliberately done so.
Yet over 5 million people have been infected nevertheless in the UK.
Those who did the infecting have indeed, overwhelmingly been okay. To the tune of 96% or so not needing hospitalisation and 99% or so not dying.
Yet 60,000 people who those infectors managed to infect have gone on to die. Given that most of these were in the higher risk categories, it's highly probable that very few of those 60,000 made the choice to face exposure and risk; instead others made the choice for them - and they ended up dying.
Nearly quarter of a million of the people those infectors did infect have been so sick they were hospitalised. A lot of those needing assistance to merely breathe.
At least a third of a million people face long-term consequences with what has been termed "long covid," many of these suffering organ damage.
Too many of those people infected - the third of a million with long covid, the quarter of a million so sick they were hospitalised, and the 60,000+ dead - had not made a decision to face higher risk.
They had that decision made for them.
By people whose own risk was low, and who did not fully think through the cost to others.
Another excellent post from Andy. Very thought-provoking - deserves a similarly thoughtful response to engage with his view (which is so widely held). So I`ll give it a go.
I`ve said before that lockdown skeptics should avoid tangling with the science and stick to principles only. For example, they should say that they don`t hold anyone else responsible for their own health; one`s own health is one`s own responsibility. This is the elephant in the room. It always has been. The opposition should come from philosophy not from scientific illiteracy, deliberate misinterpretation and mischief. Back in March I said here that at his briefings Johnson should have been flanked by a healthcare scientist, an economist and a philosopher - not just solely the former.
This is the bit I`m struggling with. Andy`s post reveals himself as a strong utilitarian. A moral framework that I don`t hold. I believe that good and bad acts come from intentions not consequences. Therefore you cannot apportion blame to someone who passes on a virus without even knowing that they had it themselves. Andy himself points out that no one has deliberately infected another person with Covid as far as we know (unlike what happened in small numbers with HIV). And, of course, an infection is not imprinted with the signature of the person it came from.
I think people who know me in real life would say that I`m as thoughtful and polite and caring and gentle as they come. But I don`t accept responsibility for other people`s health outside of my closest family. Of course I wish no one ill, but it is not my responsibility. I can`t get away from this. Utilitarians are not going to guilt-trip me into thinking otherwise. We need to stop blaming each other for things. This year has been ugly.
The vaccines are great news. But will they get us out? Only partial I think. The virus will still be present. As far as I know, a vaccine will protect that particular person from symptoms but will not prevent that person from spreading it to others. Covid is not, therefore, going away. And, of course, not everyone will agree to be vaccinated. Social-distancing will still be a thing. Covid will still be here. We still have to learn to live with it. Sorry.
This is bleak outlook - though doesn`t match @Black_Rook levels of bleakness. I`m betting that those holding a utilitarian outlook (which lends itself more to totalitarianism than liberalism I think) who are also risk-averse, and probably financially comfortable in themselves, will still have no intention of learning to live with Covid and will selfishly continue to chide, bully and rebuke the rest of us, who just want to live their lives in the ways we choose in a precious liberal society. For me, the selfishness is on the other side.
If you don`t agree, at least give me the courtesy of being honest.
Thank you for a well thought-out reply, and the up-front compliment.
I have no idea whether or not I am a utilitarian; I'm not really up on moral philosophy. I usually see myself as a liberal: everyone should have the right to pilot their own life in whatever way they can.
But the freedom to swing one's fist ends at someone else's face.
I did highlight that no-one has intentionally infected others. But that others have been infected nevertheless - and at a staggering scale. That actions, in a global pandemic, have huge externalities (in economics terms). If I exercise my freedom and, in doing so, knowingly impair the freedoms of many others to live their lives, that's illiberal of me. I'll have taken away all the choices they could have made in future and made them for them.
If I take some actions that could knowingly hurt others, I am at fault. If I refuse a set of actions that exist to protect others, I am at fault. Of course, as The Good Place covers, virtually every action we can take or refrain from taking will have knock-on consequences and we can't prevent all negative outcomes - but we can look at ones where we know the negative outcomes are huge. Normal actions, where the harm theoretically caused is either hugely unlikely, or very limited in scope, or limited in effect - that's all of life, almost. We blunder through as best we can.
This, though, is nowhere near normal life.
The restrictions we did put successfully kicked the can down the road. Not only do we have vaccines that will be going into people's arms within days, we have vastly improved our treatments and the prognosis of people who are ill. We will continue to do so. There is hope. And there are also indications that some vaccines at least will either prevent spread or hugely reduce spread. We're not in a static scenario; the potential outcomes are improving day by day.
The "lockdown sceptics" and those of the Toby Young side that argue the libertarian case do always seem to gloss over the spreading-the-disease onwards aspect. Mary Mallon certainly had her personal freedoms hugely curtailed - but doing so stopped her from taking a load of life choices away from others. Totalitarianism is usually seen as people having choices imposed upon them rather than being able to make them themselves. Surely taking actions that can be reasonably seen to, en masse, take a lot of choices away from others (when killed or disabled by anothers choices, a lot of potential choices evaporate) isn't truly a liberal course of action?
(I'm also not sure that "risk-averse" sums me up. I've been accused of the opposite in the past, with the skydiving and the microlighting, but that could simply be a different category of risk. I'd say I'm risk averse when my risk-taking could affect my family or others; I really don't think "totalitarian" applies to me, but I could be wrong there as well).
Thanks for that. I don`t think were are far off from agreeing with each other. I usually agree with your posts on other things.
You say "If I exercise my freedom and, in doing so, knowingly impair the freedoms of many others to live their lives, that's illiberal of me" and "If I take some actions that could knowingly hurt others, I am at fault" - I couldn`t agree more with both of those statements - I`m a liberal - but note that this, for me, is different when you take out the word "knowingly". That is what my post was about.
I think we are indeed fairly close and the discrepancy is "knowingly." My core point is that in normal day-to-day life, no-one could realistically be held responsible for passing on a cold, or flu, or anything else, unless they could be reasonably expected to know they were doing so.
Given that we know R is relentlessly over 1 for this damn disease unless serious restrictions are imposed, and even that the infectious period includes multiple days before showing symptoms, then - during a known pandemic that we're trying to avoid further spreading - we can reasonably expect that if we're infected, we will infect others (with the best will in the world, we won't know the moment we become infectious, and if we are knowingly acting in such a way that we aren't minimising spread - as would be true if we were actively accepting the risk of infection), we will almost certainly pass it on. And it isn't really plausible for me (or anyone) to claim that I didn't know there was a very high risk of passing it on if I got it.
(remember that the core jumping off point was the assumption of accepting the risk of getting it in the first place)
With @YBarddCwsc 's example, as I said, I'd be fine with the high risk person accepting the risk of infection - but only if they could then ensure that the risk was confined to themselves. Sure, I might think it's the wrong choice, but who the hell am I to make that decision for them? I don't know their full situation, I certainly don't know what their priorities are, and even if I did, it's their life to lead. Not mine. If freedom of choice means anything, it must include the freedom to make the wrong choice, anyway, even if it is objectively wrong for them. Otherwise it's not a choice (and not a freedom) at all.
But not to make a choice for someone else that could be wrong, which is what people are perforce doing if they follow a course of action where they could reasonably be expected to know they're exposing others without their own choice made in it - and in a global pandemic which continues to spread at the slightest opportunity and where we're discussing the choices we're making to prevent that spread, I can't see that people could reasonably expect to be exposed without then exposing others.
Comments
Come Friday Cornwall is the only part of the UK you can go to a pub and not only eat a Pasty or any other food inside and outside with your mates and family but also have a beer after without any more food
Then there's the need for medical care if they do become sick - they potentially infect other elderly people in hospital (they may be admitted for something other than Covid while having Covid, so not isolated) and of course pose some risk to the medical staff and. by extension, their families. They, in that case, also take resources away from others who did not choose to take the risk, who are perhaps sick for other reasons, long term conditions.
I think for those living alone and really isolated, you can make the case (and they can join a support bubble). For those not living alone, I'm not convinced.
I think it can be difficult to have that happen - either they promptly self-isolate fully for a fortnight afterwards and avoid meeting any of their own friends or anyone to whom they could pass it on (especially if they're in a care home, or similar!), or they could end up infecting others. (That's one aspect of the problem with the Great Barrington Declaration route: never mind the question of whether those making the choice to expose themselves have been given an accurate assessment of their personal risk, but the immense difficulties of separating out all the vulnerable are astonishing. It's why, despite virtually every country making real efforts to protect their vulnerable, every country where spread became widespread in the general community saw a lot of infections in their vulnerable as well. Even if successful, you'd need to practically put a lot of people under a far more real "lockdown" than anything we've ever seen - fully isolating them from friends, family, and colleagues and almost every aspect of society. Shopping, takeaways, outside exercise, meeting literally anyone, full-on perpetual quarantine).
It's almost always the onwards spread that's the problem. I mean, it's practically the definition of the difficulty in reducing R.
Doesn't work that way. Businesses exist to make a profit. The profit motive is a good thing not a bad thing.
You say "If I exercise my freedom and, in doing so, knowingly impair the freedoms of many others to live their lives, that's illiberal of me" and "If I take some actions that could knowingly hurt others, I am at fault" - I couldn`t agree more with both of those statements - I`m a liberal - but note that this, for me, is different when you take out the word "knowingly". That is what my post was about.
The relevant equilibrium is between making money and losing the respect of your fellows.
You only get paid if you do work.
Which is no bid contracts for middlemen, effectively backed with the credit of the UK government, and margins around 25%.
Dems suffered down ticket losses but the election was Rigged against Trump.
That means it was the State Republicans that rigged the election against Trump!
And also to the point that you don't want anyone to look into any of this.
https://twitter.com/robfordmancs/status/1333374935528583175?s=20
...
https://twitter.com/robfordmancs/status/1333374941316722688?s=20
Thereafter, Covid becomes a low-risk illness: it is almost harmless for the healthy under-50s, so once we remove the vulnerable cohort it becomes a much less fraught societal and philosophical challenge.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/absolutely-remarkable-no-one-who-got-modernas-vaccine-trial-developed-severe-covid-19
...Moderna’s candidate had 100% efficacy against severe disease. There were zero such COVID-19 cases among the vaccinees, but 30 in the placebo group....
I agree that the profit motive is good but not excessive profiteering in the middle of a national emergency.
Scrutiny is essential but is something which no-one in this government (or their cheerleaders and fans) seem to want.
I would guess it's at least possible that a slug of economic discomfort might have some impact on the latter category.
Yes, really. In the middle of a pandemic, halfway through a vaccination programme (if all goes well) we are meant to open our doors to strangers and those working on this are supposed to put themselves at risk.
WTAF?!
It might be that the government knew what it would take to get hold of the goods but weren't prepared to do it themselves. Plausible deniability and all that.
It didn't help that legitimate British companies had their production lines commandeered by the Chinese government.
You're making it sound like the situation Trump inherited from Obama was generally positive. It wasn't. The US was embroiled in conflicts. It had let China run riot. It is also easy to forget how relatively easy the West and Russia could have got into conflict over Crimea and the Ukraine in the mid-2010s. With HRC as President, that could have happened. You'
(Though it sometimes seems that Phillip simply doesn't want to know.)
The various governments are simply determined to kill the hospitality sector once and for all, aren’t they?
And no that does not mean I want people taking silly risks (other than going to crowded shops 24 hours a day, apparently) but it does mean that I want a proper support package for those unable to operate.
They couldn't pay me enough to deal with the inevitable "I refuse to take part in the census because Magna Carta" gang.
And I'm happy for it to be looked into and expect a full inquiry after the pandemic. Just think the whinging so far is much ado about nothing.
The numbers are very small, so the 'percentages' aren't definitive by any means (including Moderna's '100%'), but Pfizer, for example, had a severe case in the treatment arm.
AZN, as far as I'm aware, has not had any severe cases either.
Though the vaccine is (probably) less effective overall.
This pernicious myth that he de-escalated American intervention abroad is parroted with zero thought or research on here.
If the AZ vaccine has got very high efficacy in the young then that's who should get it, but given we're going to start taking delivery of it in the next few days it means we should run a specific programme for under 55s. Keeping it in the fridge and waiting for the Pfizer vaccine to run out doesn't make any sense.
Oooh, the economy grew under Trump. Ooooh. I wonder why?
If inducements were the price needed to get a hold of the goods and we couldn't get them without paying that price then what alternative was there exactly?
I see a lot of whinging, not so many productive alternatives.
Under the new programme, cinemas, bowling alleys and other indoor entertainment venues will also close, but non-essential retail, hairdressers, gyms and leisure centres can stay open.
Full data haven't been published yet, but fingers crossed.
They had to pull a "we are a society of hidden feminists" narrative out of their hat.
If the only way of getting a hold of requisitioned goods is to pay a fee to someone holding them then do you pay the fee or let doctors and nurses die from a lack of PPE?
I have little doubt that some of those who imported the goods paid a bribe to those holding goods to sell it to them so they could sell it to the NHS. Those who did that have provided a necessary service in securing the goods. Simply wishing away the fact that other nations requisitioned everything doesn't make it go away.
Maybe those in China or elsewhere who received the bribes or inducements to sell to us should be investigated and prosecuted - by the Chinese. Paying it shouldn't be condemned it was a needed part of business under the circumstances.
It also opens the door to "hard rejoin" which any possible form of less disastrous Brexit would inhibit.
Not all of it will be. But some may be and defending the indefensible is simply wrong. What is more the concerns relate not just to PPE but to many other aspects of government - the New Town Fund, for instance.
There is a thread which runs through this government - of carelessness with our money, cronyism, corruption, preference for who you know rather than expertise, of one rule for us, one rule for the plebs - and the government’s cheerleaders are making themselves look ridiculous with their “nothing to see here” nonsense.
The unfairness grates too. Businesses like my daughter’s face ruin and closure for want of sums which are not even a rounding error by comparison with the monies lavished on the government’s friends. One day - I hope - there will be a political price to be paid for this.
I hope so anyway. Because if there isn’t Britain will be a very much worse place to live in than it should be.
Assuming it's approved, I'd be far happier to have the AZN vaccine than have to wait another six months for one of the others and possibly get infected in the meantime (and I'm over 55).
The balance of risk would be, I think, pretty strongly in favour of early vaccination.
Surely we can and should run both vaccine programmes simultaneously. No reason on a Monday for instance we can't be vaccinating people using both the Pfizer vaccine and the AZ vaccine. Especially if the vaccines are being distributed through different channels.
Distribution should be going out seven days a week for both programmes. As fast as it gets manufactured we should be distributing it as fast as possible.
Trump launched no new airstrikes or military action in any country the US was not involved in before as well as reaching out to North Korea's leadership in a way no previous President had done and had better relations with Putin than Bush or Obama had.
He said: “We don’t think we took the wrong decision. The advice was going early would be more effective and that by going early and going deep, 17 days would be adequate.
“It delivered what we wanted it to do.”
You wanted an R rate of 1.4 a couple of weeks after coming out of it?
Those arguing for a bigger stockpiles are forgetting that there was even a furore over the re-certification of old stock. We'd have to have had an active stockpile where stuff was thrown out regularly.
He closes pubs, restaurants and cafes from 6.00pm but stops them selling any alcohol
At the same time supermarket alcohol sales are allowed so as you cannot go to the pub, people will buy alcohol from the supermarkets and meet In each others homes rather than in a covid secure pub or restaurant
This policy is idiotic
Still, silly me - we have a government that thinks laws don’t matter, that breaking the law in a “specific and limited” way is fine.
So how “limited” and “specific” do you think such law-breaking will remain?
https://twitter.com/niubi/status/1333378401495883778
Do Leavers also accept that a 52/48 win did not justify leaving without regard to the views of those who wished to remain? Personally I would have thought that even if the vote had gone 90/10 to Leave, the Government would still have had an obligation to negotiate the best possible deal on leaving. It is after all obliged to do its best for the whole country, and not just its supporters.
Anyway it's an ill wind that brings no good. I see that the closer we get to the reality of Brexit, the less popular it becomes. No Deal would certainly be worse than a Negotiated Deal in the short term, but you never know. In the long run if we all learned that voting for Stupid has bad consequences it may serve us all better in future.
Can we now put to bed this idea that a quick and easy couple of weeks break solves yoir covid problems. 2 for 2 in failures.
That doesn't apply for other issues. If there are any other issues then let's hear them, that would be far more interesting and damning. Yet for some reason we don't. It's always bloody PPE again and again and again. That says to me that people are scraping the barrel precisely because they can't find legitimate issues to complain about.
I want your daughter's business to succeed. Ensuring an adequate supply of PPE is not counter to your daughter's interests though, if the country has no PPE the virus spreads more and the lockdown gets harder not softer.
They just hope to get away with doing nothing by claiming - wrongly - that the grant given in March was meant to cover a year or more of no or little trading.
LOL.
I voted tory btw.
My core point is that in normal day-to-day life, no-one could realistically be held responsible for passing on a cold, or flu, or anything else, unless they could be reasonably expected to know they were doing so.
Given that we know R is relentlessly over 1 for this damn disease unless serious restrictions are imposed, and even that the infectious period includes multiple days before showing symptoms, then - during a known pandemic that we're trying to avoid further spreading - we can reasonably expect that if we're infected, we will infect others (with the best will in the world, we won't know the moment we become infectious, and if we are knowingly acting in such a way that we aren't minimising spread - as would be true if we were actively accepting the risk of infection), we will almost certainly pass it on. And it isn't really plausible for me (or anyone) to claim that I didn't know there was a very high risk of passing it on if I got it.
(remember that the core jumping off point was the assumption of accepting the risk of getting it in the first place)
With @YBarddCwsc 's example, as I said, I'd be fine with the high risk person accepting the risk of infection - but only if they could then ensure that the risk was confined to themselves. Sure, I might think it's the wrong choice, but who the hell am I to make that decision for them? I don't know their full situation, I certainly don't know what their priorities are, and even if I did, it's their life to lead. Not mine. If freedom of choice means anything, it must include the freedom to make the wrong choice, anyway, even if it is objectively wrong for them. Otherwise it's not a choice (and not a freedom) at all.
But not to make a choice for someone else that could be wrong, which is what people are perforce doing if they follow a course of action where they could reasonably be expected to know they're exposing others without their own choice made in it - and in a global pandemic which continues to spread at the slightest opportunity and where we're discussing the choices we're making to prevent that spread, I can't see that people could reasonably expect to be exposed without then exposing others.
The comment is fair, but the attached picture... Trumpian.
And pinning the Tweet, inflammatory.