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Could Attorney-General Barr be next in line to be sacked by Trump? – politicalbetting.com

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  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,714
    Andy_JS said:

    I reckon the Americans are annoyed that they didn't get there first with the vaccine.

    The FDA meets on Wednesday. There isn't much difference in practice. Lets just hope the Moderna vaccine doesn't have the same production problems.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,695

    Ugh, if Boris agrees to this then he deserves to ousted and charged with High Treason.

    https://twitter.com/QuentinAries/status/1334596958204407812

    In exchange for Aquitaine?
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,593
    "Criticism of UK's vaccine approval is because other regulators are playing catch-up, Jonathan Van Tam says

    England's deputy chief medical officer said questions over the speed of approval were coming from regulators that were 'further behind'" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/12/03/criticism-uks-vaccine-approval-regulators-playing-catch-up-jonathan/
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,205


    Is there not the option to sue BetFair for any winnings you are due through the small claims court?

    They'll pay out eventually. It's more the potential false markets (There shouldn't be any substantial ones) they've led themselves into here which is the issue.

    I think the biggest potential for a false market on the 14th is Trump severely underperforming his ECVs - the 180 - 209 band could "falsely" land.
    There's a Predictit market, will Trump match Pence's ECVs which is rated at a 70ish % chance. I think that's way too high.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,695
    Foxy said:

    Andy_JS said:

    I reckon the Americans are annoyed that they didn't get there first with the vaccine.

    The FDA meets on Wednesday. There isn't much difference in practice. Lets just hope the Moderna vaccine doesn't have the same production problems.
    What do you think will happen with approval for the Oxford vaccine Foxy?
  • OnboardG1 said:

    Slightly disappointing, but who wouldn’t have taken 5 million doses in arms by 31st dec 2020 at the start of the week?
    Oxford on its way. May be a better solution anyway as doesn't need a -70c supply route.
    How far away from approval do you reckon?
    Hopefully this month. Around Christmas.
    Being very selfish for the moment, I wonder what chance Mrs P and I have of celebrating our ruby wedding in New York next May as planned. 50/50 at the moment?
    How likely do you think it is the US will have inoculated a significant portion of its population by then to allow them to lift the travel ban?
    About 50/50 for that and I think 60/40 that we will have been vaccinated and be confident to travel.

    But in the great scheme of things ours is a very minor issue.
    I'm meant to be travelling to the US on business (that cannot be done at home since it requires wire strippers and a shovel) in July. Not sure if it'll happen. Depends if the US is less of a basket case under Biden on COVID.
    I read that as "...involves wine, strippers, and a shovel".

    That's some 'business trip'. 😂
    I think I saw that movie...
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362

    Any provision on state aid is going to need a rather short sunset clause - 24 months? - to get past Conservative MPs. They can't go into the next election with that still a thing.
    Why?

    Surely this embrace of socialism will have the architect of EU free market, Margaret Thatcher, spinning in her grave?
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Ugh, if Boris agrees to this then he deserves to ousted and charged with High Treason.

    https://twitter.com/QuentinAries/status/1334596958204407812

    The Channel Islands aren't part of the UK, they are subject to HMQ as Duke of Normandy, so you really need to clarify your thinking on the whole republican thing if you have a problem with this.
  • GaussianGaussian Posts: 831
    HYUFD said:

    Pulpstar said:

    For what it's worth, here is Betfair's non-answer to my complaint about their handling of the US Presidential Election markets. I believe others have received similarly bland, unhelpful responses.



    Dear Mr Smith,

    I hope that this email finds you well.

    I am writing to you in relation to your query regarding the settlement of bets placed on the Exchange markets relating to the USA Presidential Election.

    I fully appreciate that you have concerns regarding the time-frame in which this market will be settled, however, settlement of the US Presidential Election and related markets will not be completed until the result is beyond doubt and unfortunately, this may take some time, given the possibility of recounts and current legal challenges filed by the Republican Party.

    As such, given the highly contested nature of this election, the decision has been taken in the best interests of our customers to delay settling this market, until there is clarity around any ongoing recounts and legal challenges.

    This decision has been taken in-line with our terms and conditions, which for ease of use, have been copied below:

    In the event of any uncertainty about any result or potential result, Betfair reserves the right to suspend settlement of any market for an unlimited period until the uncertainty can be resolved to the reasonable satisfaction of Betfair.

    Betfair reserves the right to void any market if the uncertainty regarding settlement cannot be resolved to Betfair's reasonable satisfaction.

    Please note that we are keeping abreast of all developments in this on-going situation and will be settling this market as soon as there is no longer any uncertainty regarding the outcome of this election.

    I fully appreciate that this is not the response which you had hoped to receive here, and I apologise for any frustration or inconvenience which this may have caused to you.

    I hope that this clarifies the matter for you and should you have any further queries, please do not hesitate to reach out to our Helpdesk team.

    Thanks,

    Christian
    Escalation Management Team

    "Possibility of recounts ?"

    There's no possibility of recounts in any of the markets now.

    Their rules were not on who would become president, it's on projected ECVs to attain the presidency.

    Uncertainty in projected ECVs would be along the lines of if a state was as close as Iowa-2 which is currently a 6 vote margin.

    What Betfair is doing rather than intrroduce clarity is potentially allowing false markets to come about as a potential of corrupt state legislatures, bias courts and dictatorial moves by the White House.
    Fortunately the superloons in GOP legislatures are outnumbered, GOP governors (Ducey, Kemp) and SoS (Raffensberger) are putting democracy above fealty to Trump, not enough WH minions are quite corrupt enough to declare huge fraud (Barr) and the judges with a couple of exceptions (MAGA McCullough springs to mind) are placing the law & constitution above any sort of fealty to Trump.

    Simply put Biden is the winner of Projected ECVs. The murky depths of the US legal political system look, fortunately for the US as if they'll hold but they should never ever have entered into the Betfair market as the rules were rather simply (And well !) stated.
    Under the US constitution when the Electoral College meets on December 14th that will actually confirm the next President, so unlikely to be any payouts until then absent a Trump concession
    That's when the Electoral College appointees vote in their states. The votes then get sent to Washington by mail coach, where they're due to be counted by Congress in the first week of January. Expect armed hold ups and that sort of thing.
  • Foxy said:

    That's a very chilling photo.
    Our ICU staff find that the hardest thing. They are pretty used to patients dying, it is the nature of their work, but they find it very hard without any relatives around. It is a very cruel death.

    Our Leicester numbers have improved, less than 200 inpatients now and only 25 or so on ICU, indeed we are takingpatients from other hospitals again. Nottingham still seems to be a nightmare. They have 70 odd on ICU when I last heard.
    My wife works in a care home and says similar. It is very tough looking after and caring for people who can't see their family and due to dementia don't always understand why their family is being kept away. Especially for those end of life.

    Though one sweet thing she said recently was that the residents who die in the home are not completely separated from loved ones. They may be separated from their family and friends but the staff who look after them are like loved ones and they are never alone, so they are never alone there is always someone there to be with them.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,695
    HYUFD said:

    Pulpstar said:

    For what it's worth, here is Betfair's non-answer to my complaint about their handling of the US Presidential Election markets. I believe others have received similarly bland, unhelpful responses.



    Dear Mr Smith,

    I hope that this email finds you well.

    I am writing to you in relation to your query regarding the settlement of bets placed on the Exchange markets relating to the USA Presidential Election.

    I fully appreciate that you have concerns regarding the time-frame in which this market will be settled, however, settlement of the US Presidential Election and related markets will not be completed until the result is beyond doubt and unfortunately, this may take some time, given the possibility of recounts and current legal challenges filed by the Republican Party.

    As such, given the highly contested nature of this election, the decision has been taken in the best interests of our customers to delay settling this market, until there is clarity around any ongoing recounts and legal challenges.

    This decision has been taken in-line with our terms and conditions, which for ease of use, have been copied below:

    In the event of any uncertainty about any result or potential result, Betfair reserves the right to suspend settlement of any market for an unlimited period until the uncertainty can be resolved to the reasonable satisfaction of Betfair.

    Betfair reserves the right to void any market if the uncertainty regarding settlement cannot be resolved to Betfair's reasonable satisfaction.

    Please note that we are keeping abreast of all developments in this on-going situation and will be settling this market as soon as there is no longer any uncertainty regarding the outcome of this election.

    I fully appreciate that this is not the response which you had hoped to receive here, and I apologise for any frustration or inconvenience which this may have caused to you.

    I hope that this clarifies the matter for you and should you have any further queries, please do not hesitate to reach out to our Helpdesk team.

    Thanks,

    Christian
    Escalation Management Team

    "Possibility of recounts ?"

    There's no possibility of recounts in any of the markets now.

    Their rules were not on who would become president, it's on projected ECVs to attain the presidency.

    Uncertainty in projected ECVs would be along the lines of if a state was as close as Iowa-2 which is currently a 6 vote margin.

    What Betfair is doing rather than intrroduce clarity is potentially allowing false markets to come about as a potential of corrupt state legislatures, bias courts and dictatorial moves by the White House.
    Fortunately the superloons in GOP legislatures are outnumbered, GOP governors (Ducey, Kemp) and SoS (Raffensberger) are putting democracy above fealty to Trump, not enough WH minions are quite corrupt enough to declare huge fraud (Barr) and the judges with a couple of exceptions (MAGA McCullough springs to mind) are placing the law & constitution above any sort of fealty to Trump.

    Simply put Biden is the winner of Projected ECVs. The murky depths of the US legal political system look, fortunately for the US as if they'll hold but they should never ever have entered into the Betfair market as the rules were rather simply (And well !) stated.
    Under the US constitution when the Electoral College meets on December 14th that will actually confirm the next President, so unlikely to be any payouts until then absent a Trump concession
    Why not: Wednesday January 6, 2021 – when Congress counts and certifies the electoral votes?
  • Fysics_TeacherFysics_Teacher Posts: 6,285
    edited December 2020

    Off topic, but a bit of good, if not amazing, news in astronomy:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55178257

    I've been reading about it since before it was launched, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite so good.

    The world, and science, have moved forwards massively in my lifetime and continue to do so.

    But we've definitely got worse at sharing that with the general public. One of the reasons I've done what I've done is BBC1 primetime shows like QED and Tomorrow's World. They don't exist in the same way now, and that's a shame.

    Science is blooming amazing.
    :+1: I wonder if they will ever produce another one given the wealth of data produced by this satellite? Maybe a pair with one being sent up at 90° to the orbital plane using a gravity slingshot to allow a really long baseline between them? Five or 10 AUs would bump the precision up considerably.
    There is a very good reason why this is a very bad idea.

    Almost all the space-borne telescopes are at the Lagrange points.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrange_points

    They are "parked" relative to the Sun and Earth.
    It does not give a long enough baseline using the Lagrange points (and even L3 is pointless). They are used to keep the satellites in a stable position whilst minimising the need for orbital corrections which means less fuel needs to be carried. I was thinking of a probe moving out of the solar system so a Lagrangian orbit would not be of any use. The reason for the high inclination of the trajectory is so that the probe is always in an easily accessible part of the the sky regardless of where the Earth is in its orbit.
    The satellite is measuring the sky positions and distances of stars, etc. The measurement of the distances comes from the parallactic motion (i.e. the annual motion of the Earth (& Lagrange point) about the Sun).

    Spaceship Beibheirli zooming about the Solar system on an high inclination orbit would not be very useful for measuring parallactic motion.
    One wouldn't, no. Four, each sent off on a trajectory 120 degrees from the others out past Neptune? That would.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,603

    OnboardG1 said:

    Slightly disappointing, but who wouldn’t have taken 5 million doses in arms by 31st dec 2020 at the start of the week?
    Oxford on its way. May be a better solution anyway as doesn't need a -70c supply route.
    How far away from approval do you reckon?
    Hopefully this month. Around Christmas.
    Being very selfish for the moment, I wonder what chance Mrs P and I have of celebrating our ruby wedding in New York next May as planned. 50/50 at the moment?
    How likely do you think it is the US will have inoculated a significant portion of its population by then to allow them to lift the travel ban?
    About 50/50 for that and I think 60/40 that we will have been vaccinated and be confident to travel.

    But in the great scheme of things ours is a very minor issue.
    I'm meant to be travelling to the US on business (that cannot be done at home since it requires wire strippers and a shovel) in July. Not sure if it'll happen. Depends if the US is less of a basket case under Biden on COVID.
    I read that as "...involves wine, strippers, and a shovel".

    That's some 'business trip'. 😂
    I think I saw that movie...
    I think I did that business trip.

    "What goes on in Guinea Bissau....."
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,714

    Foxy said:

    Andy_JS said:

    I reckon the Americans are annoyed that they didn't get there first with the vaccine.

    The FDA meets on Wednesday. There isn't much difference in practice. Lets just hope the Moderna vaccine doesn't have the same production problems.
    What do you think will happen with approval for the Oxford vaccine Foxy?
    I have no idea. The data they released was a bit of a mess, I am sure that the MRHA will want to have those issues sorted before approval.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,699
    edited December 2020

    Ugh, if Boris agrees to this then he deserves to ousted and charged with High Treason.

    https://twitter.com/QuentinAries/status/1334596958204407812

    In exchange for Aquitaine?
    In exchange for French Polynesia.
  • gealbhan said:

    Any provision on state aid is going to need a rather short sunset clause - 24 months? - to get past Conservative MPs. They can't go into the next election with that still a thing.
    Why?

    Surely this embrace of socialism will have the architect of EU free market, Margaret Thatcher, spinning in her grave?
    The level playing field is not about socialism.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,714

    OnboardG1 said:

    Slightly disappointing, but who wouldn’t have taken 5 million doses in arms by 31st dec 2020 at the start of the week?
    Oxford on its way. May be a better solution anyway as doesn't need a -70c supply route.
    How far away from approval do you reckon?
    Hopefully this month. Around Christmas.
    Being very selfish for the moment, I wonder what chance Mrs P and I have of celebrating our ruby wedding in New York next May as planned. 50/50 at the moment?
    How likely do you think it is the US will have inoculated a significant portion of its population by then to allow them to lift the travel ban?
    About 50/50 for that and I think 60/40 that we will have been vaccinated and be confident to travel.

    But in the great scheme of things ours is a very minor issue.
    I'm meant to be travelling to the US on business (that cannot be done at home since it requires wire strippers and a shovel) in July. Not sure if it'll happen. Depends if the US is less of a basket case under Biden on COVID.
    I read that as "...involves wine, strippers, and a shovel".

    That's some 'business trip'. 😂
    I think I saw that movie...
    Good alibi cover in the middle of a pandemic too...
  • IshmaelZ said:

    Ugh, if Boris agrees to this then he deserves to ousted and charged with High Treason.

    https://twitter.com/QuentinAries/status/1334596958204407812

    The Channel Islands aren't part of the UK, they are subject to HMQ as Duke of Normandy, so you really need to clarify your thinking on the whole republican thing if you have a problem with this.
    I think he wants the whole of the area in Britain that William the Bastard, sorry William the Conquerer err conquered.
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362
    What is the worst that can go wrong?
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    I've seen something similar in lockdown for nursing homes to allow them to chat to family members and not because they are about to die.
    For the elderly demented, skyping and such can be terrifying. Their principal experience of screens is of televisions from which presenters and actors and such deliver non-interactive content, and a screen on which a family member appears and tries to hold a conversation with you can be the stuff of nightmares.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,695
    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Andy_JS said:

    I reckon the Americans are annoyed that they didn't get there first with the vaccine.

    The FDA meets on Wednesday. There isn't much difference in practice. Lets just hope the Moderna vaccine doesn't have the same production problems.
    What do you think will happen with approval for the Oxford vaccine Foxy?
    I have no idea. The data they released was a bit of a mess, I am sure that the MRHA will want to have those issues sorted before approval.
    Fair point.

    Weren't they promising last week to publish full data in The Lancet in the next few days?
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362
    Foxy said:

    Well, are we British not keeping our end up? Is it because we have pulled out?
    We were never solid members.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,695

    OnboardG1 said:

    Slightly disappointing, but who wouldn’t have taken 5 million doses in arms by 31st dec 2020 at the start of the week?
    Oxford on its way. May be a better solution anyway as doesn't need a -70c supply route.
    How far away from approval do you reckon?
    Hopefully this month. Around Christmas.
    Being very selfish for the moment, I wonder what chance Mrs P and I have of celebrating our ruby wedding in New York next May as planned. 50/50 at the moment?
    How likely do you think it is the US will have inoculated a significant portion of its population by then to allow them to lift the travel ban?
    About 50/50 for that and I think 60/40 that we will have been vaccinated and be confident to travel.

    But in the great scheme of things ours is a very minor issue.
    I'm meant to be travelling to the US on business (that cannot be done at home since it requires wire strippers and a shovel) in July. Not sure if it'll happen. Depends if the US is less of a basket case under Biden on COVID.
    I read that as "...involves wine, strippers, and a shovel".

    That's some 'business trip'. 😂
    I think I saw that movie...
    I think I did that business trip.

    "What goes on in Guinea Bissau....."
    Sounds like it would qualify for Shapps high-value business travel exemptions, at least.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 11,805

    US recorded its highest daily deaths yesterday according to Worldometer.

    https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

    Looks like today's cases and deaths are going to surpass yesterday's figures by some margin once all the States numbers are in. Two more records are sadly likely to be set.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,593
    edited December 2020
    Maybe Gavin Williamson's apparently silly speech this morning was a false flag operation to get right-wing nationalists to feel patriotic and enthusiastic about taking the vaccine.
  • Off topic, but a bit of good, if not amazing, news in astronomy:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55178257

    I've been reading about it since before it was launched, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite so good.

    The world, and science, have moved forwards massively in my lifetime and continue to do so.

    But we've definitely got worse at sharing that with the general public. One of the reasons I've done what I've done is BBC1 primetime shows like QED and Tomorrow's World. They don't exist in the same way now, and that's a shame.

    Science is blooming amazing.
    :+1: I wonder if they will ever produce another one given the wealth of data produced by this satellite? Maybe a pair with one being sent up at 90° to the orbital plane using a gravity slingshot to allow a really long baseline between them? Five or 10 AUs would bump the precision up considerably.
    There is a very good reason why this is a very bad idea.

    Almost all the space-borne telescopes are at the Lagrange points.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrange_points

    They are "parked" relative to the Sun and Earth.
    It does not give a long enough baseline using the Lagrange points (and even L3 is pointless). They are used to keep the satellites in a stable position whilst minimising the need for orbital corrections which means less fuel needs to be carried. I was thinking of a probe moving out of the solar system so a Lagrangian orbit would not be of any use. The reason for the high inclination of the trajectory is so that the probe is always in an easily accessible part of the the sky regardless of where the Earth is in its orbit.
    The satellite is measuring the sky positions and distances of stars, etc. The measurement of the distances comes from the parallactic motion (i.e. the annual motion of the Earth (& Lagrange point) about the Sun).

    Spaceship Beibheirli zooming about the Solar system on an high inclination orbit would not be very useful for measuring parallactic motion.
    The Earth zooms about giving a parallax baseline of about 3x10^8 km. A satellite boosted up to 10AU would provide a baseline of 1.5x10^9 km which is 5 times more than can be achieved in NEO. We regularly send probes distances of 10AU or greater - we have the technology.

    Having a vertical orientation to the baseline makes no difference to the accuracy.
  • Andy_JS said:

    Maybe Gavin Williamson's apparently silly speech this morning was a false flag operation to get right-wing nationalists to feel patriotic and enthusiastic about taking the vaccine.

    He's not that clever.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,128
    Still, that's a fine margin by which to dismiss it, 4-3.
  • gealbhan said:

    What is the worst that can go wrong?
    We will know after they beta-test the vaccines in care homes.... :-1:
  • gealbhan said:

    Foxy said:

    Well, are we British not keeping our end up? Is it because we have pulled out?
    We were never solid members.
    Hands full with a hard Brexit?
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,699
    Andy_JS said:

    Maybe Gavin Williamson's apparently silly speech this morning was a false flag operation to get right-wing nationalists to feel patriotic and enthusiastic about taking the vaccine.

    These flags are not false.

    image
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,533
    Andy_JS said:

    Not helpful.

    "Anthony Fauci: Britain was too quick to approve Covid vaccine"

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/anthony-fauci-britain-was-too-quick-to-approve-covid-vaccine-587vv3c6x

    Fauci or Williamson, who has more credibility? Tough one.

    Despite that, I'm inclined to trust the MRHA decision. I'd like to see them take more time over the Oxford one (the report I've seen said "soon after Christmas") as it would be good to have either verification or at least credible explanation of the "lower dose protects you more" finding.

    It's clearly a difficult decision for the Government if it's approved on the basis that it's 60% effective, while adeqaute supplies of the Pfizer/Moderna vaccine could take months to arrive. Not inclined to make a political point out of it, so long as the decisions are science-based and not because of Williamson singing Rule Britannia. The the MHRA decides the Oxford vaccine is also 90%, the dilemma vanishes.
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362

    gealbhan said:

    Any provision on state aid is going to need a rather short sunset clause - 24 months? - to get past Conservative MPs. They can't go into the next election with that still a thing.
    Why?

    Surely this embrace of socialism will have the architect of EU free market, Margaret Thatcher, spinning in her grave?
    The level playing field is not about socialism.
    It’s not about us throwing money around because otherwise the more tempting offer is elsewhere? That’s un level playing field surely? To have that, and a nice deal with nice access would be having the cake and eating it. Is this what we are trying to achieve with the negotiation.

    Don’t you have the impression if the UK had freedom to negotiate a FTA with EU it would have been signed months ago, yet doesn’t have that freedom because it’s constrained by brexit expectations and promises?
  • Off topic, but a bit of good, if not amazing, news in astronomy:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55178257

    I've been reading about it since before it was launched, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite so good.

    The world, and science, have moved forwards massively in my lifetime and continue to do so.

    But we've definitely got worse at sharing that with the general public. One of the reasons I've done what I've done is BBC1 primetime shows like QED and Tomorrow's World. They don't exist in the same way now, and that's a shame.

    Science is blooming amazing.
    :+1: I wonder if they will ever produce another one given the wealth of data produced by this satellite? Maybe a pair with one being sent up at 90° to the orbital plane using a gravity slingshot to allow a really long baseline between them? Five or 10 AUs would bump the precision up considerably.
    There is a very good reason why this is a very bad idea.

    Almost all the space-borne telescopes are at the Lagrange points.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrange_points

    They are "parked" relative to the Sun and Earth.
    It does not give a long enough baseline using the Lagrange points (and even L3 is pointless). They are used to keep the satellites in a stable position whilst minimising the need for orbital corrections which means less fuel needs to be carried. I was thinking of a probe moving out of the solar system so a Lagrangian orbit would not be of any use. The reason for the high inclination of the trajectory is so that the probe is always in an easily accessible part of the the sky regardless of where the Earth is in its orbit.
    The satellite is measuring the sky positions and distances of stars, etc. The measurement of the distances comes from the parallactic motion (i.e. the annual motion of the Earth (& Lagrange point) about the Sun).

    Spaceship Beibheirli zooming about the Solar system on an high inclination orbit would not be very useful for measuring parallactic motion.
    The Earth zooms about giving a parallax baseline of about 3x10^8 km. A satellite boosted up to 10AU would provide a baseline of 1.5x10^9 km which is 5 times more than can be achieved in NEO. We regularly send probes distances of 10AU or greater - we have the technology.

    Having a vertical orientation to the baseline makes no difference to the accuracy.
    With Gaia it’s not so much the position as the phenomenal accuracy: measuring angles with a precision in fractions of a micro arcsecond is mind blowing.
  • IshmaelZ said:

    Ugh, if Boris agrees to this then he deserves to ousted and charged with High Treason.

    https://twitter.com/QuentinAries/status/1334596958204407812

    The Channel Islands aren't part of the UK, they are subject to HMQ as Duke of Normandy, so you really need to clarify your thinking on the whole republican thing if you have a problem with this.
    England is still a Norman possession. It's France they have carelessly mislaid.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 19,914
    Pretty shocking to think a country's judiciary is expected to vote on party lines. Perhaps the US really is a basket case. It's not all Trump
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,603
    Andy_JS said:

    Maybe Gavin Williamson's apparently silly speech this morning was a false flag operation to get right-wing nationalists to feel patriotic and enthusiastic about taking the vaccine.

    He missed the chance to offer a free Union Jack tat with each jab.....
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,128
    edited December 2020

    Ugh, if Boris agrees to this then he deserves to be ousted and charged with High Treason.

    https://twitter.com/QuentinAries/status/1334596958204407812

    It's amazing how much you can probably puzzle out if you know even one or two french words, and the rest have equivalients in Engish as many things come from french. I know 'vrai' 'pardon' and 'maison', so something like 'The true secret french position is annexation of the norman islands (presumably the Channel Islands)? And something about sorry and home.

    Those bastards never quit!
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,128
    edited December 2020
    Roger said:

    Pretty shocking to think a country's judiciary is expected to vote on party lines.
    Never ceases to be shocking. And mealy mouthed people will say they don't always vote along those lines, but people still expect it and usually are right (or that judges here have political leanings too, but then the answer is not to lean into the politics). Politics might come down to dualling parties, but I'd like to believe the different avenues of jurisprudence are such that they don't simplify down to liberal and conservative quite so boldly.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,714

    gealbhan said:

    Foxy said:

    Well, are we British not keeping our end up? Is it because we have pulled out?
    We were never solid members.
    Hands full with a hard Brexit?
    That's the bottom of it.
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362

    gealbhan said:

    Foxy said:

    Well, are we British not keeping our end up? Is it because we have pulled out?
    We were never solid members.
    Hands full with a hard Brexit?
    We are enjoying playing with this one.

    PB hive mind could write a carry on script
  • kle4 said:

    Still, that's a fine margin by which to dismiss it, 4-3.
    What they dismissed was not so much the case as whether they should hear it first or not: they sent it back down to the circuit court.
  • Beibheirli_CBeibheirli_C Posts: 8,163
    edited December 2020

    Off topic, but a bit of good, if not amazing, news in astronomy:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55178257

    I've been reading about it since before it was launched, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite so good.

    The world, and science, have moved forwards massively in my lifetime and continue to do so.

    But we've definitely got worse at sharing that with the general public. One of the reasons I've done what I've done is BBC1 primetime shows like QED and Tomorrow's World. They don't exist in the same way now, and that's a shame.

    Science is blooming amazing.
    :+1: I wonder if they will ever produce another one given the wealth of data produced by this satellite? Maybe a pair with one being sent up at 90° to the orbital plane using a gravity slingshot to allow a really long baseline between them? Five or 10 AUs would bump the precision up considerably.
    There is a very good reason why this is a very bad idea.

    Almost all the space-borne telescopes are at the Lagrange points.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrange_points

    They are "parked" relative to the Sun and Earth.
    It does not give a long enough baseline using the Lagrange points (and even L3 is pointless). They are used to keep the satellites in a stable position whilst minimising the need for orbital corrections which means less fuel needs to be carried. I was thinking of a probe moving out of the solar system so a Lagrangian orbit would not be of any use. The reason for the high inclination of the trajectory is so that the probe is always in an easily accessible part of the the sky regardless of where the Earth is in its orbit.
    The satellite is measuring the sky positions and distances of stars, etc. The measurement of the distances comes from the parallactic motion (i.e. the annual motion of the Earth (& Lagrange point) about the Sun).

    Spaceship Beibheirli zooming about the Solar system on an high inclination orbit would not be very useful for measuring parallactic motion.
    The Earth zooms about giving a parallax baseline of about 3x10^8 km. A satellite boosted up to 10AU would provide a baseline of 1.5x10^9 km which is 5 times more than can be achieved in NEO. We regularly send probes distances of 10AU or greater - we have the technology.

    Having a vertical orientation to the baseline makes no difference to the accuracy.
    With Gaia it’s not so much the position as the phenomenal accuracy: measuring angles with a precision in fractions of a micro arcsecond is mind blowing.
    I agree. It is superbly engineered. :+1:

    I am just theorising about successor missions. The real problem with distant missions (and it seems to have passed YBarddCwsc by) is that the data transmission rate goes through the floor. Once you get any real distance away, shifting large quantities of data takes a lot of time and the Gaia satellite is generating huge quantities of data. When the New Horizons probe was out at Pluto the data rate back to Earth was 1kbit or 125 bytes per second... :dizzy:
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,128

    Andy_JS said:

    Not helpful.

    "Anthony Fauci: Britain was too quick to approve Covid vaccine"

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/anthony-fauci-britain-was-too-quick-to-approve-covid-vaccine-587vv3c6x

    Fauci or Williamson, who has more credibility? Tough one.

    Despite that, I'm inclined to trust the MRHA decision. I'd like to see them take more time over the Oxford one (the report I've seen said "soon after Christmas") as it would be good to have either verification or at least credible explanation of the "lower dose protects you more" finding.

    It's clearly a difficult decision for the Government if it's approved on the basis that it's 60% effective, while adeqaute supplies of the Pfizer/Moderna vaccine could take months to arrive. Not inclined to make a political point out of it, so long as the decisions are science-based and not because of Williamson singing Rule Britannia. The the MHRA decides the Oxford vaccine is also 90%, the dilemma vanishes.
    Fauci has apologised, and I'd think that is right, because I don't see how he is in a position to judge whether the process in another country has been fundamentally flawed without more to back up such a statement (ie history of poor process, political interference etc).
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,128

    Andy_JS said:

    Maybe Gavin Williamson's apparently silly speech this morning was a false flag operation to get right-wing nationalists to feel patriotic and enthusiastic about taking the vaccine.

    He's not that clever.
    He might not have been in on the operation.

    "I'm sorry I messed up, boss, I just get so excited"
    "I know you do, Gavin. Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen"
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,137
    edited December 2020
    Tony Blair on Brexitcast on BBC1
  • YBarddCwscYBarddCwsc Posts: 7,172

    Off topic, but a bit of good, if not amazing, news in astronomy:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55178257

    I've been reading about it since before it was launched, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite so good.

    The world, and science, have moved forwards massively in my lifetime and continue to do so.

    But we've definitely got worse at sharing that with the general public. One of the reasons I've done what I've done is BBC1 primetime shows like QED and Tomorrow's World. They don't exist in the same way now, and that's a shame.

    Science is blooming amazing.
    :+1: I wonder if they will ever produce another one given the wealth of data produced by this satellite? Maybe a pair with one being sent up at 90° to the orbital plane using a gravity slingshot to allow a really long baseline between them? Five or 10 AUs would bump the precision up considerably.
    There is a very good reason why this is a very bad idea.

    Almost all the space-borne telescopes are at the Lagrange points.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrange_points

    They are "parked" relative to the Sun and Earth.
    It does not give a long enough baseline using the Lagrange points (and even L3 is pointless). They are used to keep the satellites in a stable position whilst minimising the need for orbital corrections which means less fuel needs to be carried. I was thinking of a probe moving out of the solar system so a Lagrangian orbit would not be of any use. The reason for the high inclination of the trajectory is so that the probe is always in an easily accessible part of the the sky regardless of where the Earth is in its orbit.
    The satellite is measuring the sky positions and distances of stars, etc. The measurement of the distances comes from the parallactic motion (i.e. the annual motion of the Earth (& Lagrange point) about the Sun).

    Spaceship Beibheirli zooming about the Solar system on an high inclination orbit would not be very useful for measuring parallactic motion.
    The Earth zooms about giving a parallax baseline of about 3x10^8 km. A satellite boosted up to 10AU would provide a baseline of 1.5x10^9 km which is 5 times more than can be achieved in NEO. We regularly send probes distances of 10AU or greater - we have the technology.

    Having a vertical orientation to the baseline makes no difference to the accuracy.
    If you move the satellite to 10 AU, it then takes 31.6 years to complete a parallactic ellipse (Kepler's Third Law).

    The baseline is larger, but it takes way, way longer to traverse it.
  • Off topic, but a bit of good, if not amazing, news in astronomy:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55178257

    I've been reading about it since before it was launched, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite so good.

    The world, and science, have moved forwards massively in my lifetime and continue to do so.

    But we've definitely got worse at sharing that with the general public. One of the reasons I've done what I've done is BBC1 primetime shows like QED and Tomorrow's World. They don't exist in the same way now, and that's a shame.

    Science is blooming amazing.
    :+1: I wonder if they will ever produce another one given the wealth of data produced by this satellite? Maybe a pair with one being sent up at 90° to the orbital plane using a gravity slingshot to allow a really long baseline between them? Five or 10 AUs would bump the precision up considerably.
    There is a very good reason why this is a very bad idea.

    Almost all the space-borne telescopes are at the Lagrange points.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrange_points

    They are "parked" relative to the Sun and Earth.
    It does not give a long enough baseline using the Lagrange points (and even L3 is pointless). They are used to keep the satellites in a stable position whilst minimising the need for orbital corrections which means less fuel needs to be carried. I was thinking of a probe moving out of the solar system so a Lagrangian orbit would not be of any use. The reason for the high inclination of the trajectory is so that the probe is always in an easily accessible part of the the sky regardless of where the Earth is in its orbit.
    The satellite is measuring the sky positions and distances of stars, etc. The measurement of the distances comes from the parallactic motion (i.e. the annual motion of the Earth (& Lagrange point) about the Sun).

    Spaceship Beibheirli zooming about the Solar system on an high inclination orbit would not be very useful for measuring parallactic motion.
    The Earth zooms about giving a parallax baseline of about 3x10^8 km. A satellite boosted up to 10AU would provide a baseline of 1.5x10^9 km which is 5 times more than can be achieved in NEO. We regularly send probes distances of 10AU or greater - we have the technology.

    Having a vertical orientation to the baseline makes no difference to the accuracy.
    With Gaia it’s not so much the position as the phenomenal accuracy: measuring angles with a precision in fractions of a micro arcsecond is mind blowing.
    I agree. It is superbly engineered. :+1:

    I am just theorising about successor missions. The real problem with distant missions (and it seems to have passed YBarddCwsc by) is that the data transmission rate goes through the floor. Once you get any real distance away, shifting large quantities of data takes a lot of time and the Gaia satellite is generating huge quantities of data. When the New Horizons probe was out at Pluto the data rate back to Earth was 1kbit or 125 bytes per second... :dizzy:
    I think there is a solar observing telescope in geostationary orbit rather than the Lagrange point between us and the sun purely because of the bandwidth needed for the observations.
  • kle4 said:

    Still, that's a fine margin by which to dismiss it, 4-3.
    That's 4-3 for dismissing even hearing the case - passing the minimum bar for presenting evidence that a moment's more court time should be wasted on it. Even if it had gone the other way, Trump would've needed to prove his case AND successfully argued the remedy he sought was proportionate... and even two of the three dissenting judges said the remedy sought would have been disproportionate so they have been deciding on non-election-changing points.
  • Off topic, but a bit of good, if not amazing, news in astronomy:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55178257

    I've been reading about it since before it was launched, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite so good.

    The world, and science, have moved forwards massively in my lifetime and continue to do so.

    But we've definitely got worse at sharing that with the general public. One of the reasons I've done what I've done is BBC1 primetime shows like QED and Tomorrow's World. They don't exist in the same way now, and that's a shame.

    Science is blooming amazing.
    :+1: I wonder if they will ever produce another one given the wealth of data produced by this satellite? Maybe a pair with one being sent up at 90° to the orbital plane using a gravity slingshot to allow a really long baseline between them? Five or 10 AUs would bump the precision up considerably.
    There is a very good reason why this is a very bad idea.

    Almost all the space-borne telescopes are at the Lagrange points.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrange_points

    They are "parked" relative to the Sun and Earth.
    It does not give a long enough baseline using the Lagrange points (and even L3 is pointless). They are used to keep the satellites in a stable position whilst minimising the need for orbital corrections which means less fuel needs to be carried. I was thinking of a probe moving out of the solar system so a Lagrangian orbit would not be of any use. The reason for the high inclination of the trajectory is so that the probe is always in an easily accessible part of the the sky regardless of where the Earth is in its orbit.
    The satellite is measuring the sky positions and distances of stars, etc. The measurement of the distances comes from the parallactic motion (i.e. the annual motion of the Earth (& Lagrange point) about the Sun).

    Spaceship Beibheirli zooming about the Solar system on an high inclination orbit would not be very useful for measuring parallactic motion.
    The Earth zooms about giving a parallax baseline of about 3x10^8 km. A satellite boosted up to 10AU would provide a baseline of 1.5x10^9 km which is 5 times more than can be achieved in NEO. We regularly send probes distances of 10AU or greater - we have the technology.

    Having a vertical orientation to the baseline makes no difference to the accuracy.
    If you move the satellite to 10 AU, it then takes 31.6 years to complete a parallactic ellipse (Kepler's Third Law).

    The baseline is larger, but it takes way, way longer to traverse it.
    The solution to that is use more than one, or even just use the Earth as one of the two.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,128
    edited December 2020
    Roger said:
    People pull out this kind of remark for comments by figures on left and right, and I don't really get it. Occasionally someone might post a tweet as illustrative of some wider trend and it may be worth querying that as it could be a pretty minority view, but sometimes it will just be because the view expressed is considered good or bad, and the person being, perhaps, a nobody, is kind of irrelevant.

    Even nobodies can make a decent point (or a very bad one). Some of us rely on that.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,128
    edited December 2020

    kle4 said:

    Still, that's a fine margin by which to dismiss it, 4-3.
    That's 4-3 for dismissing even hearing the case - passing the minimum bar for presenting evidence that a moment's more court time should be wasted on it. Even if it had gone the other way, Trump would've needed to prove his case AND successfully argued the remedy he sought was proportionate... and even two of the three dissenting judges said the remedy sought would have been disproportionate so they have been deciding on non-election-changing points.
    More encouraging, but until all this crap is done with the fear remains. Thankfully the judiciary mostly don't seem to see it worth their time to trash reputation on meritless cases. Some of them might love if a case with even marginal benefit could come before them, but they haven't been given it.
  • kle4 said:

    Still, that's a fine margin by which to dismiss it, 4-3.
    That's 4-3 for dismissing even hearing the case - passing the minimum bar for presenting evidence that a moment's more court time should be wasted on it. Even if it had gone the other way, Trump would've needed to prove his case AND successfully argued the remedy he sought was proportionate... and even two of the three dissenting judges said the remedy sought would have been disproportionate so they have been deciding on non-election-changing points.
    Here is the actual judgment if anyone is interested:
    https://electioncases.osu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Trump-v-Evers-Order-Denying-Petition.pdf
  • YBarddCwscYBarddCwsc Posts: 7,172

    Off topic, but a bit of good, if not amazing, news in astronomy:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55178257

    I've been reading about it since before it was launched, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite so good.

    The world, and science, have moved forwards massively in my lifetime and continue to do so.

    But we've definitely got worse at sharing that with the general public. One of the reasons I've done what I've done is BBC1 primetime shows like QED and Tomorrow's World. They don't exist in the same way now, and that's a shame.

    Science is blooming amazing.
    :+1: I wonder if they will ever produce another one given the wealth of data produced by this satellite? Maybe a pair with one being sent up at 90° to the orbital plane using a gravity slingshot to allow a really long baseline between them? Five or 10 AUs would bump the precision up considerably.
    There is a very good reason why this is a very bad idea.

    Almost all the space-borne telescopes are at the Lagrange points.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrange_points

    They are "parked" relative to the Sun and Earth.
    It does not give a long enough baseline using the Lagrange points (and even L3 is pointless). They are used to keep the satellites in a stable position whilst minimising the need for orbital corrections which means less fuel needs to be carried. I was thinking of a probe moving out of the solar system so a Lagrangian orbit would not be of any use. The reason for the high inclination of the trajectory is so that the probe is always in an easily accessible part of the the sky regardless of where the Earth is in its orbit.
    The satellite is measuring the sky positions and distances of stars, etc. The measurement of the distances comes from the parallactic motion (i.e. the annual motion of the Earth (& Lagrange point) about the Sun).

    Spaceship Beibheirli zooming about the Solar system on an high inclination orbit would not be very useful for measuring parallactic motion.
    The Earth zooms about giving a parallax baseline of about 3x10^8 km. A satellite boosted up to 10AU would provide a baseline of 1.5x10^9 km which is 5 times more than can be achieved in NEO. We regularly send probes distances of 10AU or greater - we have the technology.

    Having a vertical orientation to the baseline makes no difference to the accuracy.
    If you move the satellite to 10 AU, it then takes 31.6 years to complete a parallactic ellipse (Kepler's Third Law).

    The baseline is larger, but it takes way, way longer to traverse it.
    The solution to that is use more than one, or even just use the Earth as one of the two.
    The Earth's atmosphere prevents you getting microarcsecond resolution.

    I agree that you could use a second satellite and then you won't need to wait decades ... but this is now a very, very expensive mission 😳
  • kle4 said:

    Roger said:
    People pull out this kind of remark for comments by figures on left and right, and I don't really get it. Occasionally someone might post a tweet as illustrative of some wider trend and it may be worth querying that as it could be a pretty minority view, but sometimes it will just be because the view expressed is considered good or bad, and the person being, perhaps, a nobody, is kind of irrelevant.

    Even nobodies can make a decent point (or a very bad one). Some of us rely on that.
    I assumed she was so knowledgeable or famous that the very vacuity of her remark was a talking point in itself.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,205

    kle4 said:

    Still, that's a fine margin by which to dismiss it, 4-3.
    That's 4-3 for dismissing even hearing the case - passing the minimum bar for presenting evidence that a moment's more court time should be wasted on it. Even if it had gone the other way, Trump would've needed to prove his case AND successfully argued the remedy he sought was proportionate... and even two of the three dissenting judges said the remedy sought would have been disproportionate so they have been deciding on non-election-changing points.
    That means there was one judge who might have disenfranchised almost all of WI ! Grade A Zoomer Rebecca MAGA Bradley

  • RogerRoger Posts: 19,914
    kle4 said:

    Roger said:
    People pull out this kind of remark for comments by figures on left and right, and I don't really get it. Occasionally someone might post a tweet as illustrative of some wider trend and it may be worth querying that as it could be a pretty minority view, but sometimes it will just be because the view expressed is considered good or bad, and the person being, perhaps, a nobody, is kind of irrelevant.

    Even nobodies can make a decent point (or a very bad one). Some of us rely on that.
    Sure anyone can make an interesting point but if they're unknown introduce the comment as 'Something I heard' or 'something interesting I read' but to pull out something as vague and hazy as 'The EU can make mistakes' and to credit the author by name without any accreditation makes no sense
  • Off topic, but a bit of good, if not amazing, news in astronomy:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55178257

    I've been reading about it since before it was launched, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite so good.

    The world, and science, have moved forwards massively in my lifetime and continue to do so.

    But we've definitely got worse at sharing that with the general public. One of the reasons I've done what I've done is BBC1 primetime shows like QED and Tomorrow's World. They don't exist in the same way now, and that's a shame.

    Science is blooming amazing.
    :+1: I wonder if they will ever produce another one given the wealth of data produced by this satellite? Maybe a pair with one being sent up at 90° to the orbital plane using a gravity slingshot to allow a really long baseline between them? Five or 10 AUs would bump the precision up considerably.
    There is a very good reason why this is a very bad idea.

    Almost all the space-borne telescopes are at the Lagrange points.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrange_points

    They are "parked" relative to the Sun and Earth.
    It does not give a long enough baseline using the Lagrange points (and even L3 is pointless). They are used to keep the satellites in a stable position whilst minimising the need for orbital corrections which means less fuel needs to be carried. I was thinking of a probe moving out of the solar system so a Lagrangian orbit would not be of any use. The reason for the high inclination of the trajectory is so that the probe is always in an easily accessible part of the the sky regardless of where the Earth is in its orbit.
    The satellite is measuring the sky positions and distances of stars, etc. The measurement of the distances comes from the parallactic motion (i.e. the annual motion of the Earth (& Lagrange point) about the Sun).

    Spaceship Beibheirli zooming about the Solar system on an high inclination orbit would not be very useful for measuring parallactic motion.
    The Earth zooms about giving a parallax baseline of about 3x10^8 km. A satellite boosted up to 10AU would provide a baseline of 1.5x10^9 km which is 5 times more than can be achieved in NEO. We regularly send probes distances of 10AU or greater - we have the technology.

    Having a vertical orientation to the baseline makes no difference to the accuracy.
    If you move the satellite to 10 AU, it then takes 31.6 years to complete a parallactic ellipse (Kepler's Third Law).

    The baseline is larger, but it takes way, way longer to traverse it.
    The solution to that is use more than one, or even just use the Earth as one of the two.
    The Earth's atmosphere prevents you getting microarcsecond resolution.

    I agree that you could use a second satellite and then you won't need to wait decades ... but this is now a very, very expensive mission 😳
    Well if you are going to bring expense into it, you probably don’t like my idea of four spacecraft, each on a trajectory at 120 degrees from the others...
  • Off topic, but a bit of good, if not amazing, news in astronomy:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55178257

    I've been reading about it since before it was launched, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite so good.

    The world, and science, have moved forwards massively in my lifetime and continue to do so.

    But we've definitely got worse at sharing that with the general public. One of the reasons I've done what I've done is BBC1 primetime shows like QED and Tomorrow's World. They don't exist in the same way now, and that's a shame.

    Science is blooming amazing.
    :+1: I wonder if they will ever produce another one given the wealth of data produced by this satellite? Maybe a pair with one being sent up at 90° to the orbital plane using a gravity slingshot to allow a really long baseline between them? Five or 10 AUs would bump the precision up considerably.
    There is a very good reason why this is a very bad idea.

    Almost all the space-borne telescopes are at the Lagrange points.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrange_points

    They are "parked" relative to the Sun and Earth.
    It does not give a long enough baseline using the Lagrange points (and even L3 is pointless). They are used to keep the satellites in a stable position whilst minimising the need for orbital corrections which means less fuel needs to be carried. I was thinking of a probe moving out of the solar system so a Lagrangian orbit would not be of any use. The reason for the high inclination of the trajectory is so that the probe is always in an easily accessible part of the the sky regardless of where the Earth is in its orbit.
    The satellite is measuring the sky positions and distances of stars, etc. The measurement of the distances comes from the parallactic motion (i.e. the annual motion of the Earth (& Lagrange point) about the Sun).

    Spaceship Beibheirli zooming about the Solar system on an high inclination orbit would not be very useful for measuring parallactic motion.
    The Earth zooms about giving a parallax baseline of about 3x10^8 km. A satellite boosted up to 10AU would provide a baseline of 1.5x10^9 km which is 5 times more than can be achieved in NEO. We regularly send probes distances of 10AU or greater - we have the technology.

    Having a vertical orientation to the baseline makes no difference to the accuracy.
    If you move the satellite to 10 AU, it then takes 31.6 years to complete a parallactic ellipse (Kepler's Third Law).

    The baseline is larger, but it takes way, way longer to traverse it.
    The solution to that is use more than one, or even just use the Earth as one of the two.
    :+1:
  • Extinction Rebellion leader, I mean PM partner, I mean the PM, demands UK cuts emissions massively by 2030....

    BBC News - Climate change: UK aims to cut emissions by 68% by end of 2030
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55179008
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362

    Extinction Rebellion leader, I mean PM partner, I mean the PM, demands UK cuts emissions massively by 2030....

    BBC News - Climate change: UK aims to cut emissions by 68% by end of 2030
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55179008

    Princess Nut Nuts is the PM!

    Vote blue, go green!
  • Off topic, but a bit of good, if not amazing, news in astronomy:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55178257

    I've been reading about it since before it was launched, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite so good.

    The world, and science, have moved forwards massively in my lifetime and continue to do so.

    But we've definitely got worse at sharing that with the general public. One of the reasons I've done what I've done is BBC1 primetime shows like QED and Tomorrow's World. They don't exist in the same way now, and that's a shame.

    Science is blooming amazing.
    :+1: I wonder if they will ever produce another one given the wealth of data produced by this satellite? Maybe a pair with one being sent up at 90° to the orbital plane using a gravity slingshot to allow a really long baseline between them? Five or 10 AUs would bump the precision up considerably.
    There is a very good reason why this is a very bad idea.

    Almost all the space-borne telescopes are at the Lagrange points.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrange_points

    They are "parked" relative to the Sun and Earth.
    It does not give a long enough baseline using the Lagrange points (and even L3 is pointless). They are used to keep the satellites in a stable position whilst minimising the need for orbital corrections which means less fuel needs to be carried. I was thinking of a probe moving out of the solar system so a Lagrangian orbit would not be of any use. The reason for the high inclination of the trajectory is so that the probe is always in an easily accessible part of the the sky regardless of where the Earth is in its orbit.
    The satellite is measuring the sky positions and distances of stars, etc. The measurement of the distances comes from the parallactic motion (i.e. the annual motion of the Earth (& Lagrange point) about the Sun).

    Spaceship Beibheirli zooming about the Solar system on an high inclination orbit would not be very useful for measuring parallactic motion.
    The Earth zooms about giving a parallax baseline of about 3x10^8 km. A satellite boosted up to 10AU would provide a baseline of 1.5x10^9 km which is 5 times more than can be achieved in NEO. We regularly send probes distances of 10AU or greater - we have the technology.

    Having a vertical orientation to the baseline makes no difference to the accuracy.
    With Gaia it’s not so much the position as the phenomenal accuracy: measuring angles with a precision in fractions of a micro arcsecond is mind blowing.
    I agree. It is superbly engineered. :+1:

    I am just theorising about successor missions. The real problem with distant missions (and it seems to have passed YBarddCwsc by) is that the data transmission rate goes through the floor. Once you get any real distance away, shifting large quantities of data takes a lot of time and the Gaia satellite is generating huge quantities of data. When the New Horizons probe was out at Pluto the data rate back to Earth was 1kbit or 125 bytes per second... :dizzy:
    I think there is a solar observing telescope in geostationary orbit rather than the Lagrange point between us and the sun purely because of the bandwidth needed for the observations.
    I think there is one planned for L1, but the STEREO satellites are at L4 and L5. I am sure that there are a bunch of satellites in geostationary orbit.
  • Beibheirli_CBeibheirli_C Posts: 8,163
    edited December 2020

    Off topic, but a bit of good, if not amazing, news in astronomy:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55178257

    I've been reading about it since before it was launched, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite so good.

    The world, and science, have moved forwards massively in my lifetime and continue to do so.

    But we've definitely got worse at sharing that with the general public. One of the reasons I've done what I've done is BBC1 primetime shows like QED and Tomorrow's World. They don't exist in the same way now, and that's a shame.

    Science is blooming amazing.
    :+1: I wonder if they will ever produce another one given the wealth of data produced by this satellite? Maybe a pair with one being sent up at 90° to the orbital plane using a gravity slingshot to allow a really long baseline between them? Five or 10 AUs would bump the precision up considerably.
    There is a very good reason why this is a very bad idea.

    Almost all the space-borne telescopes are at the Lagrange points.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrange_points

    They are "parked" relative to the Sun and Earth.
    It does not give a long enough baseline using the Lagrange points (and even L3 is pointless). They are used to keep the satellites in a stable position whilst minimising the need for orbital corrections which means less fuel needs to be carried. I was thinking of a probe moving out of the solar system so a Lagrangian orbit would not be of any use. The reason for the high inclination of the trajectory is so that the probe is always in an easily accessible part of the the sky regardless of where the Earth is in its orbit.
    The satellite is measuring the sky positions and distances of stars, etc. The measurement of the distances comes from the parallactic motion (i.e. the annual motion of the Earth (& Lagrange point) about the Sun).

    Spaceship Beibheirli zooming about the Solar system on an high inclination orbit would not be very useful for measuring parallactic motion.
    The Earth zooms about giving a parallax baseline of about 3x10^8 km. A satellite boosted up to 10AU would provide a baseline of 1.5x10^9 km which is 5 times more than can be achieved in NEO. We regularly send probes distances of 10AU or greater - we have the technology.

    Having a vertical orientation to the baseline makes no difference to the accuracy.
    If you move the satellite to 10 AU, it then takes 31.6 years to complete a parallactic ellipse (Kepler's Third Law).

    The baseline is larger, but it takes way, way longer to traverse it.
    The solution to that is use more than one, or even just use the Earth as one of the two.
    The Earth's atmosphere prevents you getting microarcsecond resolution.

    I agree that you could use a second satellite and then you won't need to wait decades ... but this is now a very, very expensive mission 😳
    Well if you are going to bring expense into it, you probably don’t like my idea of four spacecraft, each on a trajectory at 120 degrees from the others...
    I love it :+1:

    It would probably cost less than £350m per week ;)
  • Off topic, but a bit of good, if not amazing, news in astronomy:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55178257

    I've been reading about it since before it was launched, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite so good.

    The world, and science, have moved forwards massively in my lifetime and continue to do so.

    But we've definitely got worse at sharing that with the general public. One of the reasons I've done what I've done is BBC1 primetime shows like QED and Tomorrow's World. They don't exist in the same way now, and that's a shame.

    Science is blooming amazing.
    :+1: I wonder if they will ever produce another one given the wealth of data produced by this satellite? Maybe a pair with one being sent up at 90° to the orbital plane using a gravity slingshot to allow a really long baseline between them? Five or 10 AUs would bump the precision up considerably.
    There is a very good reason why this is a very bad idea.

    Almost all the space-borne telescopes are at the Lagrange points.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrange_points

    They are "parked" relative to the Sun and Earth.
    It does not give a long enough baseline using the Lagrange points (and even L3 is pointless). They are used to keep the satellites in a stable position whilst minimising the need for orbital corrections which means less fuel needs to be carried. I was thinking of a probe moving out of the solar system so a Lagrangian orbit would not be of any use. The reason for the high inclination of the trajectory is so that the probe is always in an easily accessible part of the the sky regardless of where the Earth is in its orbit.
    The satellite is measuring the sky positions and distances of stars, etc. The measurement of the distances comes from the parallactic motion (i.e. the annual motion of the Earth (& Lagrange point) about the Sun).

    Spaceship Beibheirli zooming about the Solar system on an high inclination orbit would not be very useful for measuring parallactic motion.
    The Earth zooms about giving a parallax baseline of about 3x10^8 km. A satellite boosted up to 10AU would provide a baseline of 1.5x10^9 km which is 5 times more than can be achieved in NEO. We regularly send probes distances of 10AU or greater - we have the technology.

    Having a vertical orientation to the baseline makes no difference to the accuracy.
    If you move the satellite to 10 AU, it then takes 31.6 years to complete a parallactic ellipse (Kepler's Third Law).

    The baseline is larger, but it takes way, way longer to traverse it.
    The solution to that is use more than one, or even just use the Earth as one of the two.
    The Earth's atmosphere prevents you getting microarcsecond resolution.

    I agree that you could use a second satellite and then you won't need to wait decades ... but this is now a very, very expensive mission 😳
    I did mention two satellites in the original post.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,603

    Extinction Rebellion leader, I mean PM partner, I mean the PM, demands UK cuts emissions massively by 2030....

    BBC News - Climate change: UK aims to cut emissions by 68% by end of 2030
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55179008

    Well she better get Boris building tidal lagoon power stations then......
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362

    Extinction Rebellion leader, I mean PM partner, I mean the PM, demands UK cuts emissions massively by 2030....

    BBC News - Climate change: UK aims to cut emissions by 68% by end of 2030
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55179008

    Well she better get Boris building tidal lagoon power stations then......
    🐿 ❤️
  • Brillo going mental at a tweet from April 2018 is a metaphor for something or other.

    https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1334627154059988997?s=20
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-christmas-covid-legault-1.5826939

    Quebec cancels Christmas, backtracking on an armistice arrangement rather like ours.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,699
    They’re approaching 3000 deaths today too.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,209
    RobD said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Sounds like nonsense to me. Who else would police it but an independent regulator? Was Boris proposing Donald Trump or something?
    Surely an independent regulator was a UK demand, rather than the ECJ. Have I got this wrong?
    Yeah, I had thought the sticking point was that the EU wanted the ECJ to adjudicate, and the UK wanted an independent body.
    Now we want the ECJ to adjudicate, so we can have something to complain about.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,209

    Andy_JS said:

    Not helpful.

    "Anthony Fauci: Britain was too quick to approve Covid vaccine"

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/anthony-fauci-britain-was-too-quick-to-approve-covid-vaccine-587vv3c6x

    Fauci or Williamson, who has more credibility? Tough one.

    Despite that, I'm inclined to trust the MRHA decision. I'd like to see them take more time over the Oxford one (the report I've seen said "soon after Christmas") as it would be good to have either verification or at least credible explanation of the "lower dose protects you more" finding.

    It's clearly a difficult decision for the Government if it's approved on the basis that it's 60% effective, while adeqaute supplies of the Pfizer/Moderna vaccine could take months to arrive. Not inclined to make a political point out of it, so long as the decisions are science-based and not because of Williamson singing Rule Britannia. The the MHRA decides the Oxford vaccine is also 90%, the dilemma vanishes.
    The AZN/Oxford vaccine will not be as effective, but will be much cheaper, and easier to distribute.

    My guess is that those who are high risk will get Pfizer/BioNTech, while the younger, healthier and more impatient will get AZN/Oxford.
  • MikeLMikeL Posts: 7,708
    Per The Times:

    "Boris Johnson will fight the next election with an advantage of up to ten seats under a redrawn constituency map compiled from figures to be published next month.

    He is also set to lift the national campaign spending cap from £19.5 million to about £33 million — in line with inflation — in time for the next election."

    NB1. Lord Hayward has said net benefit to Conservatives will be between 5 and 10 seats.

    NB2. If 2nd paragraph looks odd it's because spending limit has been frozen since the year 2000. So Boris is uprating limit in line with inflation since then!
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,593
    edited December 2020
    It's pretty much inevitable that the Tories will get an extra 10 seats from the boundary review because the small electorate constituencies in the south Wales valleys are finally going to be redrawn with larger electorates. Cynon Valley, Blaenau Gwent, Islwyn, Aberavon, etc, which have around 50,000 voters each compared to average of about 75,000 in England.
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,468
    kle4 said:

    Ugh, if Boris agrees to this then he deserves to be ousted and charged with High Treason.

    https://twitter.com/QuentinAries/status/1334596958204407812

    It's amazing how much you can probably puzzle out if you know even one or two french words, and the rest have equivalients in Engish as many things come from french. I know 'vrai' 'pardon' and 'maison', so something like 'The true secret french position is annexation of the norman islands (presumably the Channel Islands)? And something about sorry and home.

    Those bastards never quit!
    "It is true that within the secret French (negotiating) position is the annexation (sorry, repatriation) of the Channel Islands."
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,468

    O/T

    It must really infuriate Trump that he has only 88.7m Twitter followers compared to Obama's 126.9m.

    Nah! Because Trump knows it's just part of the Deep State conspiracy and that Dominion/Twitter have secretly switched Trump followers over to Obama's
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,468

    gealbhan said:

    Foxy said:

    Well, are we British not keeping our end up? Is it because we have pulled out?
    We were never solid members.
    Hands full with a hard Brexit?
    Or just limping away?
  • kamskikamski Posts: 5,191
    Pulpstar said:


    Is there not the option to sue BetFair for any winnings you are due through the small claims court?

    They'll pay out eventually. It's more the potential false markets (There shouldn't be any substantial ones) they've led themselves into here which is the issue.

    I think the biggest potential for a false market on the 14th is Trump severely underperforming his ECVs - the 180 - 209 band could "falsely" land.
    There's a Predictit market, will Trump match Pence's ECVs which is rated at a 70ish % chance. I think that's way too high.
    BF rules:
    This market will be settled according to the candidate that has the most projected Electoral College votes won at the 2020 presidential election. Any subsequent events such as a ‘faithless elector’ will have no effect on the settlement of this market. 

    It seems to me that the description of a "faithless elector" as a "subsequent event" means that the "projection" they are talking about must happen before the possible faithless elector. So they have to pay out before the actual EC vote. Otherwise their rules are gibberish.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,868
    edited December 2020
    rcs1000 said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Not helpful.

    "Anthony Fauci: Britain was too quick to approve Covid vaccine"

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/anthony-fauci-britain-was-too-quick-to-approve-covid-vaccine-587vv3c6x

    Fauci or Williamson, who has more credibility? Tough one.

    Despite that, I'm inclined to trust the MRHA decision. I'd like to see them take more time over the Oxford one (the report I've seen said "soon after Christmas") as it would be good to have either verification or at least credible explanation of the "lower dose protects you more" finding.

    It's clearly a difficult decision for the Government if it's approved on the basis that it's 60% effective, while adeqaute supplies of the Pfizer/Moderna vaccine could take months to arrive. Not inclined to make a political point out of it, so long as the decisions are science-based and not because of Williamson singing Rule Britannia. The the MHRA decides the Oxford vaccine is also 90%, the dilemma vanishes.
    The AZN/Oxford vaccine will not be as effective, but will be much cheaper, and easier to distribute.

    My guess is that those who are high risk will get Pfizer/BioNTech, while the younger, healthier and more impatient will get AZN/Oxford.
    As I have been suggesting. On the numbers, the break point is around age 65, which is neat.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,421
    rcs1000 said:

    RobD said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Sounds like nonsense to me. Who else would police it but an independent regulator? Was Boris proposing Donald Trump or something?
    Surely an independent regulator was a UK demand, rather than the ECJ. Have I got this wrong?
    Yeah, I had thought the sticking point was that the EU wanted the ECJ to adjudicate, and the UK wanted an independent body.
    Now we want the ECJ to adjudicate, so we can have something to complain about.
    Who in their senses would want the ECJ to adjudicate on anything? They must be the most corrupt and supine court in the developed world. They have no integrity, no sense, make daft laws up as they go along at the behest of the Advocate General and quite openly always side with the highest bidder.

    The only really good argument for Brexit is if it takes us away from their malign influence.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,868
    TimT said:

    O/T

    It must really infuriate Trump that he has only 88.7m Twitter followers compared to Obama's 126.9m.

    Nah! Because Trump knows it's just part of the Deep State conspiracy and that Dominion/Twitter have secretly switched Trump followers over to Obama's
    At the election I noticed he had 88.8m, which jumped to 88.9m afterwards, presumably some extra people wanting to see what he’d come out with next. It will be interesting to see if it falls away as power slips away from him.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,463
    rcs1000 said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Not helpful.

    "Anthony Fauci: Britain was too quick to approve Covid vaccine"

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/anthony-fauci-britain-was-too-quick-to-approve-covid-vaccine-587vv3c6x

    Fauci or Williamson, who has more credibility? Tough one.

    Despite that, I'm inclined to trust the MRHA decision. I'd like to see them take more time over the Oxford one (the report I've seen said "soon after Christmas") as it would be good to have either verification or at least credible explanation of the "lower dose protects you more" finding.

    It's clearly a difficult decision for the Government if it's approved on the basis that it's 60% effective, while adeqaute supplies of the Pfizer/Moderna vaccine could take months to arrive. Not inclined to make a political point out of it, so long as the decisions are science-based and not because of Williamson singing Rule Britannia. The the MHRA decides the Oxford vaccine is also 90%, the dilemma vanishes.
    The AZN/Oxford vaccine will not be as effective, but will be much cheaper, and easier to distribute.

    My guess is that those who are high risk will get Pfizer/BioNTech, while the younger, healthier and more impatient will get AZN/Oxford.
    Bit disappointed to learn that although I'm over 80, as I don't have any need for hospital appointments I'm not getting vaccinated. Yet, anyway.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,209
    Yeah... but it's all statistics. We're not looking to eliminate 99.999% of infections, just 99%.

    One in 10,000 times, someone will get infected at a distance of 6m indoors... but 9,999 they won't. Basing your policy off the extremes because you want to be "certain" you won't get infected is bonkers.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,209

    rcs1000 said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Not helpful.

    "Anthony Fauci: Britain was too quick to approve Covid vaccine"

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/anthony-fauci-britain-was-too-quick-to-approve-covid-vaccine-587vv3c6x

    Fauci or Williamson, who has more credibility? Tough one.

    Despite that, I'm inclined to trust the MRHA decision. I'd like to see them take more time over the Oxford one (the report I've seen said "soon after Christmas") as it would be good to have either verification or at least credible explanation of the "lower dose protects you more" finding.

    It's clearly a difficult decision for the Government if it's approved on the basis that it's 60% effective, while adeqaute supplies of the Pfizer/Moderna vaccine could take months to arrive. Not inclined to make a political point out of it, so long as the decisions are science-based and not because of Williamson singing Rule Britannia. The the MHRA decides the Oxford vaccine is also 90%, the dilemma vanishes.
    The AZN/Oxford vaccine will not be as effective, but will be much cheaper, and easier to distribute.

    My guess is that those who are high risk will get Pfizer/BioNTech, while the younger, healthier and more impatient will get AZN/Oxford.
    Bit disappointed to learn that although I'm over 80, as I don't have any need for hospital appointments I'm not getting vaccinated. Yet, anyway.
    Apparently, the now check people's social media presence before deciding who gets the vaccine, so maybe you should have been a bit more polite about Gavin Williamson.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,421
    IanB2 said:

    TimT said:

    O/T

    It must really infuriate Trump that he has only 88.7m Twitter followers compared to Obama's 126.9m.

    Nah! Because Trump knows it's just part of the Deep State conspiracy and that Dominion/Twitter have secretly switched Trump followers over to Obama's
    At the election I noticed he had 88.8m, which jumped to 88.9m afterwards, presumably some extra people wanting to see what he’d come out with next. It will be interesting to see if it falls away as power slips away from him.
    I doubt it. We’re not so richly blessed with comedians right now we can afford to overlook such an extraordinary talent.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,209
    ydoethur said:

    rcs1000 said:

    RobD said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Sounds like nonsense to me. Who else would police it but an independent regulator? Was Boris proposing Donald Trump or something?
    Surely an independent regulator was a UK demand, rather than the ECJ. Have I got this wrong?
    Yeah, I had thought the sticking point was that the EU wanted the ECJ to adjudicate, and the UK wanted an independent body.
    Now we want the ECJ to adjudicate, so we can have something to complain about.
    Who in their senses would want the ECJ to adjudicate on anything? They must be the most corrupt and supine court in the developed world. They have no integrity, no sense, make daft laws up as they go along at the behest of the Advocate General and quite openly always side with the highest bidder.

    The only really good argument for Brexit is if it takes us away from their malign influence.
    Exactly.

    It's really important we have someone to blame, to have an enemy who we can hate and castigate and blame.

    If we have some kind of independent adjudicator, that's not going to work. But if it's the ECJ, then we can simultaneously be outside the EU, and yet still complain about the EU.

    It's a brilliant ploy by Johnson.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,868
    edited December 2020
    NHS staff will no longer get the coronavirus vaccine first after a drastic rethink about who should be given priority, it emerged last night.

    The new immunisation strategy is likely to disappoint and worry thousands of frontline staff – and comes amid urgent warnings from NHS chiefs that hospitals could be “overwhelmed” in January by a third wave of Covid-19 caused by mingling over Christmas.

    Frontline personnel were due to have the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine when the NHS starts its rollout, which is expected to be next Tuesday

    However, hospitals will instead begin by immunising care home staff, and hospital inpatients and outpatients aged over 80. The new UK-wide guidance on priority groups was issued by the joint committee on vaccination and immunisation (JCVI) amid uncertainty over when the rest of the 5m-strong initial batch of doses that ministers ordered will reach the UK.

    And so our government flip-flopping continues ....
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,421
    rcs1000 said:

    ydoethur said:

    rcs1000 said:

    RobD said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Sounds like nonsense to me. Who else would police it but an independent regulator? Was Boris proposing Donald Trump or something?
    Surely an independent regulator was a UK demand, rather than the ECJ. Have I got this wrong?
    Yeah, I had thought the sticking point was that the EU wanted the ECJ to adjudicate, and the UK wanted an independent body.
    Now we want the ECJ to adjudicate, so we can have something to complain about.
    Who in their senses would want the ECJ to adjudicate on anything? They must be the most corrupt and supine court in the developed world. They have no integrity, no sense, make daft laws up as they go along at the behest of the Advocate General and quite openly always side with the highest bidder.

    The only really good argument for Brexit is if it takes us away from their malign influence.
    Exactly.

    It's really important we have someone to blame, to have an enemy who we can hate and castigate and blame.

    If we have some kind of independent adjudicator, that's not going to work. But if it's the ECJ, then we can simultaneously be outside the EU, and yet still complain about the EU.

    It's a brilliant ploy by Johnson.
    The ECJ would always do what the Commission told them to. Because that’s what they’ve always done. So they cannot be independent.

    If Johnson even proposes that, surely he would be instantly scalped by the Tory right.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,463
    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Not helpful.

    "Anthony Fauci: Britain was too quick to approve Covid vaccine"

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/anthony-fauci-britain-was-too-quick-to-approve-covid-vaccine-587vv3c6x

    Fauci or Williamson, who has more credibility? Tough one.

    Despite that, I'm inclined to trust the MRHA decision. I'd like to see them take more time over the Oxford one (the report I've seen said "soon after Christmas") as it would be good to have either verification or at least credible explanation of the "lower dose protects you more" finding.

    It's clearly a difficult decision for the Government if it's approved on the basis that it's 60% effective, while adeqaute supplies of the Pfizer/Moderna vaccine could take months to arrive. Not inclined to make a political point out of it, so long as the decisions are science-based and not because of Williamson singing Rule Britannia. The the MHRA decides the Oxford vaccine is also 90%, the dilemma vanishes.
    The AZN/Oxford vaccine will not be as effective, but will be much cheaper, and easier to distribute.

    My guess is that those who are high risk will get Pfizer/BioNTech, while the younger, healthier and more impatient will get AZN/Oxford.
    Bit disappointed to learn that although I'm over 80, as I don't have any need for hospital appointments I'm not getting vaccinated. Yet, anyway.
    Apparently, the now check people's social media presence before deciding who gets the vaccine, so maybe you should have been a bit more polite about Gavin Williamson.
    I try not to think about Gavin Williamson, let alone post about him!
  • Trump seems to have decided that people need to be punished for not having re-elected him.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,421
    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Not helpful.

    "Anthony Fauci: Britain was too quick to approve Covid vaccine"

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/anthony-fauci-britain-was-too-quick-to-approve-covid-vaccine-587vv3c6x

    Fauci or Williamson, who has more credibility? Tough one.

    Despite that, I'm inclined to trust the MRHA decision. I'd like to see them take more time over the Oxford one (the report I've seen said "soon after Christmas") as it would be good to have either verification or at least credible explanation of the "lower dose protects you more" finding.

    It's clearly a difficult decision for the Government if it's approved on the basis that it's 60% effective, while adeqaute supplies of the Pfizer/Moderna vaccine could take months to arrive. Not inclined to make a political point out of it, so long as the decisions are science-based and not because of Williamson singing Rule Britannia. The the MHRA decides the Oxford vaccine is also 90%, the dilemma vanishes.
    The AZN/Oxford vaccine will not be as effective, but will be much cheaper, and easier to distribute.

    My guess is that those who are high risk will get Pfizer/BioNTech, while the younger, healthier and more impatient will get AZN/Oxford.
    Bit disappointed to learn that although I'm over 80, as I don't have any need for hospital appointments I'm not getting vaccinated. Yet, anyway.
    Apparently, the now check people's social media presence before deciding who gets the vaccine, so maybe you should have been a bit more polite about Gavin Williamson.
    I hate to think how low down the priority list @Dura_Ace will be...
  • ydoethur said:

    rcs1000 said:

    ydoethur said:

    rcs1000 said:

    RobD said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Sounds like nonsense to me. Who else would police it but an independent regulator? Was Boris proposing Donald Trump or something?
    Surely an independent regulator was a UK demand, rather than the ECJ. Have I got this wrong?
    Yeah, I had thought the sticking point was that the EU wanted the ECJ to adjudicate, and the UK wanted an independent body.
    Now we want the ECJ to adjudicate, so we can have something to complain about.
    Who in their senses would want the ECJ to adjudicate on anything? They must be the most corrupt and supine court in the developed world. They have no integrity, no sense, make daft laws up as they go along at the behest of the Advocate General and quite openly always side with the highest bidder.

    The only really good argument for Brexit is if it takes us away from their malign influence.
    Exactly.

    It's really important we have someone to blame, to have an enemy who we can hate and castigate and blame.

    If we have some kind of independent adjudicator, that's not going to work. But if it's the ECJ, then we can simultaneously be outside the EU, and yet still complain about the EU.

    It's a brilliant ploy by Johnson.
    The ECJ would always do what the Commission told them to. Because that’s what they’ve always done. So they cannot be independent.

    If Johnson even proposes that, surely he would be instantly scalped by the Tory right.
    But maybe Johnson has concluded that an independent adjucicator is more likely to mechanically say "No Britain, that's against the deal you signed", whereas the ECJ can be subject to indirect political pressure.
  • eristdooferistdoof Posts: 5,065

    Trump seems to have decided that people need to be punished for not having re-elected him.
    But he is also punishing people who did vote for him. Like class detention.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,421
    edited December 2020

    ydoethur said:

    rcs1000 said:

    ydoethur said:

    rcs1000 said:

    RobD said:

    Scott_xP said:
    Sounds like nonsense to me. Who else would police it but an independent regulator? Was Boris proposing Donald Trump or something?
    Surely an independent regulator was a UK demand, rather than the ECJ. Have I got this wrong?
    Yeah, I had thought the sticking point was that the EU wanted the ECJ to adjudicate, and the UK wanted an independent body.
    Now we want the ECJ to adjudicate, so we can have something to complain about.
    Who in their senses would want the ECJ to adjudicate on anything? They must be the most corrupt and supine court in the developed world. They have no integrity, no sense, make daft laws up as they go along at the behest of the Advocate General and quite openly always side with the highest bidder.

    The only really good argument for Brexit is if it takes us away from their malign influence.
    Exactly.

    It's really important we have someone to blame, to have an enemy who we can hate and castigate and blame.

    If we have some kind of independent adjudicator, that's not going to work. But if it's the ECJ, then we can simultaneously be outside the EU, and yet still complain about the EU.

    It's a brilliant ploy by Johnson.
    The ECJ would always do what the Commission told them to. Because that’s what they’ve always done. So they cannot be independent.

    If Johnson even proposes that, surely he would be instantly scalped by the Tory right.
    But maybe Johnson has concluded that an independent adjucicator is more likely to mechanically say "No Britain, that's against the deal you signed", whereas the ECJ can be subject to indirect political pressure.
    But the ECJ would always claim that any action that was against Britain’s interests was legal, because they basically do what the Advocate General tells them - and the AG is a politician first and a lawyer second. The only reason they haven’t up to now is because we’ve been members of the EU.

    Meanwhile an independent panel would interpret on the facts, which wouldn’t always be to the EU’s advantage as they are not too clever at dealing with facts.

    Johnson would have to be totally stupid to even...ahh, wait a minute, I now see where you might be coming from.
  • IanB2 said:

    NHS staff will no longer get the coronavirus vaccine first after a drastic rethink about who should be given priority, it emerged last night.

    The new immunisation strategy is likely to disappoint and worry thousands of frontline staff – and comes amid urgent warnings from NHS chiefs that hospitals could be “overwhelmed” in January by a third wave of Covid-19 caused by mingling over Christmas.

    Frontline personnel were due to have the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine when the NHS starts its rollout, which is expected to be next Tuesday

    However, hospitals will instead begin by immunising care home staff, and hospital inpatients and outpatients aged over 80. The new UK-wide guidance on priority groups was issued by the joint committee on vaccination and immunisation (JCVI) amid uncertainty over when the rest of the 5m-strong initial batch of doses that ministers ordered will reach the UK.

    And so our government flip-flopping continues ....

    No. Just sticking to the original plan. Where has the govt. said frontline NHS staff would get vaccinated first? They haven’t. There has been media speculation that because of the difficulties in distribution of the Pfizer vaccine to Care Homes that would happen - but that’s all it’s been.
This discussion has been closed.