Off topic (unless there's a political correctness gone mad context hidden in it), just finished episode 10 of the fifth series of The Bureau; what a series, what a finale!
Yes, the Bureau was superb TV.
The writer bravely handed over the last two episodes to a french film director, with free reign not only to direct but to decide the fate of the characters. The finale divided opinion in France, in a marmite way. I liked it, but I can understand how long term fans of the series might feel the opposite.
There are rumours of a sixth season ‘postscript’, but if I were them I would quit while they are ahead, rather than make the typical American mistake of slogging on until people lose interest.
What an shift the makers put in, quite moving to see how the actors aged with their characters over 5 years. One of the few slightly duff points was episodes where characters spoke English to each other, the dialogue seemed stilted; maybe that's just a realistic depiction of how many people communicate in a second language. The CIA characters also seemed clichéd, blustering yeehaw types. Thinking about it, a noticeable absence was largely no mention of Britain, a passing reference to Putin loving Brexit in the last series is all I can recall. Fascinating to see the middle east experience through the lens of an entirely different set of priorities.
Agree about them quitting while they're ahead. Spiral starts it's last series in January, let's hope they've not watered the product too much.
One of my spooky chums reckoned The Bureau the best (in terms of accurate) depiction of that world anyone has done to date.
As a non spooky person it seemed entirely authentic to me (and therefore scary imagining what's actually being done beneath the radar). In fact I'll have to exercise some restraint in fancying myself as an armchair intel and espionage expert on the basis of watching the telly.
If we'd had the two week firebreak we would be in the position where Drakeford is now which is even worse.
Thanks to taking the time to try the Tiers we found out that the original Tier system didn't work, took a 4 week lockdown that did and put in stricter Tiers as a result afterwards.
So how is taking time to consider all the evidence as we did a bad thing?
There's a graph in the paper that shows it wonderfully well.
But here's two bits that stood out.
As a result, more than 1.3 million extra infections are estimated to have spread across the country. We heard evidence that one intensive care ward in Manchester became so overwhelmed that patients were left to die without the life-saving care they needed......
..The next day in the Commons, Wednesday, October 14, Sunak hit back, accusing Labour of being “detached from reality” and being irresponsible for not acknowledging “the economic cost of a blunt national lockdown”. This was little more than two weeks before the government would perform a U-turn and announce a lockdown.
Does the graph show England doing worse than Wales? 🤔
A blunt lockdown failed where it was tried.
By taking time to test Tiers we surely have a better outcome now than if we had just gone for a 2 weeks firebreak then back to the status quo ante which is what the advice was and Wales tried.
Fake news again! The Wales Lockdown worked in the short term, it only failed in the medium term because it was too short and the moment we exited it was party time.
I reluctantly went hunter-gathering this afternoon to Waitrose in Cowbridge. Sunday afternoon, just before closing time, it'll be quiet I thought. Waitrose was rammed to the extent that trolley usage was like the dodgems. I got what was on my list and left.
Drakeford might be clueless, but his citizens seem even dafter.
I estimate that England is ten to fourteen days behind, so good luck.
Short term is meaningless which was my precise point! Medium term is relevant.
The fact they reverted from the firebreak back to the status quo ante restrictions was Drakeford's policy and Drakeford gave the attitude that the two weeks was sufficient so why not party afterwards?
In contrast in England as they had tried the Tiers first post lockdown they knew NOT to go back into the original Tiers afterwards so the post lockdown Tiers were different to the pre lockdown Tiers.
I see no reason why if we had followed the 2 week firebreak advice we wouldn't have followed Drakeford's path which seems worse than what has actually happened in the medium term.
We should have been in a long lock down in September.
I had a quarterly appointment at Manchester Royal Infirmary last week with a specialist endocrine nurse.
When I saw her in September she was shattered, she had spent the summer on the positive C-19 ward as she was deemed 'safe' as she is young (in her 30s).
Each day getting home after hours in PPE, getting totally undressed at the front door, putting all her clothes in the washing machine and then ages in the shower petrified she'd bring the virus into her family.
Since Sept she is back on the endocrine side of things.
There are no consultants available, there have been none since March, they are all running and working on the C-19 positive wards.
Patients are getting very impatient, she commented that clap for carers on a Thursday night seems a long time ago and the public have turned against them as they are not getting the care they expect.
There are staff on the positive C-19 wards and positive C-19 ICU ward in Manchester that have worked 6 and 7 days weeks, every week, with no holiday, since March, 10+ hours every single day.
She said the staff are at breaking point in Manchester on the positive wards, the patients are at breaking point through lack of any healthcare service.
Once we do see a reduction in C-19 when vaccines start to have a material impact a vast swathe of the NHS needs a long holiday, a very long holiday.
The awful management of this by the government has let this continue, they have permitted levels to stay high so long as the NHS is not totally overwhelmed with zero care whatsoever on the impact of those working in the NHS or those who desperately require the healthcare that is provides.
A terrible strategy that they deserve to be absolutely hammered for.
A sophisticated hacking group backed by a foreign government stole information from the U.S. Treasury Department and a U.S. agency responsible for deciding policy around the internet and telecommunications, according to people familiar with the matter.
Off topic (unless there's a political correctness gone mad context hidden in it), just finished episode 10 of the fifth series of The Bureau; what a series, what a finale!
Yes, the Bureau was superb TV.
The writer bravely handed over the last two episodes to a french film director, with free reign not only to direct but to decide the fate of the characters. The finale divided opinion in France, in a marmite way. I liked it, but I can understand how long term fans of the series might feel the opposite.
There are rumours of a sixth season ‘postscript’, but if I were them I would quit while they are ahead, rather than make the typical American mistake of slogging on until people lose interest.
What an shift the makers put in, quite moving to see how the actors aged with their characters over 5 years. One of the few slightly duff points was episodes where characters spoke English to each other, the dialogue seemed stilted; maybe that's just a realistic depiction of how many people communicate in a second language. The CIA characters also seemed clichéd, blustering yeehaw types. Thinking about it, a noticeable absence was largely no mention of Britain, a passing reference to Putin loving Brexit in the last series is all I can recall. Fascinating to see the middle east experience through the lens of an entirely different set of priorities.
Agree about them quitting while they're ahead. Spiral starts it's last series in January, let's hope they've not watered the product too much.
Agreed on all counts. The instinctive French antipathy to the US did show through at times, although, as the New York Times observed, it was a rare chance to see their country depicted through the critical eyes of an ally.
The first couple of episodes were shown in a private viewing to the actual staff of the DGSE, and got a standing ovation. The series really does show their jobs in the round, rather than concentrating mostly on dramatic action like, for example, Homeland.
Spiral was great - i too hope they don’t ruin it. The French-Danish co-operation DNA is also worth a look, although I though its credibility flagged somewhat by the end.
BBC had a good graphic showing why Welsh lockdown was a failure. It never really squished down rates anywhere enough in some key areas
Thus, even then going to tiers would fail, because as we know tiers really only try and hold back the water for so long. You have to start that from a really low rate to begin with to buy significant breathing space.
The two weeks of lockdown worked. It just needed to be followed by another 10 weeks of lockdown.
Not a bloody free for all.
And of course the English government didn't learn the lesson.
Now, while the rest of Europe is locking down for Christmas, we are letting rip.
I reluctantly went hunter-gathering this afternoon to Waitrose in Cowbridge. Sunday afternoon, just before closing time, it'll be quiet I thought. Waitrose was rammed to the extent that trolley usage was like the dodgems. I got what was on my list and left.
The Waitrose in Cowbridge was rammed. So you've met the Welsh middle class 😌
Wales being Wales, I think the Waitrose in Cowbridge is my "local", as well.
It's not only running the gauntlet of Covid that is damaging to one's health at Waitrose, it's the coronary when the bill is issued that is most dangerous. How can so few items be so expensive. I can fill s Transit van for a hundred quid in Lidl!
It's quality versus quantity.
I've always gone for quantity over quality. Buy cheap, buy twice is my motto, and I often do.
BBC had a good graphic showing why Welsh lockdown was a failure. It never really squished down rates anywhere enough in some key areas
Thus, even then going to tiers would fail, because as we know tiers really only try and hold back the water for so long. You have to start that from a really low rate to begin with to buy significant breathing space.
The two weeks of lockdown worked. It just needed to be followed by another 10 weeks of lockdown.
Not a bloody free for all.
And of course the English government didn't learn the lesson.
Now, while the rest of Europe is locking down for Christmas, we are letting rip.
Yeah, there's clearly no way to simultaneously ease restrictions in a significant way and keep it at a very suppressed level. It's about trade off between saving lives and saving the economy.
Could England have gone into lockdown sooner? Yes. Would that have been better? No, I don't see why.
It would have been better because a) fewer people would have died b) we would have less virus spreading now.
Why?
That didn't happen in Wales. More virus is circulating in Wales than England.
There may have been less virus circulating on a particular date but without the knowledge of how Tiers do and don't work I don't see why we would have overall fared better if we had done just a firebreak then not going into anything harsher post firebreak. Wales didn't, despite the knowledge they were able to learn from England's experience.
I think quite a lot of people predicted at the time, that a two week lockdown would do a lot of damage to businesses while doing the square root of nothing to halt the progress of the disease.
Indeed. It was obvious to me it would be devastating to businesses but do nothing.
Party before and party after is human nature, we saw that in Lockdown 1, and when Liverpool went into Tier 3 etc so shouldn't be a shock to anyone.
Clearly the Tories mucked up the pandemic again in the latter part of this year.
I was talking about cases going out of control from July onwards and was laughed at by my peers. I was calling for a lockdown then and I was absolutely right.
Indeed. By September it was patently obvious that the measures they were announcing were insufficient and would lead to national lockdown.
Drakeford's errors are bizarre though. He had the courage and foresight to go firebreak earlier than other leaders. It seemed like he understood the virus. And now he has messed up all that good work.
I struggle to think of a time when a policy was a) so obviously the right call based on the evidence b) overwhelmingly popular according to the polls... and yet was so resisted by politicians.
Because lockdowns devastate economies. And ruined economies mean ruined lives. I don’t envy politicians who have to make the call.
I really think this is wrong. The virus devastates economies. Lockdowns are good for the economy because they reduce the virus faster.
Yes; most economists support them for that reason. It’s usually just casual commentators who are wedded to the need for a narrative that it must be a seesaw choice “protect public health OR protect the economy.”
In reality, the vast majority of economists point out that the choice is “protect public health AND the economy... or lose out on both.”
BBC had a good graphic showing why Welsh lockdown was a failure. It never really squished down rates anywhere enough in some key areas
Thus, even then going to tiers would fail, because as we know tiers really only try and hold back the water for so long. You have to start that from a really low rate to begin with to buy significant breathing space.
The two weeks of lockdown worked. It just needed to be followed by another 10 weeks of lockdown.
Not a bloody free for all.
And of course the English government didn't learn the lesson.
Now, while the rest of Europe is locking down for Christmas, we are letting rip.
The announcement from Germany today was very similar to the plans for Christmas in the UK. Although a shorter period, 3 days instead of 5.
The 5 southern boroughs of Greater Manchester, Trafford, Stockport, Tameside, Salford and Manchester should have been in tier 2 if this was an acceptable option, but this was declined by the London loving, northern hating government we have.
"Outdated attitudes" with zero censorship is perfectly reasonable. Let the snowflakes not watch it having been warned let everyone else watch it unfiltered and uncensored.
I don't have a problem with the policy, 'outdated attitudes' just feels ill defined as a term.
Would you feel comfortable filming this today?
If no: it is outdated.
Who is 'you' in this scenario? I wouldn't film a dog called n****r, as that would feel gratuitously offensive, but I'd be quite comfortable to film characters that had a wide variety of views, including racist ones, as part of a story.
Well precisely. So it is outdated. You can film things today set in the past knowing it is outdated when you film it. Because it accurately reflects the era.
A slightly different example of this is the use of smoking in TV and films. There has been a long running campaign to rem
At the other extreme - and something I think is completely unacceptable - companies are now editing old films and photos to remove images of people smoking. In the UK this has included censoring photos of both Churchill and IKB to remove cigars from their hands.
I don't understand how difficult it is for some people not to appreciate that people in the past thought and acted differently, and people in the future will think and act differently.
I can't begin to think what his source would be for that. Nothing springs to mind from, say, Aristophanes or Menander or Plautus or Petronius which gives us a steer either way about master/slave sex initiation techniques, and I am not sure where else to look. There's a lot of contemporary evidence to suggest that Epsteinian transactions are dressed up in a pretence of flirtation and seduction even when the reality is recognised all round as basic, choice-free sex trafficking. So where is Mr Gabb getting this stuff from?
In Petronius' Satyricon, Trimalchio is quite frank that he was used for sex by his master, when he was a slave, and states that there is no shame in serving the master's pleasure. Martial remarks that his wife is willing to let him bugger her, but he tells her that his slave boy's backside is better than hers, for that purpose. Then there is Plato's Phaidon, in which Phaedo of Elis was kept as a sex slave, due to his personal beauty. Marcus Arelius was considered remarkably self-restrained, not to take advantage of the attractive slaves in his employ.
If we'd had the two week firebreak we would be in the position where Drakeford is now which is even worse.
Thanks to taking the time to try the Tiers we found out that the original Tier system didn't work, took a 4 week lockdown that did and put in stricter Tiers as a result afterwards.
So how is taking time to consider all the evidence as we did a bad thing?
There's a graph in the paper that shows it wonderfully well.
But here's two bits that stood out.
As a result, more than 1.3 million extra infections are estimated to have spread across the country. We heard evidence that one intensive care ward in Manchester became so overwhelmed that patients were left to die without the life-saving care they needed......
..The next day in the Commons, Wednesday, October 14, Sunak hit back, accusing Labour of being “detached from reality” and being irresponsible for not acknowledging “the economic cost of a blunt national lockdown”. This was little more than two weeks before the government would perform a U-turn and announce a lockdown.
Does the graph show England doing worse than Wales? 🤔
A blunt lockdown failed where it was tried.
By taking time to test Tiers we surely have a better outcome now than if we had just gone for a 2 weeks firebreak then back to the status quo ante which is what the advice was and Wales tried.
Fake news again! The Wales Lockdown worked in the short term, it only failed in the medium term because it was too short and the moment we exited it was party time.
I reluctantly went hunter-gathering this afternoon to Waitrose in Cowbridge. Sunday afternoon, just before closing time, it'll be quiet I thought. Waitrose was rammed to the extent that trolley usage was like the dodgems. I got what was on my list and left.
Drakeford might be clueless, but his citizens seem even dafter.
I estimate that England is ten to fourteen days behind, so good luck.
You can get click and collect slits at Waitrose. At our local branch you don't need to enter the store. And get to use the disabled persons parking spaces while you wait. Totally risk free.
I reluctantly went hunter-gathering this afternoon to Waitrose in Cowbridge. Sunday afternoon, just before closing time, it'll be quiet I thought. Waitrose was rammed to the extent that trolley usage was like the dodgems. I got what was on my list and left.
The Waitrose in Cowbridge was rammed. So you've met the Welsh middle class 😌
Wales being Wales, I think the Waitrose in Cowbridge is my "local", as well.
It's not only running the gauntlet of Covid that is damaging to one's health at Waitrose, it's the coronary when the bill is issued that is most dangerous. How can so few items be so expensive. I can fill s Transit van for a hundred quid in Lidl!
It's quality versus quantity.
I've always gone for quantity over quality. Buy cheap, buy twice is my motto, and I often do.
Through hard work and good fortune I am in the lucky position where I have more money than I can ever sensibly spend in my lifetime.
I cannot take it with me so I am buggered if I'm going to compromise on quality.
It hasn't always been that way - I had plenty of years of seeking out the cheapest options.
The 5 southern boroughs of Greater Manchester, Trafford, Stockport, Tameside, Salford and Manchester should have been in tier 2 if this was an acceptable option, but this was declined by the London loving, northern hating government we have.
I think it was Wigan I felt the most sorry for, I think they had one of the lowest Covid-19 rates in the country but got whacked into Tier 3 for being part of GM.
"Outdated attitudes" with zero censorship is perfectly reasonable. Let the snowflakes not watch it having been warned let everyone else watch it unfiltered and uncensored.
I don't have a problem with the policy, 'outdated attitudes' just feels ill defined as a term.
Would you feel comfortable filming this today?
If no: it is outdated.
Who is 'you' in this scenario? I wouldn't film a dog called n****r, as that would feel gratuitously offensive, but I'd be quite comfortable to film characters that had a wide variety of views, including racist ones, as part of a story.
Well precisely. So it is outdated. You can film things today set in the past knowing it is outdated when you film it. Because it accurately reflects the era.
A slightly different example of this is the use of smoking in TV and films. There has been a long running campaign to rem
At the other extreme - and something I think is completely unacceptable - companies are now editing old films and photos to remove images of people smoking. In the UK this has included censoring photos of both Churchill and IKB to remove cigars from their hands.
I don't understand how difficult it is for some people not to appreciate that people in the past thought and acted differently, and people in the future will think and act differently.
I can't begin to think what his source would be for that. Nothing springs to mind from, say, Aristophanes or Menander or Plautus or Petronius which gives us a steer either way about master/slave sex initiation techniques, and I am not sure where else to look. There's a lot of contemporary evidence to suggest that Epsteinian transactions are dressed up in a pretence of flirtation and seduction even when the reality is recognised all round as basic, choice-free sex trafficking. So where is Mr Gabb getting this stuff from?
In Petronius' Satyricon, Trimalchio is quite frank that he was used for sex by his master, when he was a slave, and states that there is no shame in serving the master's pleasure. Martial remarks that his wife is willing to let him bugger her, but he tells her that his slave boy's backside is better than hers, for that purpose. Then there is Plato's Phaidon, in which Phaedo of Elis was kept as a sex slave, due to his personal beauty. Marcus Arelius was considered remarkably self-restrained, not to take advantage of the attractive slaves in his employ.
Not the point. We all agree that masters had sex with slaves, what we are talking about is how the transaction was initiated.
The tiers should be based on numerical criteria and nothing more. Exceed the criteria, you get pushed up a tier. All this wrangling about it not being appropriate for this or that area is really unhelpful.
Anyone know why we let the criminal and Brexiteer Iain Dale on our TV?
It's not as clear cut as that because it is usually exporters that have to cut their prices to remain competitive in the market vs domestic competition and competitors from nations who have tariff free trade deals. So no, they don't pay the tax, but ultimately they see significant margin deterioration or volume loss if they don't cut prices to defend market share.
There's been a lot of studies done on it but for every ten points of tariffs the exporting company takes 5-7 points if margin loss and the importing consumer sees a 3-5% price rise.
"Outdated attitudes" with zero censorship is perfectly reasonable. Let the snowflakes not watch it having been warned let everyone else watch it unfiltered and uncensored.
I don't have a problem with the policy, 'outdated attitudes' just feels ill defined as a term.
Would you feel comfortable filming this today?
If no: it is outdated.
Who is 'you' in this scenario? I wouldn't film a dog called n****r, as that would feel gratuitously offensive, but I'd be quite comfortable to film characters that had a wide variety of views, including racist ones, as part of a story.
Well precisely. So it is outdated. You can film things today set in the past knowing it is outdated when you film it. Because it accurately reflects the era.
A slightly different example of this is the use of smoking in TV and films. There has been a long running campaign to rem
At the other extreme - and something I think is completely unacceptable - companies are now editing old films and photos to remove images of people smoking. In the UK this has included censoring photos of both Churchill and IKB to remove cigars from their hands.
I don't understand how difficult it is for some people not to appreciate that people in the past thought and acted differently, and people in the future will think and act differently.
I can't begin to think what his source would be for that. Nothing springs to mind from, say, Aristophanes or Menander or Plautus or Petronius which gives us a steer either way about master/slave sex initiation techniques, and I am not sure where else to look. There's a lot of contemporary evidence to suggest that Epsteinian transactions are dressed up in a pretence of flirtation and seduction even when the reality is recognised all round as basic, choice-free sex trafficking. So where is Mr Gabb getting this stuff from?
In Petronius' Satyricon, Trimalchio is quite frank that he was used for sex by his master, when he was a slave, and states that there is no shame in serving the master's pleasure. Martial remarks that his wife is willing to let him bugger her, but he tells her that his slave boy's backside is better than hers, for that purpose. Then there is Plato's Phaidon, in which Phaedo of Elis was kept as a sex slave, due to his personal beauty. Marcus Arelius was considered remarkably self-restrained, not to take advantage of the attractive slaves in his employ.
Not the point. We all agree that masters had sex with slaves, what we are talking about is how the transaction was initiated.
You instruct your slave what your slave is to do. The slave has no choice in the matter.
Clearly the Tories mucked up the pandemic again in the latter part of this year.
I was talking about cases going out of control from July onwards and was laughed at by my peers. I was calling for a lockdown then and I was absolutely right.
Indeed. By September it was patently obvious that the measures they were announcing were insufficient and would lead to national lockdown.
Drakeford's errors are bizarre though. He had the courage and foresight to go firebreak earlier than other leaders. It seemed like he understood the virus. And now he has messed up all that good work.
I struggle to think of a time when a policy was a) so obviously the right call based on the evidence b) overwhelmingly popular according to the polls... and yet was so resisted by politicians.
Because lockdowns devastate economies. And ruined economies mean ruined lives. I don’t envy politicians who have to make the call.
I really think this is wrong. The virus devastates economies. Lockdowns are good for the economy because they reduce the virus faster.
Yes; most economists support them for that reason. It’s usually just casual commentators who are wedded to the need for a narrative that it must be a seesaw choice “protect public health OR protect the economy.”
In reality, the vast majority of economists point out that the choice is “protect public health AND the economy... or lose out on both.”
No. We simply don’t know yet. You could be right, you could be wrong. We are still in the middle of this pandemic (with maybe the worst yet to come - medically and/or economically). eg We have no idea what the long term effects will be, of closing down great world cities. We assume they will simply bounce back. What if they don’t? What if suicide rates soar? What if the vaccines don’t work as hoped?
It will be several long years before we can look back and say Yes, lockdowns were the best option. Or not.
If we'd had the two week firebreak we would be in the position where Drakeford is now which is even worse.
Thanks to taking the time to try the Tiers we found out that the original Tier system didn't work, took a 4 week lockdown that did and put in stricter Tiers as a result afterwards.
So how is taking time to consider all the evidence as we did a bad thing?
There's a graph in the paper that shows it wonderfully well.
But here's two bits that stood out.
As a result, more than 1.3 million extra infections are estimated to have spread across the country. We heard evidence that one intensive care ward in Manchester became so overwhelmed that patients were left to die without the life-saving care they needed......
..The next day in the Commons, Wednesday, October 14, Sunak hit back, accusing Labour of being “detached from reality” and being irresponsible for not acknowledging “the economic cost of a blunt national lockdown”. This was little more than two weeks before the government would perform a U-turn and announce a lockdown.
Does the graph show England doing worse than Wales? 🤔
A blunt lockdown failed where it was tried.
By taking time to test Tiers we surely have a better outcome now than if we had just gone for a 2 weeks firebreak then back to the status quo ante which is what the advice was and Wales tried.
Fake news again! The Wales Lockdown worked in the short term, it only failed in the medium term because it was too short and the moment we exited it was party time.
I reluctantly went hunter-gathering this afternoon to Waitrose in Cowbridge. Sunday afternoon, just before closing time, it'll be quiet I thought. Waitrose was rammed to the extent that trolley usage was like the dodgems. I got what was on my list and left.
Drakeford might be clueless, but his citizens seem even dafter.
I estimate that England is ten to fourteen days behind, so good luck.
Short term is meaningless which was my precise point! Medium term is relevant.
The fact they reverted from the firebreak back to the status quo ante restrictions was Drakeford's policy and Drakeford gave the attitude that the two weeks was sufficient so why not party afterwards?
In contrast in England as they had tried the Tiers first post lockdown they knew NOT to go back into the original Tiers afterwards so the post lockdown Tiers were different to the pre lockdown Tiers.
I see no reason why if we had followed the 2 week firebreak advice we wouldn't have followed Drakeford's path which seems worse than what has actually happened in the medium term.
I really don't want to defend Drakeford, significant errors were indeed made, but he did call the fire-break when it was politically unacceptable, particularly with Johnson saying at the time it was an unnecessary waste of time, only to call his own two weeks later. Whatever you do, don't hold Johnson up as the beacon of Covid best practice.. You may now be fine in the North West, however it is unfortunately a different story in South East and Eastern England.
I think I need to go before your utter nonsense pisses me off any more than it already has.
Indeed. London didn't see a big fall in lockdown, we're just going to have to live with a higher base level than the rest of the country because there is simply too much activity even under lockdown. The only thing that will save London is a rapid vaccine roll out for under 50s and the government needs to bite the bullet on that and take the bad headlines.
The notion of splitting London between Tiers has been put forward by "London Tories" (didn't know there were any). The idea is the suburbs get put into Tier 3 while the central area remains in Tier 2.
If we'd had the two week firebreak we would be in the position where Drakeford is now which is even worse.
Thanks to taking the time to try the Tiers we found out that the original Tier system didn't work, took a 4 week lockdown that did and put in stricter Tiers as a result afterwards.
So how is taking time to consider all the evidence as we did a bad thing?
There's a graph in the paper that shows it wonderfully well.
But here's two bits that stood out.
As a result, more than 1.3 million extra infections are estimated to have spread across the country. We heard evidence that one intensive care ward in Manchester became so overwhelmed that patients were left to die without the life-saving care they needed......
..The next day in the Commons, Wednesday, October 14, Sunak hit back, accusing Labour of being “detached from reality” and being irresponsible for not acknowledging “the economic cost of a blunt national lockdown”. This was little more than two weeks before the government would perform a U-turn and announce a lockdown.
Does the graph show England doing worse than Wales? 🤔
A blunt lockdown failed where it was tried.
By taking time to test Tiers we surely have a better outcome now than if we had just gone for a 2 weeks firebreak then back to the status quo ante which is what the advice was and Wales tried.
Fake news again! The Wales Lockdown worked in the short term, it only failed in the medium term because it was too short and the moment we exited it was party time.
I reluctantly went hunter-gathering this afternoon to Waitrose in Cowbridge. Sunday afternoon, just before closing time, it'll be quiet I thought. Waitrose was rammed to the extent that trolley usage was like the dodgems. I got what was on my list and left.
Drakeford might be clueless, but his citizens seem even dafter.
I estimate that England is ten to fourteen days behind, so good luck.
You argument of it only failed because it was too short....it was the policy to be that short.
Its like saying my diet worked in the short term when i didn't eat anything for 4 days and i went in the sauna for hours on end...a lot of the weight loss was water weight. Then i eat what i liked and weight shot up. You never really lost anywhere near what you thought and never tackled the core issues.
Wales firebreak was sold in a similar manner to these crazy diets. Its easy, just do this for a couple of weeks and it will all be fixed.
The tiers should be based on numerical criteria and nothing more. Exceed the criteria, you get pushed up a tier. All this wrangling about it not being appropriate for this or that area is really unhelpful.
London has massive hospital capacity, a young population and serves the rest of the country with connectivity via trains and aircraft. I suspect tolerating a higher rate here is wise.
The tiers should be based on numerical criteria and nothing more. Exceed the criteria, you get pushed up a tier. All this wrangling about it not being appropriate for this or that area is really unhelpful.
London has massive hospital capacity, a young population and serves the rest of the country with connectivity via trains and aircraft. I suspect tolerating a higher rate here is wise.
So well-off areas get preferential treatment? I can see that going down well.
Clearly the Tories mucked up the pandemic again in the latter part of this year.
I was talking about cases going out of control from July onwards and was laughed at by my peers. I was calling for a lockdown then and I was absolutely right.
Indeed. By September it was patently obvious that the measures they were announcing were insufficient and would lead to national lockdown.
Drakeford's errors are bizarre though. He had the courage and foresight to go firebreak earlier than other leaders. It seemed like he understood the virus. And now he has messed up all that good work.
I struggle to think of a time when a policy was a) so obviously the right call based on the evidence b) overwhelmingly popular according to the polls... and yet was so resisted by politicians.
Because lockdowns devastate economies. And ruined economies mean ruined lives. I don’t envy politicians who have to make the call.
I really think this is wrong. The virus devastates economies. Lockdowns are good for the economy because they reduce the virus faster.
Yes; most economists support them for that reason. It’s usually just casual commentators who are wedded to the need for a narrative that it must be a seesaw choice “protect public health OR protect the economy.”
In reality, the vast majority of economists point out that the choice is “protect public health AND the economy... or lose out on both.”
No. We simply don’t know yet. You could be right, you could be wrong. We are still in the middle of this pandemic (with maybe the worst yet to come - medically and/or economically). eg We have no idea what the long term effects will be, of closing down great world cities. We assume they will simply bounce back. What if they don’t? What if suicide rates soar? What if the vaccines don’t work as hoped?
It will be several long years before we can look back and say Yes, lockdowns were the best option. Or not.
The vaccines work, but need to be paired with a clear programme of risk segmentation. Vaccinate the vulnerable, let everyone else get on with their lives.
The tiers should be based on numerical criteria and nothing more. Exceed the criteria, you get pushed up a tier. All this wrangling about it not being appropriate for this or that area is really unhelpful.
London has massive hospital capacity, a young population and serves the rest of the country with connectivity via trains and aircraft. I suspect tolerating a higher rate here is wise.
Yes, London is a special case - and it's a truly special place. Love London!
The tiers should be based on numerical criteria and nothing more. Exceed the criteria, you get pushed up a tier. All this wrangling about it not being appropriate for this or that area is really unhelpful.
London has massive hospital capacity, a young population and serves the rest of the country with connectivity via trains and aircraft. I suspect tolerating a higher rate here is wise.
So well-off areas get preferential treatment? I can see that going down well.
Lots of areas of London are poor. Yet it is indisputable that it is the hub for everywhere else. Policy should be about reality, not optics.
"Outdated attitudes" with zero censorship is perfectly reasonable. Let the snowflakes not watch it having been warned let everyone else watch it unfiltered and uncensored.
I don't have a problem with the policy, 'outdated attitudes' just feels ill defined as a term.
Would you feel comfortable filming this today?
If no: it is outdated.
Who is 'you' in this scenario? I wouldn't film a dog called n****r, as that would feel gratuitously offensive, but I'd be quite comfortable to film characters that had a wide variety of views, including racist ones, as part of a story.
Well precisely. So it is outdated. You can film things today set in the past knowing it is outdated when you film it. Because it accurately reflects the era.
A slightly different example of this is the use of smoking in TV and films. There has been a long running campaign to rem
At the other extreme - and something I think is completely unacceptable - companies are now editing old films and photos to remove images of people smoking. In the UK this has included censoring photos of both Churchill and IKB to remove cigars from their hands.
I don't understand how difficult it is for some people not to appreciate that people in the past thought and acted differently, and people in the future will think and act differently.
I can't begin to think what his source would be for that. Nothing springs to mind from, say, Aristophanes or Menander or Plautus or Petronius which gives us a steer either way about master/slave sex initiation techniques, and I am not sure where else to look. There's a lot of contemporary evidence to suggest that Epsteinian transactions are dressed up in a pretence of flirtation and seduction even when the reality is recognised all round as basic, choice-free sex trafficking. So where is Mr Gabb getting this stuff from?
In Petronius' Satyricon, Trimalchio is quite frank that he was used for sex by his master, when he was a slave, and states that there is no shame in serving the master's pleasure. Martial remarks that his wife is willing to let him bugger her, but he tells her that his slave boy's backside is better than hers, for that purpose. Then there is Plato's Phaidon, in which Phaedo of Elis was kept as a sex slave, due to his personal beauty. Marcus Arelius was considered remarkably self-restrained, not to take advantage of the attractive slaves in his employ.
Not the point. We all agree that masters had sex with slaves, what we are talking about is how the transaction was initiated.
You instruct your slave what your slave is to do. The slave has no choice in the matter.
So what? That is also true of employer/employee relationships, and that doesn't stop employers dressing up instructions as courteously phrased requests. Not always, but sometimes. Sexual relations come in as many different flavours as master/servant ones. so what is the basis of the evidence-free assertion that the Crassus-Antoninus scene is impossible?
The tiers should be based on numerical criteria and nothing more. Exceed the criteria, you get pushed up a tier. All this wrangling about it not being appropriate for this or that area is really unhelpful.
London has massive hospital capacity, a young population and serves the rest of the country with connectivity via trains and aircraft. I suspect tolerating a higher rate here is wise.
So well-off areas get preferential treatment? I can see that going down well.
Lots of areas of London are poor. Yet it is indisputable that it is the hub for everywhere else. Policy should be about reality, not optics.
So only London gets this special exemption? If you make the system unfair, people will be more inclined to ignore it.
"Outdated attitudes" with zero censorship is perfectly reasonable. Let the snowflakes not watch it having been warned let everyone else watch it unfiltered and uncensored.
I don't have a problem with the policy, 'outdated attitudes' just feels ill defined as a term.
Would you feel comfortable filming this today?
If no: it is outdated.
Who is 'you' in this scenario? I wouldn't film a dog called n****r, as that would feel gratuitously offensive, but I'd be quite comfortable to film characters that had a wide variety of views, including racist ones, as part of a story.
Well precisely. So it is outdated. You can film things today set in the past knowing it is outdated when you film it. Because it accurately reflects the era.
A slightly different example of this is the use of smoking in TV and films. There has been a long running campaign to rem
At the other extreme - and something I think is completely unacceptable - companies are now editing old films and photos to remove images of people smoking. In the UK this has included censoring photos of both Churchill and IKB to remove cigars from their hands.
I don't understand how difficult it is for some people not to appreciate that people in the past thought and acted differently, and people in the future will think and act differently.
I can't begin to think what his source would be for that. Nothing springs to mind from, say, Aristophanes or Menander or Plautus or Petronius which gives us a steer either way about master/slave sex initiation techniques, and I am not sure where else to look. There's a lot of contemporary evidence to suggest that Epsteinian transactions are dressed up in a pretence of flirtation and seduction even when the reality is recognised all round as basic, choice-free sex trafficking. So where is Mr Gabb getting this stuff from?
In Petronius' Satyricon, Trimalchio is quite frank that he was used for sex by his master, when he was a slave, and states that there is no shame in serving the master's pleasure. Martial remarks that his wife is willing to let him bugger her, but he tells her that his slave boy's backside is better than hers, for that purpose. Then there is Plato's Phaidon, in which Phaedo of Elis was kept as a sex slave, due to his personal beauty. Marcus Arelius was considered remarkably self-restrained, not to take advantage of the attractive slaves in his employ.
Not the point. We all agree that masters had sex with slaves, what we are talking about is how the transaction was initiated.
You instruct your slave what your slave is to do. The slave has no choice in the matter.
Also, it is widely accepted that Romans could have slaves mutilated, tortured or thrown to the lampreys. Slaves were possessions, not people. If Romans had the power to kill their slaves as they wished, I find it hard to believe they weren’t allowed to sodomise them
The tiers should be based on numerical criteria and nothing more. Exceed the criteria, you get pushed up a tier. All this wrangling about it not being appropriate for this or that area is really unhelpful.
London has massive hospital capacity, a young population and serves the rest of the country with connectivity via trains and aircraft. I suspect tolerating a higher rate here is wise.
So well-off areas get preferential treatment? I can see that going down well.
Lots of areas of London are poor. Yet it is indisputable that it is the hub for everywhere else. Policy should be about reality, not optics.
So only London gets this special exemption? If you make the system unfair, people will be more inclined to ignore it.
London already does get exceptional and unfair treatment in just about every policy that any government has ever implemented.
The tiers should be based on numerical criteria and nothing more. Exceed the criteria, you get pushed up a tier. All this wrangling about it not being appropriate for this or that area is really unhelpful.
London has massive hospital capacity, a young population and serves the rest of the country with connectivity via trains and aircraft. I suspect tolerating a higher rate here is wise.
So well-off areas get preferential treatment? I can see that going down well.
Lots of areas of London are poor. Yet it is indisputable that it is the hub for everywhere else. Policy should be about reality, not optics.
So only London gets this special exemption? If you make the system unfair, people will be more inclined to ignore it.
It's based partly on hospital capacity as well as infection rates and London has got huge hospital capacity and is nowhere near the same capacity crunch as other parts of the country.
The tiers should be based on numerical criteria and nothing more. Exceed the criteria, you get pushed up a tier. All this wrangling about it not being appropriate for this or that area is really unhelpful.
London has massive hospital capacity, a young population and serves the rest of the country with connectivity via trains and aircraft. I suspect tolerating a higher rate here is wise.
So well-off areas get preferential treatment? I can see that going down well.
Lots of areas of London are poor. Yet it is indisputable that it is the hub for everywhere else. Policy should be about reality, not optics.
So only London gets this special exemption? If you make the system unfair, people will be more inclined to ignore it.
Everyone ignores it anyway.
Yet it is indisputable that London is a special case due to its high baseline activity and national importance in connectivity.
Indeed. London didn't see a big fall in lockdown, we're just going to have to live with a higher base level than the rest of the country because there is simply too much activity even under lockdown. The only thing that will save London is a rapid vaccine roll out for under 50s and the government needs to bite the bullet on that and take the bad headlines.
Under 50s don't need the vaccine though since they don't get hospitalised.
Vaccinate the over 50s and shielding under 50s and the under 50s can get back to normal automatically.
The tiers should be based on numerical criteria and nothing more. Exceed the criteria, you get pushed up a tier. All this wrangling about it not being appropriate for this or that area is really unhelpful.
London has massive hospital capacity, a young population and serves the rest of the country with connectivity via trains and aircraft. I suspect tolerating a higher rate here is wise.
So well-off areas get preferential treatment? I can see that going down well.
Lots of areas of London are poor. Yet it is indisputable that it is the hub for everywhere else. Policy should be about reality, not optics.
So only London gets this special exemption? If you make the system unfair, people will be more inclined to ignore it.
It's based partly on hospital capacity as well as infection rates and London has got huge hospital capacity and is nowhere near the same capacity crunch as other parts of the country.
Then the metric can be patience as a fraction of the hospital capacity. I still think having strict numerical criteria for which tier you are in would make this whole process easier.
The tiers should be based on numerical criteria and nothing more. Exceed the criteria, you get pushed up a tier. All this wrangling about it not being appropriate for this or that area is really unhelpful.
London has massive hospital capacity, a young population and serves the rest of the country with connectivity via trains and aircraft. I suspect tolerating a higher rate here is wise.
So well-off areas get preferential treatment? I can see that going down well.
Lots of areas of London are poor. Yet it is indisputable that it is the hub for everywhere else. Policy should be about reality, not optics.
So only London gets this special exemption? If you make the system unfair, people will be more inclined to ignore it.
Everyone ignores it anyway.
Yet it is indisputable that London is a special case due to its high baseline activity and national importance in connectivity.
And hospital capacity and a much younger population that are less likely to suffer serious symptoms that need hospitalisation and far, far fewer multi-generation households as London is the home of the young professional private renter shared household.
The tiers should be based on numerical criteria and nothing more. Exceed the criteria, you get pushed up a tier. All this wrangling about it not being appropriate for this or that area is really unhelpful.
London has massive hospital capacity, a young population and serves the rest of the country with connectivity via trains and aircraft. I suspect tolerating a higher rate here is wise.
So well-off areas get preferential treatment? I can see that going down well.
Lots of areas of London are poor. Yet it is indisputable that it is the hub for everywhere else. Policy should be about reality, not optics.
So only London gets this special exemption? If you make the system unfair, people will be more inclined to ignore it.
London already does get exceptional and unfair treatment in just about every policy that any government has ever implemented.
C-19 isn't any different.
Agreed. A major cause of the disunity in the UK is London.
"Outdated attitudes" with zero censorship is perfectly reasonable. Let the snowflakes not watch it having been warned let everyone else watch it unfiltered and uncensored.
I don't have a problem with the policy, 'outdated attitudes' just feels ill defined as a term.
Would you feel comfortable filming this today?
If no: it is outdated.
Who is 'you' in this scenario? I wouldn't film a dog called n****r, as that would feel gratuitously offensive, but I'd be quite comfortable to film characters that had a wide variety of views, including racist ones, as part of a story.
Well precisely. So it is outdated. You can film things today set in the past knowing it is outdated when you film it. Because it accurately reflects the era.
A slightly different example of this is the use of smoking in TV and films. There has been a long running campaign to rem
At the other extreme - and something I think is completely unacceptable - companies are now editing old films and photos to remove images of people smoking. In the UK this has included censoring photos of both Churchill and IKB to remove cigars from their hands.
I don't understand how difficult it is for some people not to appreciate that people in the past thought and acted differently, and people in the future will think and act differently.
I can't begin to think what his source would be for that. Nothing springs to mind from, say, Aristophanes or Menander or Plautus or Petronius which gives us a steer either way about master/slave sex initiation techniques, and I am not sure where else to look. There's a lot of contemporary evidence to suggest that Epsteinian transactions are dressed up in a pretence of flirtation and seduction even when the reality is recognised all round as basic, choice-free sex trafficking. So where is Mr Gabb getting this stuff from?
In Petronius' Satyricon, Trimalchio is quite frank that he was used for sex by his master, when he was a slave, and states that there is no shame in serving the master's pleasure. Martial remarks that his wife is willing to let him bugger her, but he tells her that his slave boy's backside is better than hers, for that purpose. Then there is Plato's Phaidon, in which Phaedo of Elis was kept as a sex slave, due to his personal beauty. Marcus Arelius was considered remarkably self-restrained, not to take advantage of the attractive slaves in his employ.
Not the point. We all agree that masters had sex with slaves, what we are talking about is how the transaction was initiated.
You instruct your slave what your slave is to do. The slave has no choice in the matter.
Also, it is widely accepted that Romans could have slaves mutilated, tortured or thrown to the lampreys. Slaves were possessions, not people. If Romans had the power to kill their slaves as they wished, I find it hard to believe they weren’t allowed to sodomise them
Of course they could and did, but that doesn't mean they always did. Any more than all Englishmen routinely raped their wives in the days before marital rape became a crime.
Clearly the Tories mucked up the pandemic again in the latter part of this year.
I was talking about cases going out of control from July onwards and was laughed at by my peers. I was calling for a lockdown then and I was absolutely right.
Indeed. By September it was patently obvious that the measures they were announcing were insufficient and would lead to national lockdown.
Drakeford's errors are bizarre though. He had the courage and foresight to go firebreak earlier than other leaders. It seemed like he understood the virus. And now he has messed up all that good work.
I struggle to think of a time when a policy was a) so obviously the right call based on the evidence b) overwhelmingly popular according to the polls... and yet was so resisted by politicians.
Because lockdowns devastate economies. And ruined economies mean ruined lives. I don’t envy politicians who have to make the call.
I really think this is wrong. The virus devastates economies. Lockdowns are good for the economy because they reduce the virus faster.
Yes; most economists support them for that reason. It’s usually just casual commentators who are wedded to the need for a narrative that it must be a seesaw choice “protect public health OR protect the economy.”
In reality, the vast majority of economists point out that the choice is “protect public health AND the economy... or lose out on both.”
No. We simply don’t know yet. You could be right, you could be wrong. We are still in the middle of this pandemic (with maybe the worst yet to come - medically and/or economically). eg We have no idea what the long term effects will be, of closing down great world cities. We assume they will simply bounce back. What if they don’t? What if suicide rates soar? What if the vaccines don’t work as hoped?
It will be several long years before we can look back and say Yes, lockdowns were the best option. Or not.
The vaccines work, but need to be paired with a clear programme of risk segmentation. Vaccinate the vulnerable, let everyone else get on with their lives.
I said “work AS HOPED”. What if they wear off quickly and new doses are less effective or useless? What if the virus mutates rendering them pointless. There are so many imponderables.
And that is my argument. I respect Andy Cooke’s well informed opinions on covid. But in this case he is prematurely emphatic. We’re still in the midst of this terrible crisis, we cannot be sure we are doing the right thing, we are doing what seems feasibly effective - and praying.
"Outdated attitudes" with zero censorship is perfectly reasonable. Let the snowflakes not watch it having been warned let everyone else watch it unfiltered and uncensored.
I don't have a problem with the policy, 'outdated attitudes' just feels ill defined as a term.
Would you feel comfortable filming this today?
If no: it is outdated.
Who is 'you' in this scenario? I wouldn't film a dog called n****r, as that would feel gratuitously offensive, but I'd be quite comfortable to film characters that had a wide variety of views, including racist ones, as part of a story.
Well precisely. So it is outdated. You can film things today set in the past knowing it is outdated when you film it. Because it accurately reflects the era.
A slightly different example of this is the use of smoking in TV and films. There has been a long running campaign to rem
At the other extreme - and something I think is completely unacceptable - companies are now editing old films and photos to remove images of people smoking. In the UK this has included censoring photos of both Churchill and IKB to remove cigars from their hands.
I don't understand how difficult it is for some people not to appreciate that people in the past thought and acted differently, and people in the future will think and act differently.
I can't begin to think what his source would be for that. Nothing springs to mind from, say, Aristophanes or Menander or Plautus or Petronius which gives us a steer either way about master/slave sex initiation techniques, and I am not sure where else to look. There's a lot of contemporary evidence to suggest that Epsteinian transactions are dressed up in a pretence of flirtation and seduction even when the reality is recognised all round as basic, choice-free sex trafficking. So where is Mr Gabb getting this stuff from?
In Petronius' Satyricon, Trimalchio is quite frank that he was used for sex by his master, when he was a slave, and states that there is no shame in serving the master's pleasure. Martial remarks that his wife is willing to let him bugger her, but he tells her that his slave boy's backside is better than hers, for that purpose. Then there is Plato's Phaidon, in which Phaedo of Elis was kept as a sex slave, due to his personal beauty. Marcus Arelius was considered remarkably self-restrained, not to take advantage of the attractive slaves in his employ.
Not the point. We all agree that masters had sex with slaves, what we are talking about is how the transaction was initiated.
You instruct your slave what your slave is to do. The slave has no choice in the matter.
So what? That is also true of employer/employee relationships, and that doesn't stop employers dressing up instructions as courteously phrased requests. Not always, but sometimes. Sexual relations come in as many different flavours as master/servant ones. so what is the basis of the evidence-free assertion that the Crassus-Antoninus scene is impossible?
If I own a slave and want to have sex with him/her why would I be courting him/her? To take more modern examples, do we really think that master/slave sex was consensual in the Deep South or West Indies?
The tiers should be based on numerical criteria and nothing more. Exceed the criteria, you get pushed up a tier. All this wrangling about it not being appropriate for this or that area is really unhelpful.
London has massive hospital capacity, a young population and serves the rest of the country with connectivity via trains and aircraft. I suspect tolerating a higher rate here is wise.
So well-off areas get preferential treatment? I can see that going down well.
Lots of areas of London are poor. Yet it is indisputable that it is the hub for everywhere else. Policy should be about reality, not optics.
So only London gets this special exemption? If you make the system unfair, people will be more inclined to ignore it.
It's based partly on hospital capacity as well as infection rates and London has got huge hospital capacity and is nowhere near the same capacity crunch as other parts of the country.
Then the metric can be patience as a fraction of the hospital capacity. I still think having strict numerical criteria for which tier you are in would make this whole process easier.
There are numerical metrics but the issue is there's not just one of them but five.
Indeed. London didn't see a big fall in lockdown, we're just going to have to live with a higher base level than the rest of the country because there is simply too much activity even under lockdown. The only thing that will save London is a rapid vaccine roll out for under 50s and the government needs to bite the bullet on that and take the bad headlines.
Under 50s don't need the vaccine though since they don't get hospitalised.
Vaccinate the over 50s and shielding under 50s and the under 50s can get back to normal automatically.
That's not going to make a difference in London because the hospitalisation rate is already lower than the rest of the country. It's about stopping young people from getting and spreading it, the AZ vaccine with the half/full dose seems to do that for under 55s so once it's approved it should be prioritised for that age group with immediate rollout.
Clearly the Tories mucked up the pandemic again in the latter part of this year.
I was talking about cases going out of control from July onwards and was laughed at by my peers. I was calling for a lockdown then and I was absolutely right.
Indeed. By September it was patently obvious that the measures they were announcing were insufficient and would lead to national lockdown.
Drakeford's errors are bizarre though. He had the courage and foresight to go firebreak earlier than other leaders. It seemed like he understood the virus. And now he has messed up all that good work.
I struggle to think of a time when a policy was a) so obviously the right call based on the evidence b) overwhelmingly popular according to the polls... and yet was so resisted by politicians.
Because lockdowns devastate economies. And ruined economies mean ruined lives. I don’t envy politicians who have to make the call.
I really think this is wrong. The virus devastates economies. Lockdowns are good for the economy because they reduce the virus faster.
Yes; most economists support them for that reason. It’s usually just casual commentators who are wedded to the need for a narrative that it must be a seesaw choice “protect public health OR protect the economy.”
In reality, the vast majority of economists point out that the choice is “protect public health AND the economy... or lose out on both.”
No. We simply don’t know yet. You could be right, you could be wrong. We are still in the middle of this pandemic (with maybe the worst yet to come - medically and/or economically). eg We have no idea what the long term effects will be, of closing down great world cities. We assume they will simply bounce back. What if they don’t? What if suicide rates soar? What if the vaccines don’t work as hoped?
It will be several long years before we can look back and say Yes, lockdowns were the best option. Or not.
But with no Lockdown the virus would have run amok and this would have led to a Lockdown. Just a less organized "people led" one.
Clearly the Tories mucked up the pandemic again in the latter part of this year.
I was talking about cases going out of control from July onwards and was laughed at by my peers. I was calling for a lockdown then and I was absolutely right.
Indeed. By September it was patently obvious that the measures they were announcing were insufficient and would lead to national lockdown.
Drakeford's errors are bizarre though. He had the courage and foresight to go firebreak earlier than other leaders. It seemed like he understood the virus. And now he has messed up all that good work.
I struggle to think of a time when a policy was a) so obviously the right call based on the evidence b) overwhelmingly popular according to the polls... and yet was so resisted by politicians.
Because lockdowns devastate economies. And ruined economies mean ruined lives. I don’t envy politicians who have to make the call.
I really think this is wrong. The virus devastates economies. Lockdowns are good for the economy because they reduce the virus faster.
Yes; most economists support them for that reason. It’s usually just casual commentators who are wedded to the need for a narrative that it must be a seesaw choice “protect public health OR protect the economy.”
In reality, the vast majority of economists point out that the choice is “protect public health AND the economy... or lose out on both.”
No. We simply don’t know yet. You could be right, you could be wrong. We are still in the middle of this pandemic (with maybe the worst yet to come - medically and/or economically). eg We have no idea what the long term effects will be, of closing down great world cities. We assume they will simply bounce back. What if they don’t? What if suicide rates soar? What if the vaccines don’t work as hoped?
It will be several long years before we can look back and say Yes, lockdowns were the best option. Or not.
The vaccines work, but need to be paired with a clear programme of risk segmentation. Vaccinate the vulnerable, let everyone else get on with their lives.
I said “work AS HOPED”. What if they wear off quickly and new doses are less effective or useless? What if the virus mutates rendering them pointless. There are so many imponderables.
And that is my argument. I respect Andy Cooke’s well informed opinions on covid. But in this case he is prematurely emphatic. We’re still in the midst of this terrible crisis, we cannot be sure we are doing the right thing, we are doing what seems feasibly effective - and praying.
The vaccines work. But prioritise them for the vulnerable then unlock. Everyone else get on with their lives.
Indeed. London didn't see a big fall in lockdown, we're just going to have to live with a higher base level than the rest of the country because there is simply too much activity even under lockdown. The only thing that will save London is a rapid vaccine roll out for under 50s and the government needs to bite the bullet on that and take the bad headlines.
Under 50s don't need the vaccine though since they don't get hospitalised.
Vaccinate the over 50s and shielding under 50s and the under 50s can get back to normal automatically.
That's not going to make a difference in London because the hospitalisation rate is already lower than the rest of the country. It's about stopping young people from getting and spreading it, the AZ vaccine with the half/full dose seems to do that for under 55s so once it's approved it should be prioritised for that age group with immediate rollout.
Hospitalisation rate is one of the five factors to determine Tiers though.
If there's no risk of hospitalisations going critical then that is a reason to stay in Tier 2.
"Outdated attitudes" with zero censorship is perfectly reasonable. Let the snowflakes not watch it having been warned let everyone else watch it unfiltered and uncensored.
I don't have a problem with the policy, 'outdated attitudes' just feels ill defined as a term.
Would you feel comfortable filming this today?
If no: it is outdated.
Who is 'you' in this scenario? I wouldn't film a dog called n****r, as that would feel gratuitously offensive, but I'd be quite comfortable to film characters that had a wide variety of views, including racist ones, as part of a story.
Well precisely. So it is outdated. You can film things today set in the past knowing it is outdated when you film it. Because it accurately reflects the era.
A slightly different example of this is the use of smoking in TV and films. There has been a long running campaign to rem
At the other extreme - and something I think is completely unacceptable - companies are now editing old films and photos to remove images of people smoking. In the UK this has included censoring photos of both Churchill and IKB to remove cigars from their hands.
I don't understand how difficult it is for some people not to appreciate that people in the past thought and acted differently, and people in the future will think and act differently.
I can't begin to think what his source would be for that. Nothing springs to mind from, say, Aristophanes or Menander or Plautus or Petronius which gives us a steer either way about master/slave sex initiation techniques, and I am not sure where else to look. There's a lot of contemporary evidence to suggest that Epsteinian transactions are dressed up in a pretence of flirtation and seduction even when the reality is recognised all round as basic, choice-free sex trafficking. So where is Mr Gabb getting this stuff from?
In Petronius' Satyricon, Trimalchio is quite frank that he was used for sex by his master, when he was a slave, and states that there is no shame in serving the master's pleasure. Martial remarks that his wife is willing to let him bugger her, but he tells her that his slave boy's backside is better than hers, for that purpose. Then there is Plato's Phaidon, in which Phaedo of Elis was kept as a sex slave, due to his personal beauty. Marcus Arelius was considered remarkably self-restrained, not to take advantage of the attractive slaves in his employ.
Not the point. We all agree that masters had sex with slaves, what we are talking about is how the transaction was initiated.
You instruct your slave what your slave is to do. The slave has no choice in the matter.
EXCEPT if we're talking about a heinous homo- helot conspiracy, fueled by degenerate Greek / Slav / Anglo / Saxon / Celto / Corno slaves using their own perverted sexuality to do double duty as a vehicle for exploiting the soft underbelly (and etc.) of the Roman Empire.
"Outdated attitudes" with zero censorship is perfectly reasonable. Let the snowflakes not watch it having been warned let everyone else watch it unfiltered and uncensored.
I don't have a problem with the policy, 'outdated attitudes' just feels ill defined as a term.
Would you feel comfortable filming this today?
If no: it is outdated.
Who is 'you' in this scenario? I wouldn't film a dog called n****r, as that would feel gratuitously offensive, but I'd be quite comfortable to film characters that had a wide variety of views, including racist ones, as part of a story.
Well precisely. So it is outdated. You can film things today set in the past knowing it is outdated when you film it. Because it accurately reflects the era.
A slightly different example of this is the use of smoking in TV and films. There has been a long running campaign to rem
At the other extreme - and something I think is completely unacceptable - companies are now editing old films and photos to remove images of people smoking. In the UK this has included censoring photos of both Churchill and IKB to remove cigars from their hands.
I don't understand how difficult it is for some people not to appreciate that people in the past thought and acted differently, and people in the future will think and act differently.
I can't begin to think what his source would be for that. Nothing springs to mind from, say, Aristophanes or Menander or Plautus or Petronius which gives us a steer either way about master/slave sex initiation techniques, and I am not sure where else to look. There's a lot of contemporary evidence to suggest that Epsteinian transactions are dressed up in a pretence of flirtation and seduction even when the reality is recognised all round as basic, choice-free sex trafficking. So where is Mr Gabb getting this stuff from?
In Petronius' Satyricon, Trimalchio is quite frank that he was used for sex by his master, when he was a slave, and states that there is no shame in serving the master's pleasure. Martial remarks that his wife is willing to let him bugger her, but he tells her that his slave boy's backside is better than hers, for that purpose. Then there is Plato's Phaidon, in which Phaedo of Elis was kept as a sex slave, due to his personal beauty. Marcus Arelius was considered remarkably self-restrained, not to take advantage of the attractive slaves in his employ.
Not the point. We all agree that masters had sex with slaves, what we are talking about is how the transaction was initiated.
You instruct your slave what your slave is to do. The slave has no choice in the matter.
So what? That is also true of employer/employee relationships, and that doesn't stop employers dressing up instructions as courteously phrased requests. Not always, but sometimes. Sexual relations come in as many different flavours as master/servant ones. so what is the basis of the evidence-free assertion that the Crassus-Antoninus scene is impossible?
If I own a slave and want to have sex with him/her why would I be courting him/her? To take more modern examples, do we really think that master/slave sex was consensual in the Deep South or West Indies?
Am I the only one who finds this discussion truly bizarre?
"Outdated attitudes" with zero censorship is perfectly reasonable. Let the snowflakes not watch it having been warned let everyone else watch it unfiltered and uncensored.
I don't have a problem with the policy, 'outdated attitudes' just feels ill defined as a term.
Would you feel comfortable filming this today?
If no: it is outdated.
Who is 'you' in this scenario? I wouldn't film a dog called n****r, as that would feel gratuitously offensive, but I'd be quite comfortable to film characters that had a wide variety of views, including racist ones, as part of a story.
Well precisely. So it is outdated. You can film things today set in the past knowing it is outdated when you film it. Because it accurately reflects the era.
A slightly different example of this is the use of smoking in TV and films. There has been a long running campaign to rem
At the other extreme - and something I think is completely unacceptable - companies are now editing old films and photos to remove images of people smoking. In the UK this has included censoring photos of both Churchill and IKB to remove cigars from their hands.
I don't understand how difficult it is for some people not to appreciate that people in the past thought and acted differently, and people in the future will think and act differently.
I can't begin to think what his source would be for that. Nothing springs to mind from, say, Aristophanes or Menander or Plautus or Petronius which gives us a steer either way about master/slave sex initiation techniques, and I am not sure where else to look. There's a lot of contemporary evidence to suggest that Epsteinian transactions are dressed up in a pretence of flirtation and seduction even when the reality is recognised all round as basic, choice-free sex trafficking. So where is Mr Gabb getting this stuff from?
In Petronius' Satyricon, Trimalchio is quite frank that he was used for sex by his master, when he was a slave, and states that there is no shame in serving the master's pleasure. Martial remarks that his wife is willing to let him bugger her, but he tells her that his slave boy's backside is better than hers, for that purpose. Then there is Plato's Phaidon, in which Phaedo of Elis was kept as a sex slave, due to his personal beauty. Marcus Arelius was considered remarkably self-restrained, not to take advantage of the attractive slaves in his employ.
Not the point. We all agree that masters had sex with slaves, what we are talking about is how the transaction was initiated.
You instruct your slave what your slave is to do. The slave has no choice in the matter.
So what? That is also true of employer/employee relationships, and that doesn't stop employers dressing up instructions as courteously phrased requests. Not always, but sometimes. Sexual relations come in as many different flavours as master/servant ones. so what is the basis of the evidence-free assertion that the Crassus-Antoninus scene is impossible?
If I own a slave and want to have sex with him/her why would I be courting him/her? To take more modern examples, do we really think that master/slave sex was consensual in the Deep South or West Indies?
I can't speak for you personally, and once again you miss the point. We are not talking about consensual yes/no, we are talking about dressed up as consensual yes/no.
Indeed. London didn't see a big fall in lockdown, we're just going to have to live with a higher base level than the rest of the country because there is simply too much activity even under lockdown. The only thing that will save London is a rapid vaccine roll out for under 50s and the government needs to bite the bullet on that and take the bad headlines.
Under 50s don't need the vaccine though since they don't get hospitalised.
Vaccinate the over 50s and shielding under 50s and the under 50s can get back to normal automatically.
That's not going to make a difference in London because the hospitalisation rate is already lower than the rest of the country. It's about stopping young people from getting and spreading it, the AZ vaccine with the half/full dose seems to do that for under 55s so once it's approved it should be prioritised for that age group with immediate rollout.
Hospitalisation rate is one of the five factors to determine Tiers though.
If there's no risk of hospitalisations going critical then that is a reason to stay in Tier 2.
Yes, and there is no risk of that in London because of the previously mentioned reasons. Putting London in tier 3 would be economic vandalism. The virus won't go away in London until the young are vaccinated and on the current schedule it's going to take ages which means the same economic vandalism will last until April and destroy this city's economy and thousands of jobs.
The tiers should be based on numerical criteria and nothing more. Exceed the criteria, you get pushed up a tier. All this wrangling about it not being appropriate for this or that area is really unhelpful.
London has massive hospital capacity, a young population and serves the rest of the country with connectivity via trains and aircraft. I suspect tolerating a higher rate here is wise.
So well-off areas get preferential treatment? I can see that going down well.
Lots of areas of London are poor. Yet it is indisputable that it is the hub for everywhere else. Policy should be about reality, not optics.
So only London gets this special exemption? If you make the system unfair, people will be more inclined to ignore it.
London already does get exceptional and unfair treatment in just about every policy that any government has ever implemented.
C-19 isn't any different.
Agreed. A major cause of the disunity in the UK is London.
I see the PB London Haters are out in force again.
Almost as tiresome as the PB Trump Bed Wetters and PB Trumpton Fantasists (but not quite).
"Outdated attitudes" with zero censorship is perfectly reasonable. Let the snowflakes not watch it having been warned let everyone else watch it unfiltered and uncensored.
I don't have a problem with the policy, 'outdated attitudes' just feels ill defined as a term.
Would you feel comfortable filming this today?
If no: it is outdated.
Who is 'you' in this scenario? I wouldn't film a dog called n****r, as that would feel gratuitously offensive, but I'd be quite comfortable to film characters that had a wide variety of views, including racist ones, as part of a story.
Well precisely. So it is outdated. You can film things today set in the past knowing it is outdated when you film it. Because it accurately reflects the era.
A slightly different example of this is the use of smoking in TV and films. There has been a long running campaign to rem
At the other extreme - and something I think is completely unacceptable - companies are now editing old films and photos to remove images of people smoking. In the UK this has included censoring photos of both Churchill and IKB to remove cigars from their hands.
I don't understand how difficult it is for some people not to appreciate that people in the past thought and acted differently, and people in the future will think and act differently.
I can't begin to think what his source would be for that. Nothing springs to mind from, say, Aristophanes or Menander or Plautus or Petronius which gives us a steer either way about master/slave sex initiation techniques, and I am not sure where else to look. There's a lot of contemporary evidence to suggest that Epsteinian transactions are dressed up in a pretence of flirtation and seduction even when the reality is recognised all round as basic, choice-free sex trafficking. So where is Mr Gabb getting this stuff from?
In Petronius' Satyricon, Trimalchio is quite frank that he was used for sex by his master, when he was a slave, and states that there is no shame in serving the master's pleasure. Martial remarks that his wife is willing to let him bugger her, but he tells her that his slave boy's backside is better than hers, for that purpose. Then there is Plato's Phaidon, in which Phaedo of Elis was kept as a sex slave, due to his personal beauty. Marcus Arelius was considered remarkably self-restrained, not to take advantage of the attractive slaves in his employ.
Not the point. We all agree that masters had sex with slaves, what we are talking about is how the transaction was initiated.
You instruct your slave what your slave is to do. The slave has no choice in the matter.
So what? That is also true of employer/employee relationships, and that doesn't stop employers dressing up instructions as courteously phrased requests. Not always, but sometimes. Sexual relations come in as many different flavours as master/servant ones. so what is the basis of the evidence-free assertion that the Crassus-Antoninus scene is impossible?
If I own a slave and want to have sex with him/her why would I be courting him/her? To take more modern examples, do we really think that master/slave sex was consensual in the Deep South or West Indies?
Am I the only one who finds this discussion truly bizarre?
It is, or started out as, an historical enquiry. What have you got against history?
"Outdated attitudes" with zero censorship is perfectly reasonable. Let the snowflakes not watch it having been warned let everyone else watch it unfiltered and uncensored.
I don't have a problem with the policy, 'outdated attitudes' just feels ill defined as a term.
Would you feel comfortable filming this today?
If no: it is outdated.
Who is 'you' in this scenario? I wouldn't film a dog called n****r, as that would feel gratuitously offensive, but I'd be quite comfortable to film characters that had a wide variety of views, including racist ones, as part of a story.
Well precisely. So it is outdated. You can film things today set in the past knowing it is outdated when you film it. Because it accurately reflects the era.
A slightly different example of this is the use of smoking in TV and films. There has been a long running campaign to rem
At the other extreme - and something I think is completely unacceptable - companies are now editing old films and photos to remove images of people smoking. In the UK this has included censoring photos of both Churchill and IKB to remove cigars from their hands.
I don't understand how difficult it is for some people not to appreciate that people in the past thought and acted differently, and people in the future will think and act differently.
I can't begin to think what his source would be for that. Nothing springs to mind from, say, Aristophanes or Menander or Plautus or Petronius which gives us a steer either way about master/slave sex initiation techniques, and I am not sure where else to look. There's a lot of contemporary evidence to suggest that Epsteinian transactions are dressed up in a pretence of flirtation and seduction even when the reality is recognised all round as basic, choice-free sex trafficking. So where is Mr Gabb getting this stuff from?
In Petronius' Satyricon, Trimalchio is quite frank that he was used for sex by his master, when he was a slave, and states that there is no shame in serving the master's pleasure. Martial remarks that his wife is willing to let him bugger her, but he tells her that his slave boy's backside is better than hers, for that purpose. Then there is Plato's Phaidon, in which Phaedo of Elis was kept as a sex slave, due to his personal beauty. Marcus Arelius was considered remarkably self-restrained, not to take advantage of the attractive slaves in his employ.
Not the point. We all agree that masters had sex with slaves, what we are talking about is how the transaction was initiated.
You instruct your slave what your slave is to do. The slave has no choice in the matter.
So what? That is also true of employer/employee relationships, and that doesn't stop employers dressing up instructions as courteously phrased requests. Not always, but sometimes. Sexual relations come in as many different flavours as master/servant ones. so what is the basis of the evidence-free assertion that the Crassus-Antoninus scene is impossible?
If I own a slave and want to have sex with him/her why would I be courting him/her? To take more modern examples, do we really think that master/slave sex was consensual in the Deep South or West Indies?
I can't speak for you personally, and once again you miss the point. We are not talking about consensual yes/no, we are talking about dressed up as consensual yes/no.
Don’t know if this is an authoritative source, but:
‘A Roman Citizen was allowed to exploit his own slaves for sex, no matter the age or circumstances of birth. A freeborn Roman could even rape, torture and abuse their property without charge or prosecution. A slave had no civil protection or authority pertaining to their body; in essence the body of a slave was to be used to appease the sexual appetites of their Dominus.’
So based on R, Wales is not quite the basket case we'd assumed?
Wales hospital derived R is basically useless as the underlying data is complete garbage. The case data is much better but even that has a much longer lead time than England, Scotland and NI for backfilling. Today, for example, no new cases were added for Wales which means cases for 7 days ago are still incomplete.
Indeed. London didn't see a big fall in lockdown, we're just going to have to live with a higher base level than the rest of the country because there is simply too much activity even under lockdown. The only thing that will save London is a rapid vaccine roll out for under 50s and the government needs to bite the bullet on that and take the bad headlines.
Under 50s don't need the vaccine though since they don't get hospitalised.
Vaccinate the over 50s and shielding under 50s and the under 50s can get back to normal automatically.
That's not going to make a difference in London because the hospitalisation rate is already lower than the rest of the country. It's about stopping young people from getting and spreading it, the AZ vaccine with the half/full dose seems to do that for under 55s so once it's approved it should be prioritised for that age group with immediate rollout.
Hospitalisation rate is one of the five factors to determine Tiers though.
If there's no risk of hospitalisations going critical then that is a reason to stay in Tier 2.
Yes, and there is no risk of that in London because of the previously mentioned reasons. Putting London in tier 3 would be economic vandalism. The virus won't go away in London until the young are vaccinated and on the current schedule it's going to take ages which means the same economic vandalism will last until April and destroy this city's economy and thousands of jobs.
Indeed so if the hospitalisations are not an issue stay in Tier 2 but don't waste the vaccines on those who don't need it until there's spares.
We ought to be able to eliminate Tier 3 nationwide rapidly with a vaccine rollout. A quarter of hospitalisations come from care homes alone.
"Outdated attitudes" with zero censorship is perfectly reasonable. Let the snowflakes not watch it having been warned let everyone else watch it unfiltered and uncensored.
I don't have a problem with the policy, 'outdated attitudes' just feels ill defined as a term.
Would you feel comfortable filming this today?
If no: it is outdated.
Who is 'you' in this scenario? I wouldn't film a dog called n****r, as that would feel gratuitously offensive, but I'd be quite comfortable to film characters that had a wide variety of views, including racist ones, as part of a story.
Well precisely. So it is outdated. You can film things today set in the past knowing it is outdated when you film it. Because it accurately reflects the era.
A slightly different example of this is the use of smoking in TV and films. There has been a long running campaign to rem
At the other extreme - and something I think is completely unacceptable - companies are now editing old films and photos to remove images of people smoking. In the UK this has included censoring photos of both Churchill and IKB to remove cigars from their hands.
I don't understand how difficult it is for some people not to appreciate that people in the past thought and acted differently, and people in the future will think and act differently.
I can't begin to think what his source would be for that. Nothing springs to mind from, say, Aristophanes or Menander or Plautus or Petronius which gives us a steer either way about master/slave sex initiation techniques, and I am not sure where else to look. There's a lot of contemporary evidence to suggest that Epsteinian transactions are dressed up in a pretence of flirtation and seduction even when the reality is recognised all round as basic, choice-free sex trafficking. So where is Mr Gabb getting this stuff from?
In Petronius' Satyricon, Trimalchio is quite frank that he was used for sex by his master, when he was a slave, and states that there is no shame in serving the master's pleasure. Martial remarks that his wife is willing to let him bugger her, but he tells her that his slave boy's backside is better than hers, for that purpose. Then there is Plato's Phaidon, in which Phaedo of Elis was kept as a sex slave, due to his personal beauty. Marcus Arelius was considered remarkably self-restrained, not to take advantage of the attractive slaves in his employ.
Not the point. We all agree that masters had sex with slaves, what we are talking about is how the transaction was initiated.
You instruct your slave what your slave is to do. The slave has no choice in the matter.
So what? That is also true of employer/employee relationships, and that doesn't stop employers dressing up instructions as courteously phrased requests. Not always, but sometimes. Sexual relations come in as many different flavours as master/servant ones. so what is the basis of the evidence-free assertion that the Crassus-Antoninus scene is impossible?
If I own a slave and want to have sex with him/her why would I be courting him/her? To take more modern examples, do we really think that master/slave sex was consensual in the Deep South or West Indies?
Am I the only one who finds this discussion truly bizarre?
Very. And I'll be buggered if I'm going to join in.
"Outdated attitudes" with zero censorship is perfectly reasonable. Let the snowflakes not watch it having been warned let everyone else watch it unfiltered and uncensored.
I don't have a problem with the policy, 'outdated attitudes' just feels ill defined as a term.
Would you feel comfortable filming this today?
If no: it is outdated.
Who is 'you' in this scenario? I wouldn't film a dog called n****r, as that would feel gratuitously offensive, but I'd be quite comfortable to film characters that had a wide variety of views, including racist ones, as part of a story.
Well precisely. So it is outdated. You can film things today set in the past knowing it is outdated when you film it. Because it accurately reflects the era.
A slightly different example of this is the use of smoking in TV and films. There has been a long running campaign to rem
At the other extreme - and something I think is completely unacceptable - companies are now editing old films and photos to remove images of people smoking. In the UK this has included censoring photos of both Churchill and IKB to remove cigars from their hands.
I don't understand how difficult it is for some people not to appreciate that people in the past thought and acted differently, and people in the future will think and act differently.
I can't begin to think what his source would be for that. Nothing springs to mind from, say, Aristophanes or Menander or Plautus or Petronius which gives us a steer either way about master/slave sex initiation techniques, and I am not sure where else to look. There's a lot of contemporary evidence to suggest that Epsteinian transactions are dressed up in a pretence of flirtation and seduction even when the reality is recognised all round as basic, choice-free sex trafficking. So where is Mr Gabb getting this stuff from?
In Petronius' Satyricon, Trimalchio is quite frank that he was used for sex by his master, when he was a slave, and states that there is no shame in serving the master's pleasure. Martial remarks that his wife is willing to let him bugger her, but he tells her that his slave boy's backside is better than hers, for that purpose. Then there is Plato's Phaidon, in which Phaedo of Elis was kept as a sex slave, due to his personal beauty. Marcus Arelius was considered remarkably self-restrained, not to take advantage of the attractive slaves in his employ.
Not the point. We all agree that masters had sex with slaves, what we are talking about is how the transaction was initiated.
You instruct your slave what your slave is to do. The slave has no choice in the matter.
So what? That is also true of employer/employee relationships, and that doesn't stop employers dressing up instructions as courteously phrased requests. Not always, but sometimes. Sexual relations come in as many different flavours as master/servant ones. so what is the basis of the evidence-free assertion that the Crassus-Antoninus scene is impossible?
If I own a slave and want to have sex with him/her why would I be courting him/her? To take more modern examples, do we really think that master/slave sex was consensual in the Deep South or West Indies?
Am I the only one who finds this discussion truly bizarre?
It is, or started out as, an historical enquiry. What have you got against history?
It also makes a refreshing change from endless discussion of Covid/Brexit
Indeed. London didn't see a big fall in lockdown, we're just going to have to live with a higher base level than the rest of the country because there is simply too much activity even under lockdown. The only thing that will save London is a rapid vaccine roll out for under 50s and the government needs to bite the bullet on that and take the bad headlines.
Under 50s don't need the vaccine though since they don't get hospitalised.
Vaccinate the over 50s and shielding under 50s and the under 50s can get back to normal automatically.
That's not going to make a difference in London because the hospitalisation rate is already lower than the rest of the country. It's about stopping young people from getting and spreading it, the AZ vaccine with the half/full dose seems to do that for under 55s so once it's approved it should be prioritised for that age group with immediate rollout.
Hospitalisation rate is one of the five factors to determine Tiers though.
If there's no risk of hospitalisations going critical then that is a reason to stay in Tier 2.
Yes, and there is no risk of that in London because of the previously mentioned reasons. Putting London in tier 3 would be economic vandalism. The virus won't go away in London until the young are vaccinated and on the current schedule it's going to take ages which means the same economic vandalism will last until April and destroy this city's economy and thousands of jobs.
Indeed so if the hospitalisations are not an issue stay in Tier 2 but don't waste the vaccines on those who don't need it until there's spares.
We ought to be able to eliminate Tier 3 nationwide rapidly with a vaccine rollout. A quarter of hospitalisations come from care homes alone.
So London is just fucked until April then because you don't want to vaccinate the people who live here even though the hospitalisation rate is still very low. Unless you're saying you agree that London shouldn't be placed into tier 3.
"Outdated attitudes" with zero censorship is perfectly reasonable. Let the snowflakes not watch it having been warned let everyone else watch it unfiltered and uncensored.
I don't have a problem with the policy, 'outdated attitudes' just feels ill defined as a term.
Would you feel comfortable filming this today?
If no: it is outdated.
Who is 'you' in this scenario? I wouldn't film a dog called n****r, as that would feel gratuitously offensive, but I'd be quite comfortable to film characters that had a wide variety of views, including racist ones, as part of a story.
Well precisely. So it is outdated. You can film things today set in the past knowing it is outdated when you film it. Because it accurately reflects the era.
A slightly different example of this is the use of smoking in TV and films. There has been a long running campaign to rem
At the other extreme - and something I think is completely unacceptable - companies are now editing old films and photos to remove images of people smoking. In the UK this has included censoring photos of both Churchill and IKB to remove cigars from their hands.
I don't understand how difficult it is for some people not to appreciate that people in the past thought and acted differently, and people in the future will think and act differently.
I can't begin to think what his source would be for that. Nothing springs to mind from, say, Aristophanes or Menander or Plautus or Petronius which gives us a steer either way about master/slave sex initiation techniques, and I am not sure where else to look. There's a lot of contemporary evidence to suggest that Epsteinian transactions are dressed up in a pretence of flirtation and seduction even when the reality is recognised all round as basic, choice-free sex trafficking. So where is Mr Gabb getting this stuff from?
In Petronius' Satyricon, Trimalchio is quite frank that he was used for sex by his master, when he was a slave, and states that there is no shame in serving the master's pleasure. Martial remarks that his wife is willing to let him bugger her, but he tells her that his slave boy's backside is better than hers, for that purpose. Then there is Plato's Phaidon, in which Phaedo of Elis was kept as a sex slave, due to his personal beauty. Marcus Arelius was considered remarkably self-restrained, not to take advantage of the attractive slaves in his employ.
Not the point. We all agree that masters had sex with slaves, what we are talking about is how the transaction was initiated.
You instruct your slave what your slave is to do. The slave has no choice in the matter.
So what? That is also true of employer/employee relationships, and that doesn't stop employers dressing up instructions as courteously phrased requests. Not always, but sometimes. Sexual relations come in as many different flavours as master/servant ones. so what is the basis of the evidence-free assertion that the Crassus-Antoninus scene is impossible?
If I own a slave and want to have sex with him/her why would I be courting him/her? To take more modern examples, do we really think that master/slave sex was consensual in the Deep South or West Indies?
I can't speak for you personally, and once again you miss the point. We are not talking about consensual yes/no, we are talking about dressed up as consensual yes/no.
Don’t know if this is an authoritative source, but:
‘A Roman Citizen was allowed to exploit his own slaves for sex, no matter the age or circumstances of birth. A freeborn Roman could even rape, torture and abuse their property without charge or prosecution. A slave had no civil protection or authority pertaining to their body; in essence the body of a slave was to be used to appease the sexual appetites of their Dominus.’
Nobody disputes that. We are not asking whether they could but whether they invariably did. That was not, for instance, the relationship between Cicero and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Tullius_Tiro.
Clearly the Tories mucked up the pandemic again in the latter part of this year.
I was talking about cases going out of control from July onwards and was laughed at by my peers. I was calling for a lockdown then and I was absolutely right.
Indeed. By September it was patently obvious that the measures they were announcing were insufficient and would lead to national lockdown.
Drakeford's errors are bizarre though. He had the courage and foresight to go firebreak earlier than other leaders. It seemed like he understood the virus. And now he has messed up all that good work.
I struggle to think of a time when a policy was a) so obviously the right call based on the evidence b) overwhelmingly popular according to the polls... and yet was so resisted by politicians.
Because lockdowns devastate economies. And ruined economies mean ruined lives. I don’t envy politicians who have to make the call.
I really think this is wrong. The virus devastates economies. Lockdowns are good for the economy because they reduce the virus faster.
Yes; most economists support them for that reason. It’s usually just casual commentators who are wedded to the need for a narrative that it must be a seesaw choice “protect public health OR protect the economy.”
In reality, the vast majority of economists point out that the choice is “protect public health AND the economy... or lose out on both.”
No. We simply don’t know yet. You could be right, you could be wrong. We are still in the middle of this pandemic (with maybe the worst yet to come - medically and/or economically). eg We have no idea what the long term effects will be, of closing down great world cities. We assume they will simply bounce back. What if they don’t? What if suicide rates soar? What if the vaccines don’t work as hoped?
It will be several long years before we can look back and say Yes, lockdowns were the best option. Or not.
Well, at least we've progressed from a bald statement that "lockdowns devastate economies" to "we simply don't know yet."
It's not my claim. It's that of economists who've spent careers studying what happened (and happens) to economies during pandemics, and comparing those who exercise more restrictions to protect public health to those who don't (and investigating confounding factors that confuse the situation and cause variance).
And, overwhelmingly, conclude that it's the precise opposite of "lockdowns devastate economies." Failing to take sufficient action (including lockdowns and other restrictions) is what devastates economies.
The problem is, though... I believe you are a writer? So you understand the overwhelming power of narrative. The so-attractive narrative siren-calling us is to mentally frame it as one or the other, antagonistic forces, requiring a difficult choice to be made by hard-nosed people.
What chance does something counterintuitive have against narrative? Any more than we would hope for a dog with stitches to accept that the Cone of Shame is better to have on him than not.
If we'd had the two week firebreak we would be in the position where Drakeford is now which is even worse.
Thanks to taking the time to try the Tiers we found out that the original Tier system didn't work, took a 4 week lockdown that did and put in stricter Tiers as a result afterwards.
So how is taking time to consider all the evidence as we did a bad thing?
There's a graph in the paper that shows it wonderfully well.
But here's two bits that stood out.
As a result, more than 1.3 million extra infections are estimated to have spread across the country. We heard evidence that one intensive care ward in Manchester became so overwhelmed that patients were left to die without the life-saving care they needed......
..The next day in the Commons, Wednesday, October 14, Sunak hit back, accusing Labour of being “detached from reality” and being irresponsible for not acknowledging “the economic cost of a blunt national lockdown”. This was little more than two weeks before the government would perform a U-turn and announce a lockdown.
Does the graph show England doing worse than Wales? 🤔
A blunt lockdown failed where it was tried.
By taking time to test Tiers we surely have a better outcome now than if we had just gone for a 2 weeks firebreak then back to the status quo ante which is what the advice was and Wales tried.
Fake news again! The Wales Lockdown worked in the short term, it only failed in the medium term because it was too short and the moment we exited it was party time.
I reluctantly went hunter-gathering this afternoon to Waitrose in Cowbridge. Sunday afternoon, just before closing time, it'll be quiet I thought. Waitrose was rammed to the extent that trolley usage was like the dodgems. I got what was on my list and left.
Drakeford might be clueless, but his citizens seem even dafter.
I estimate that England is ten to fourteen days behind, so good luck.
Short term is meaningless which was my precise point! Medium term is relevant.
The fact they reverted from the firebreak back to the status quo ante restrictions was Drakeford's policy and Drakeford gave the attitude that the two weeks was sufficient so why not party afterwards?
In contrast in England as they had tried the Tiers first post lockdown they knew NOT to go back into the original Tiers afterwards so the post lockdown Tiers were different to the pre lockdown Tiers.
I see no reason why if we had followed the 2 week firebreak advice we wouldn't have followed Drakeford's path which seems worse than what has actually happened in the medium term.
We should have been in a long lock down in September.
I had a quarterly appointment at Manchester Royal Infirmary last week with a specialist endocrine nurse.
When I saw her in September she was shattered, she had spent the summer on the positive C-19 ward as she was deemed 'safe' as she is young (in her 30s).
Each day getting home after hours in PPE, getting totally undressed at the front door, putting all her clothes in the washing machine and then ages in the shower petrified she'd bring the virus into her family.
Since Sept she is back on the endocrine side of things.
There are no consultants available, there have been none since March, they are all running and working on the C-19 positive wards.
Patients are getting very impatient, she commented that clap for carers on a Thursday night seems a long time ago and the public have turned against them as they are not getting the care they expect.
There are staff on the positive C-19 wards and positive C-19 ICU ward in Manchester that have worked 6 and 7 days weeks, every week, with no holiday, since March, 10+ hours every single day.
She said the staff are at breaking point in Manchester on the positive wards, the patients are at breaking point through lack of any healthcare service.
Once we do see a reduction in C-19 when vaccines start to have a material impact a vast swathe of the NHS needs a long holiday, a very long holiday.
The awful management of this by the government has let this continue, they have permitted levels to stay high so long as the NHS is not totally overwhelmed with zero care whatsoever on the impact of those working in the NHS or those who desperately require the healthcare that is provides.
A terrible strategy that they deserve to be absolutely hammered for.
Not quite as bad where I am, but fatigue is certainly telling on our respiratory unit, where 40% were off sick the other week. Lots of conscripts from other departments, and mostly willing, but inexperienced in respiratory matters so needing supervision. Our Trust realised in March that this was a marathon rather than sprint, and honours leave requests. Indeed has instructed people to take, recognising that planned breaks are better than breakdown.
I was never into the "Clap for Carers", but now frontline staff are increasingly being abused and threatened by patients and relatives. Not me personally, but some of our HCAs have been brought to tears by mask refusers, and other non compliers with infection control policy, just for doing their jobs.
NB: Slight fluey feeling and sore deltoid after vaccination this AM, but no more than a usual flu jab. I suppose it is evidence of immunology at work, so a good thing perhaps.
Indeed. London didn't see a big fall in lockdown, we're just going to have to live with a higher base level than the rest of the country because there is simply too much activity even under lockdown. The only thing that will save London is a rapid vaccine roll out for under 50s and the government needs to bite the bullet on that and take the bad headlines.
Under 50s don't need the vaccine though since they don't get hospitalised.
Vaccinate the over 50s and shielding under 50s and the under 50s can get back to normal automatically.
That's not going to make a difference in London because the hospitalisation rate is already lower than the rest of the country. It's about stopping young people from getting and spreading it, the AZ vaccine with the half/full dose seems to do that for under 55s so once it's approved it should be prioritised for that age group with immediate rollout.
Hospitalisation rate is one of the five factors to determine Tiers though.
If there's no risk of hospitalisations going critical then that is a reason to stay in Tier 2.
Yes, and there is no risk of that in London because of the previously mentioned reasons. Putting London in tier 3 would be economic vandalism. The virus won't go away in London until the young are vaccinated and on the current schedule it's going to take ages which means the same economic vandalism will last until April and destroy this city's economy and thousands of jobs.
Indeed so if the hospitalisations are not an issue stay in Tier 2 but don't waste the vaccines on those who don't need it until there's spares.
We ought to be able to eliminate Tier 3 nationwide rapidly with a vaccine rollout. A quarter of hospitalisations come from care homes alone.
So London is just fucked until April then because you don't want to vaccinate the people who live here even though the hospitalisation rate is still very low. Unless you're saying you agree that London shouldn't be placed into tier 3.
I'm saying it should be Tier 2 unless hospitalisations are becoming or forecast to become a problem.
And the entire nation is fucked until the vaccine is rolled out. It should be prioritised on those who face hospitalisation to ensure we end these damn Tiers ASAP.
"Outdated attitudes" with zero censorship is perfectly reasonable. Let the snowflakes not watch it having been warned let everyone else watch it unfiltered and uncensored.
I don't have a problem with the policy, 'outdated attitudes' just feels ill defined as a term.
Would you feel comfortable filming this today?
If no: it is outdated.
Who is 'you' in this scenario? I wouldn't film a dog called n****r, as that would feel gratuitously offensive, but I'd be quite comfortable to film characters that had a wide variety of views, including racist ones, as part of a story.
Well precisely. So it is outdated. You can film things today set in the past knowing it is outdated when you film it. Because it accurately reflects the era.
A slightly different example of this is the use of smoking in TV and films. There has been a long running campaign to rem
At the other extreme - and something I think is completely unacceptable - companies are now editing old films and photos to remove images of people smoking. In the UK this has included censoring photos of both Churchill and IKB to remove cigars from their hands.
I don't understand how difficult it is for some people not to appreciate that people in the past thought and acted differently, and people in the future will think and act differently.
I can't begin to think what his source would be for that. Nothing springs to mind from, say, Aristophanes or Menander or Plautus or Petronius which gives us a steer either way about master/slave sex initiation techniques, and I am not sure where else to look. There's a lot of contemporary evidence to suggest that Epsteinian transactions are dressed up in a pretence of flirtation and seduction even when the reality is recognised all round as basic, choice-free sex trafficking. So where is Mr Gabb getting this stuff from?
In Petronius' Satyricon, Trimalchio is quite frank that he was used for sex by his master, when he was a slave, and states that there is no shame in serving the master's pleasure. Martial remarks that his wife is willing to let him bugger her, but he tells her that his slave boy's backside is better than hers, for that purpose. Then there is Plato's Phaidon, in which Phaedo of Elis was kept as a sex slave, due to his personal beauty. Marcus Arelius was considered remarkably self-restrained, not to take advantage of the attractive slaves in his employ.
Not the point. We all agree that masters had sex with slaves, what we are talking about is how the transaction was initiated.
You instruct your slave what your slave is to do. The slave has no choice in the matter.
So what? That is also true of employer/employee relationships, and that doesn't stop employers dressing up instructions as courteously phrased requests. Not always, but sometimes. Sexual relations come in as many different flavours as master/servant ones. so what is the basis of the evidence-free assertion that the Crassus-Antoninus scene is impossible?
If I own a slave and want to have sex with him/her why would I be courting him/her? To take more modern examples, do we really think that master/slave sex was consensual in the Deep South or West Indies?
I can't speak for you personally, and once again you miss the point. We are not talking about consensual yes/no, we are talking about dressed up as consensual yes/no.
Don’t know if this is an authoritative source, but:
‘A Roman Citizen was allowed to exploit his own slaves for sex, no matter the age or circumstances of birth. A freeborn Roman could even rape, torture and abuse their property without charge or prosecution. A slave had no civil protection or authority pertaining to their body; in essence the body of a slave was to be used to appease the sexual appetites of their Dominus.’
Nobody disputes that. We are not asking whether they could but whether they invariably did. That was not, for instance, the relationship between Cicero and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Tullius_Tiro.
Is that what we are arguing? Then there is no argument. Of course there were some Romans who treated their slaves well, some even fell in love, and freed them, and so on.
But the main point is that Romans had absolute sexual ownership of their slaves, and many regularly exploited this. It was the norm.
Indeed. London didn't see a big fall in lockdown, we're just going to have to live with a higher base level than the rest of the country because there is simply too much activity even under lockdown. The only thing that will save London is a rapid vaccine roll out for under 50s and the government needs to bite the bullet on that and take the bad headlines.
Under 50s don't need the vaccine though since they don't get hospitalised.
Vaccinate the over 50s and shielding under 50s and the under 50s can get back to normal automatically.
That's not going to make a difference in London because the hospitalisation rate is already lower than the rest of the country. It's about stopping young people from getting and spreading it, the AZ vaccine with the half/full dose seems to do that for under 55s so once it's approved it should be prioritised for that age group with immediate rollout.
Hospitalisation rate is one of the five factors to determine Tiers though.
If there's no risk of hospitalisations going critical then that is a reason to stay in Tier 2.
Yes, and there is no risk of that in London because of the previously mentioned reasons. Putting London in tier 3 would be economic vandalism. The virus won't go away in London until the young are vaccinated and on the current schedule it's going to take ages which means the same economic vandalism will last until April and destroy this city's economy and thousands of jobs.
Indeed so if the hospitalisations are not an issue stay in Tier 2 but don't waste the vaccines on those who don't need it until there's spares.
We ought to be able to eliminate Tier 3 nationwide rapidly with a vaccine rollout. A quarter of hospitalisations come from care homes alone.
So London is just fucked until April then because you don't want to vaccinate the people who live here even though the hospitalisation rate is still very low. Unless you're saying you agree that London shouldn't be placed into tier 3.
I'm saying it should be Tier 2 unless hospitalisations are becoming or forecast to become a problem.
And the entire nation is fucked until the vaccine is rolled out. It should be prioritised on those who face hospitalisation to ensure we end these damn Tiers ASAP.
Ok fair enough, but on the current data the case for tier 3 in London hasn't been made.
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EXCLUSIVE: U.S. Treasury breached by hackers backed by foreign government - sources
I had a quarterly appointment at Manchester Royal Infirmary last week with a specialist endocrine nurse.
When I saw her in September she was shattered, she had spent the summer on the positive C-19 ward as she was deemed 'safe' as she is young (in her 30s).
Each day getting home after hours in PPE, getting totally undressed at the front door, putting all her clothes in the washing machine and then ages in the shower petrified she'd bring the virus into her family.
Since Sept she is back on the endocrine side of things.
There are no consultants available, there have been none since March, they are all running and working on the C-19 positive wards.
Patients are getting very impatient, she commented that clap for carers on a Thursday night seems a long time ago and the public have turned against them as they are not getting the care they expect.
There are staff on the positive C-19 wards and positive C-19 ICU ward in Manchester that have worked 6 and 7 days weeks, every week, with no holiday, since March, 10+ hours every single day.
She said the staff are at breaking point in Manchester on the positive wards, the patients are at breaking point through lack of any healthcare service.
Once we do see a reduction in C-19 when vaccines start to have a material impact a vast swathe of the NHS needs a long holiday, a very long holiday.
The awful management of this by the government has let this continue, they have permitted levels to stay high so long as the NHS is not totally overwhelmed with zero care whatsoever on the impact of those working in the NHS or those who desperately require the healthcare that is provides.
A terrible strategy that they deserve to be absolutely hammered for.
https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-cyber-amazoncom/exclusive-u-s-treasury-breached-by-hackers-backed-by-foreign-government-sources-idUSL1N2IT0HS
The first couple of episodes were shown in a private viewing to the actual staff of the DGSE, and got a standing ovation. The series really does show their jobs in the round, rather than concentrating mostly on dramatic action like, for example, Homeland.
Spiral was great - i too hope they don’t ruin it. The French-Danish co-operation DNA is also worth a look, although I though its credibility flagged somewhat by the end.
Not a bloody free for all.
And of course the English government didn't learn the lesson.
Now, while the rest of Europe is locking down for Christmas, we are letting rip.
From case data
From hospitalisation data
Party before and party after is human nature, we saw that in Lockdown 1, and when Liverpool went into Tier 3 etc so shouldn't be a shock to anyone.
It’s usually just casual commentators who are wedded to the need for a narrative that it must be a seesaw choice “protect public health OR protect the economy.”
In reality, the vast majority of economists point out that the choice is “protect public health AND the economy... or lose out on both.”
https://twitter.com/EveningStandard/status/1338198021939601411
The 5 southern boroughs of Greater Manchester, Trafford, Stockport, Tameside, Salford and Manchester should have been in tier 2 if this was an acceptable option, but this was declined by the London loving, northern hating government we have.
https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/1338140393880301569
Anyone know why we let the criminal Iain Dale on our TV?
I cannot take it with me so I am buggered if I'm going to compromise on quality.
It hasn't always been that way - I had plenty of years of seeking out the cheapest options.
(Pre lockdown Tiers I mean, not sure about post for Yorkshire)
There's been a lot of studies done on it but for every ten points of tariffs the exporting company takes 5-7 points if margin loss and the importing consumer sees a 3-5% price rise.
It will be several long years before we can look back and say Yes, lockdowns were the best option. Or not.
The firebreak really is the fad diet solution.
C-19 isn't any different.
Yet it is indisputable that London is a special case due to its high baseline activity and national importance in connectivity.
Vaccinate the over 50s and shielding under 50s and the under 50s can get back to normal automatically.
And that is my argument. I respect Andy Cooke’s well informed opinions on covid. But in this case he is prematurely emphatic. We’re still in the midst of this terrible crisis, we cannot be sure we are doing the right thing, we are doing what seems feasibly effective - and praying.
--AS
If there's no risk of hospitalisations going critical then that is a reason to stay in Tier 2.
Almost as tiresome as the PB Trump Bed Wetters and PB Trumpton Fantasists (but not quite).
Once the priorities are done then absolutely vaccinate the rest of us but we aren't the priority of the reason for restrictions.
EU style fudge, you can have Christmas day, rule of 6, no oldies.
‘A Roman Citizen was allowed to exploit his own slaves for sex, no matter the age or circumstances of birth. A freeborn Roman could even rape, torture and abuse their property without charge or prosecution. A slave had no civil protection or authority pertaining to their body; in essence the body of a slave was to be used to appease the sexual appetites of their Dominus.’
https://www.heritagedaily.com/2018/01/roman-sex-sexuality-slaves-and-lex-scantinia/97996
We ought to be able to eliminate Tier 3 nationwide rapidly with a vaccine rollout. A quarter of hospitalisations come from care homes alone.
It's not my claim. It's that of economists who've spent careers studying what happened (and happens) to economies during pandemics, and comparing those who exercise more restrictions to protect public health to those who don't (and investigating confounding factors that confuse the situation and cause variance).
And, overwhelmingly, conclude that it's the precise opposite of "lockdowns devastate economies." Failing to take sufficient action (including lockdowns and other restrictions) is what devastates economies.
https://www.ft.com/content/e593e7d4-b82a-4bf9-8497-426eee43bcbc
https://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/policy-for-the-covid-19-crisis/
https://economics-in-the-age-of-covid-19.pubpub.org/
The problem is, though... I believe you are a writer? So you understand the overwhelming power of narrative.
The so-attractive narrative siren-calling us is to mentally frame it as one or the other, antagonistic forces, requiring a difficult choice to be made by hard-nosed people.
What chance does something counterintuitive have against narrative? Any more than we would hope for a dog with stitches to accept that the Cone of Shame is better to have on him than not.
I was never into the "Clap for Carers", but now frontline staff are increasingly being abused and threatened by patients and relatives. Not me personally, but some of our HCAs have been brought to tears by mask refusers, and other non compliers with infection control policy, just for doing their jobs.
NB: Slight fluey feeling and sore deltoid after vaccination this AM, but no more than a usual flu jab. I suppose it is evidence of immunology at work, so a good thing perhaps.
And the entire nation is fucked until the vaccine is rolled out. It should be prioritised on those who face hospitalisation to ensure we end these damn Tiers ASAP.
But the main point is that Romans had absolute sexual ownership of their slaves, and many regularly exploited this. It was the norm.
And what are we doing here....having people queue for Primark around the clock.