Care homes: the nightmare for my mother continues.
A few weeks ago the media widely reported a change to government rules regarding care home visits. This, said the media and the government, would - at last - herald meaningful inside visits with our loved ones, starting before Christmas.
My mum`s care home were gearing up for this, waiting for the rapid test (LFT) kits to arrive. I`d informed my mum of the positive change that was on the way, and I would be able to see her at Christmas.
However, yesterday, out of the blue, the care home emailed relatives saying that it has been found that negative lateral flow device results are only 75% reliable, and “this has led to many scientists, organisations and local authorities advising against their use for visiting as this does not remove risk sufficiently”. So, the care home management has decided not to implement these new rules.
Note that the government guidance specifically covers this imperfection. It says “while rapid testing can reduce the risks around visiting it does not completely remove the risk of infection”. Therefore, this factor is already discounted into their more relaxed new guidance.
Unfortunately the same guidance gives license for individual care homes to “dynamically assess risk” and the care homes are using this license to exercise judgement about when, and in what circumstances, visits can be safely supported, which - it is clear - is resulting in them applying rules which are more risk-averse than the government guidelines allows, citing resident and carer safety as their reason. (The less gullible (or more cynical) may think that the main reason is commercial: they are being supplied the test kits but not being funded to administer them.)
I`m furious. Thoughts?
Some scientists suggest the quick tests only 50% accurate.
I suppose alternately you have people who want to touch their loved ones yet prefer the home to remain COVID free most of all, and look on you and the Daily Mail campaign as being silly and dangerous?
I heard from my octogenarian step-mother that she is due to be vaccinated on Friday in a fairly small Devon town, so things seem to be moving ahead quite well.
The talk of Lockdown 3 in Febraury is daft as by then I would imagine that the vast majority of 80+ people in this country would have had a double dose and thus be immune.
So it will be safe to let the virus spread unhindered through the whole population aged 79 and less?
One would have thought that by now the message about the danger of mutations from large-scale infections would have penetrated even the thickest of skulls.
I heard from my octogenarian step-mother that she is due to be vaccinated on Friday in a fairly small Devon town, so things seem to be moving ahead quite well.
Colleague's calendar at work had "Take Dad to Covid vaccine" yesterday afternoon, which I was encouraged by.
I hope they will release separate statistics for second doses when that becomes appropriate.
Care homes: the nightmare for my mother continues.
A few weeks ago the media widely reported a change to government rules regarding care home visits. This, said the media and the government, would - at last - herald meaningful inside visits with our loved ones, starting before Christmas.
My mum`s care home were gearing up for this, waiting for the rapid test (LFT) kits to arrive. I`d informed my mum of the positive change that was on the way, and I would be able to see her at Christmas.
However, yesterday, out of the blue, the care home emailed relatives saying that it has been found that negative lateral flow device results are only 75% reliable, and “this has led to many scientists, organisations and local authorities advising against their use for visiting as this does not remove risk sufficiently”. So, the care home management has decided not to implement these new rules.
Note that the government guidance specifically covers this imperfection. It says “while rapid testing can reduce the risks around visiting it does not completely remove the risk of infection”. Therefore, this factor is already discounted into their more relaxed new guidance.
Unfortunately the same guidance gives license for individual care homes to “dynamically assess risk” and the care homes are using this license to exercise judgement about when, and in what circumstances, visits can be safely supported, which - it is clear - is resulting in them applying rules which are more risk-averse than the government guidelines allows, citing resident and carer safety as their reason. (The less gullible (or more cynical) may think that the main reason is commercial: they are being supplied the test kits but not being funded to administer them.)
I`m furious. Thoughts?
How many visits are they allowing now? And is that 75% in terms of false negatives or false positives?
If it's no deizens or a very small fraction of denizens who get visited now, then having a high proportion of denizens visited with tests of that level of reliability will increase risk. How much depends on the numbers, the level of false negatives, visitors per patient, how many of those visitors are from the same family anyway, etc.. But it may well be that the insurance company for one is not happy.
I like being privileged. I enjoy the privileges I have, and I'm excited about the thought of accruing more privileges as I go through life. I don't wish others were less privileged so I could be more privileged - that seems like screwed up logic.
I heard from my octogenarian step-mother that she is due to be vaccinated on Friday in a fairly small Devon town, so things seem to be moving ahead quite well.
They haven’t done my mum yet and she should be first in the queue! They seem to be vaccinating all the wrong people!
40K jabs is not something to applaud if it’s random wrong people, soft lying fruit just to get your stats up, it’s 40K mistakes! If that is the crime the government are committing, it should be punishable with custodial sentence.
My 98 year old grandmother hasn't heard anything yet. She said that In Wales they are only vaccinating in the North and haven't started in the Valleys yet. If this is correct, it seems to be the wrong priority as the outbreak is terrible in the Valleys right now.
More evidence they are just picking low hanging fruit and claiming how wonderful the stats are. Scandal!
Care homes: the nightmare for my mother continues.
A few weeks ago the media widely reported a change to government rules regarding care home visits. This, said the media and the government, would - at last - herald meaningful inside visits with our loved ones, starting before Christmas.
My mum`s care home were gearing up for this, waiting for the rapid test (LFT) kits to arrive. I`d informed my mum of the positive change that was on the way, and I would be able to see her at Christmas.
However, yesterday, out of the blue, the care home emailed relatives saying that it has been found that negative lateral flow device results are only 75% reliable, and “this has led to many scientists, organisations and local authorities advising against their use for visiting as this does not remove risk sufficiently”. So, the care home management has decided not to implement these new rules.
Note that the government guidance specifically covers this imperfection. It says “while rapid testing can reduce the risks around visiting it does not completely remove the risk of infection”. Therefore, this factor is already discounted into their more relaxed new guidance.
Unfortunately the same guidance gives license for individual care homes to “dynamically assess risk” and the care homes are using this license to exercise judgement about when, and in what circumstances, visits can be safely supported, which - it is clear - is resulting in them applying rules which are more risk-averse than the government guidelines allows, citing resident and carer safety as their reason. (The less gullible (or more cynical) may think that the main reason is commercial: they are being supplied the test kits but not being funded to administer them.)
I`m furious. Thoughts?
Some scientists suggest the quick tests only 50% accurate.
I suppose alternately you have people who want to touch their loved ones yet prefer the home to remain COVID free most of all, and look on you and the Daily Mail campaign as being silly and dangerous?
I don`t know anything about a Daily Mail campaign.
"Silly and dangerous"! She`s 86, hasn`t seen her family properly since February, in poor physical health and even poorer mental health and is in God`s waiting room FFS.
To be honest with electric planes, and more sustainable aviation fuels and carbon-neutral methods of ground construction, it should be possible to expand Heathrow in the long-term without too much environmental impact.
I don't think commercially viable electric aircraft are anywhere near due to energy density considerations. Jet A1 = 40Mj/kg. Li-ion batteries = 0.7 Mj/kg.
You also have to carry the depleted batteries all the way to destination unlike fuel which gets consumed.
Aviation is more likely to end up powered by H or e-fuel.
And that highlights the issue with techno-libertarian-utopianism. Science can do remarkable things; hell, that's one of the important stories of this year. But there are some underlying parameters where it's difficult to see what can be done, no matter how clever or numerous the boffins or how great the economic rewards.
To give a real example from materials science, nobody has come up with a useful material with a substantially better combination of stiffness and lightness than wood.
To give another example which I hope is true; back when the Military-Industrial Complex was a thing, Richard Feynman went to some sort of meeting with US Army highups. It's said that a general went up to the professor and told him that what the Army really, really needed was a tank that could be fuelled by sand.
Doable, but you would need a lot of Chlorine trifloride as an oxidiser. Getting an ICE to work with that combination would be a challenge, and dealing with the exhaust products would be exciting.
Given the propensity of ClF3 to "eat" anything it comes into contact with, the engine may find it exciting
Apparently, Fluorine can be stored in copper vessels because it forms a protective coating of Copper Fluoride.
Care homes: the nightmare for my mother continues.
A few weeks ago the media widely reported a change to government rules regarding care home visits. This, said the media and the government, would - at last - herald meaningful inside visits with our loved ones, starting before Christmas.
My mum`s care home were gearing up for this, waiting for the rapid test (LFT) kits to arrive. I`d informed my mum of the positive change that was on the way, and I would be able to see her at Christmas.
However, yesterday, out of the blue, the care home emailed relatives saying that it has been found that negative lateral flow device results are only 75% reliable, and “this has led to many scientists, organisations and local authorities advising against their use for visiting as this does not remove risk sufficiently”. So, the care home management has decided not to implement these new rules.
Note that the government guidance specifically covers this imperfection. It says “while rapid testing can reduce the risks around visiting it does not completely remove the risk of infection”. Therefore, this factor is already discounted into their more relaxed new guidance.
Unfortunately the same guidance gives license for individual care homes to “dynamically assess risk” and the care homes are using this license to exercise judgement about when, and in what circumstances, visits can be safely supported, which - it is clear - is resulting in them applying rules which are more risk-averse than the government guidelines allows, citing resident and carer safety as their reason. (The less gullible (or more cynical) may think that the main reason is commercial: they are being supplied the test kits but not being funded to administer them.)
I`m furious. Thoughts?
Absolutely horrible very sorry to hear that. I'm not sure what your position is, esp after that high publicity case of the woman who was arrested for trying to "rescue" her mother.
One's instinct is to march in there, PPE-ed up and take her out (is she mobile?) but that I can see may very well not work.
They won`t allow me through the front door and have banned relatives taking their relatives out - even for a brief ride in the car.
I don't think so either. 20th century solution. Imagine videoconferencing in 20 years. You'll probably be able to smell the other people on the call! Airports will be mainly for leisure travel.
I heard from my octogenarian step-mother that she is due to be vaccinated on Friday in a fairly small Devon town, so things seem to be moving ahead quite well.
The talk of Lockdown 3 in Febraury is daft as by then I would imagine that the vast majority of 80+ people in this country would have had a double dose and thus be immune.
So it will be safe to let the virus spread unhindered through the whole population aged 79 and less?
One would have thought that by now the message about the danger of mutations from large-scale infections would have penetrated even the thickest of skulls.
I just said Lockdown, not other restrictions. By far the majority of hospital admissions and deaths are in the 80+ age group. If they are immune then it will be a vastly different situation.
I like being privileged. I enjoy the privileges I have, and I'm excited about the thought of accruing more privileges as I go through life. I don't wish others were less privileged so I could be more privileged - that seems like screwed up logic.
Do you believe that if everyone's salary was increased to be above the average wage then poverty would be eliminated?
I heard from my octogenarian step-mother that she is due to be vaccinated on Friday in a fairly small Devon town, so things seem to be moving ahead quite well.
Colleague's calendar at work had "Take Dad to Covid vaccine" yesterday afternoon, which I was encouraged by.
I hope they will release separate statistics for second doses when that becomes appropriate.
If we take at face value the 200 GP locations which have to vaccinate 975 people each within 3 days of being up and running (i.e. 1 box of vaccine), that should be nearly 200k vaccinations that the reporting doesn't yet reflect. Over 500k first doses by Christmas seems very do-able, with still plenty of scale up to go.
I like being privileged. I enjoy the privileges I have, and I'm excited about the thought of accruing more privileges as I go through life. I don't wish others were less privileged so I could be more privileged - that seems like screwed up logic.
Congratulations on finding a new way of spectacularly missing the point on the issue of white privilege, a significant achievement given the wide range of bone-headed responses we've already seen on this topic here.
I heard from my octogenarian step-mother that she is due to be vaccinated on Friday in a fairly small Devon town, so things seem to be moving ahead quite well.
Colleague's calendar at work had "Take Dad to Covid vaccine" yesterday afternoon, which I was encouraged by.
I hope they will release separate statistics for second doses when that becomes appropriate.
If we take at face value the 200 GP locations which have to vaccinate 975 people each within 3 days of being up and running (i.e. 1 box of vaccine), that should be nearly 200k vaccinations that the reporting doesn't yet reflect. Over 500k first doses by Christmas seems very do-able, with still plenty of scale up to go.
We should be over a million by this time next week.
There is no one who is not aware of the Covid risks. Whether they be 20 or 80. Hence we should be trusted to do what we believe we want to or think right. For some that will be seeing their 80-yr old parents; for some that will not be seeing their 80-yr old parents.
I don't think anyone will go directly from a knees-up at Spoons to their 80-yr old parents.
I think given the risk profile it is mostly for the 80-yr old parents to decide ultimately. For some of those, Christmas and seeing family is a hugely important part of their lives in a pretty miserable year, perhaps enough for it to be a significant factor in their mental health wellbeing; for others they will not mind waiting a few more months to see the family.
I guess the question is whether Covid is a seat belts (protect the people in your car) or a drink driving (protect everyone on the road) kind of situation. I would say that it's more like the latter so the government absolutely should be able to tell people what to do. I think this whole "let's keep Christmas going" thing is horseshit, especially when the government was happy to shut down Eid with a few hours' notice. They've had plenty of time to see that their approach will lead to people dying unnecessarily and should have the guts to tell people that the situation has changed.
Let's not forget that it is and was supposed to be about protecting the NHS. If people want to bungee jump, drive racing cars, 3-day event or what have you the government says nothing about it and rightly so.
But of course bungee jumping, etc doesn't impact others and hence we are at your "protecting others". But this is your family. This is precisely people in your car and hence your former example. Of course wearing seatbelts is imo rightly mandated by law but I believe Christmas, for some people, is a special case. For others, it is not and they presumably won't have one this year.
But it's not just your family. You give it to aunty Brenda, who passes it onto a work colleague, who dies. You give it to your granny, who ends up in hospital, where the nurse treating her catches it and dies. This is how infectious diseases work: if they could only be passed on once they would die out!
Well you are slightly not crediting people with sufficient common sense. If Auntie Brenda is off to work on the 27th Dec then she will also have to use common sense. The risks, individually, however, remain very small.
Care homes: the nightmare for my mother continues.
A few weeks ago the media widely reported a change to government rules regarding care home visits. This, said the media and the government, would - at last - herald meaningful inside visits with our loved ones, starting before Christmas.
My mum`s care home were gearing up for this, waiting for the rapid test (LFT) kits to arrive. I`d informed my mum of the positive change that was on the way, and I would be able to see her at Christmas.
However, yesterday, out of the blue, the care home emailed relatives saying that it has been found that negative lateral flow device results are only 75% reliable, and “this has led to many scientists, organisations and local authorities advising against their use for visiting as this does not remove risk sufficiently”. So, the care home management has decided not to implement these new rules.
Note that the government guidance specifically covers this imperfection. It says “while rapid testing can reduce the risks around visiting it does not completely remove the risk of infection”. Therefore, this factor is already discounted into their more relaxed new guidance.
Unfortunately the same guidance gives license for individual care homes to “dynamically assess risk” and the care homes are using this license to exercise judgement about when, and in what circumstances, visits can be safely supported, which - it is clear - is resulting in them applying rules which are more risk-averse than the government guidelines allows, citing resident and carer safety as their reason. (The less gullible (or more cynical) may think that the main reason is commercial: they are being supplied the test kits but not being funded to administer them.)
FWIW, the rapid tests do seem to be less accurate when compared with PCR, but the majority of cases they miss are likely not to be very infectious. A combination of tests, together with good hygiene (sanitiser & masks), ought to be relatively safe - but obviously not absolutely safe.
I heard from my octogenarian step-mother that she is due to be vaccinated on Friday in a fairly small Devon town, so things seem to be moving ahead quite well.
The talk of Lockdown 3 in Febraury is daft as by then I would imagine that the vast majority of 80+ people in this country would have had a double dose and thus be immune.
So it will be safe to let the virus spread unhindered through the whole population aged 79 and less?
One would have thought that by now the message about the danger of mutations from large-scale infections would have penetrated even the thickest of skulls.
I just said Lockdown, not other restrictions. By far the majority of hospital admissions and deaths are in the 80+ age group. If they are immune then it will be a vastly different situation.
Not true. Deaths, yes. Hospital admissions, no. More than half of hospital admissions and clinically severe cases are under 63.
I have a feeling that come Jan 21st many senior Republicans are going to start turning on Trump.
They're too afraid too right now and I don't entirely blame them. The bizarre constitutional set up that generates a near 3-month gap from election to inauguration is to blame. It relies on decency but breaks down when you have an as5hole in the White House.
Stripped of office, Trump will no longer look or sound like a person of power. He will still rant and rave but he will come to regret making so many enemies. There's that moment in House of Cards when the big cheese Raymond Tusk suddenly finds himself facing jail ...
We’ll see. I don’t think that’s a foregone conclusion at all. It’s just as likely, perhaps more so, that the party remains in thrall to him.
The problem is there are now two GOP parties and one is basically a Trump personality cult. Only one will survive the coming party civil war and I don't think it will be the sane branch.
Maybe a new centre right party will be the medium term solution? There's been mutterings.
The problem in the US is that the voter base for a sane centre right party is smaller than that of a far right populist nationalist party, which is why Trumpism will be hard for the Republican party to destroy through the primary process too. We are probably heading in the same direction here, owing to the same processes - the hollowing out of the middle class and the growing liberalism of what remains of it.
Biden is a sane centre right politician and will be a more popular President than either a Trumpist or a Sanders/Warren type could be. As was Obama. It is not the voter base that is the problem....
That is a large assumption now.
The voter base definitely has a large number of poorly educated people who can be sold random theories via social media. In itself that would not be a problem in terms of electing Presidents if party chiefs appointed candidates without the primary process.
Primaries (and one member one vote here) are more democratic for the party memberships but less democratic and more divisive for the countries they run.
Indeed, but once a significant proportion of the electorate is hooked on conspiracy theories and hatred, expecting them to change that worldview any time soon is ... optimistic.
It's not impossible, but there is simply no Republican leader in sight who might attempt such a process, or possess the capacity to carry it out.
Over the years that I've been following US politics I've watched the GoP transform from the conservative party into the stupid party. As a general rule you can now tell whether somebody is likely to be a Democrat or a Republican by assessing how stupid they are.
This makes it very difficult for a Leader other than a Trump-like snake-oil salesman and populist to emerge and gain traction with the voters.
In 2012, just 8 years ago, Romney was picked as the GOP nominee in the primaries and even won college graduates in the general election over Obama.
Romney still lost. McCain lost. The type of Republicans the left likes. Plucky losers who maintain the fiction the old America is there, somewhere, and might get into power one day.
What is the "old" America in this context?
What's the mental picture?
Bedford Falls. Trump is more of a Pottersville kind of guy.
Mmm. I can see that, yes. A good reference, actually, that film. Jimmy Stewart (America) lived through a nightmare and when it ended was flooded with relief and joy. Him waking up was in essence the call of Pennsylvania.
If that were so these 'solutions' wouldn't need a huge helping hand from the taxpayer and the regulator. We wouldn;t need the Maoist step of banning petrol cars in 2030, for example. We could trust the market and the consumer.
The market and consumer are changing. Even in my road in a not fashionable bit of London, there are now at least three and maybe four electric cars, and several hybrids. Charging points are springing up all over the place, and in some areas they are becoming very common. What the goverment is doing is giving the market a nudge, but there's no doubt in my mind that we will see cars switch to electric motors no matter what the goverment wants, because the technological trends favour batteries and electric motors.
Once you have ditched the gearbox and been propelled by electric motors its very hard to go back to something that feels antiquated. I love my big Volvo, but ditching it for a Tesla is still really tempting.
I like being privileged. I enjoy the privileges I have, and I'm excited about the thought of accruing more privileges as I go through life. I don't wish others were less privileged so I could be more privileged - that seems like screwed up logic.
Congratulations on finding a new way of spectacularly missing the point on the issue of white privilege, a significant achievement given the wide range of bone-headed responses we've already seen on this topic here.
We await your insightful contributions with interest.
Care homes: the nightmare for my mother continues.
A few weeks ago the media widely reported a change to government rules regarding care home visits. This, said the media and the government, would - at last - herald meaningful inside visits with our loved ones, starting before Christmas.
My mum`s care home were gearing up for this, waiting for the rapid test (LFT) kits to arrive. I`d informed my mum of the positive change that was on the way, and I would be able to see her at Christmas.
However, yesterday, out of the blue, the care home emailed relatives saying that it has been found that negative lateral flow device results are only 75% reliable, and “this has led to many scientists, organisations and local authorities advising against their use for visiting as this does not remove risk sufficiently”. So, the care home management has decided not to implement these new rules.
Note that the government guidance specifically covers this imperfection. It says “while rapid testing can reduce the risks around visiting it does not completely remove the risk of infection”. Therefore, this factor is already discounted into their more relaxed new guidance.
Unfortunately the same guidance gives license for individual care homes to “dynamically assess risk” and the care homes are using this license to exercise judgement about when, and in what circumstances, visits can be safely supported, which - it is clear - is resulting in them applying rules which are more risk-averse than the government guidelines allows, citing resident and carer safety as their reason. (The less gullible (or more cynical) may think that the main reason is commercial: they are being supplied the test kits but not being funded to administer them.)
I`m furious. Thoughts?
How many visits are they allowing now? And is that 75% in terms of false negatives or false positives?
If it's no deizens or a very small fraction of denizens who get visited now, then having a high proportion of denizens visited with tests of that level of reliability will increase risk. How much depends on the numbers, the level of false negatives, visitors per patient, how many of those visitors are from the same family anyway, etc.. But it may well be that the insurance company for one is not happy.
75% of negatives turn out to be inaccurate they say. I don`t care if it`s 50%. This is about reducing risk not eradicating it; taking a common-sense approach to what has long become a cruel quasi-prison incarceration.
My mum`s home is allowing two per resident per week, only one visitor per visit, and the visitors have to be nominated forever (i.e. the nomination can`t change). For my mum we have nominated my dad and her best friend (as I live far away) and there is a screen between them meaning that they have trouble hearing each other. it`s like visiting someone in prison.
I heard from my octogenarian step-mother that she is due to be vaccinated on Friday in a fairly small Devon town, so things seem to be moving ahead quite well.
Colleague's calendar at work had "Take Dad to Covid vaccine" yesterday afternoon, which I was encouraged by.
I hope they will release separate statistics for second doses when that becomes appropriate.
If we take at face value the 200 GP locations which have to vaccinate 975 people each within 3 days of being up and running (i.e. 1 box of vaccine), that should be nearly 200k vaccinations that the reporting doesn't yet reflect. Over 500k first doses by Christmas seems very do-able, with still plenty of scale up to go.
We should be over a million by this time next week.
That's a million of the most obvious targets of which Covid will be deprived. That really is something worthy of congratulations to all involved. Hurrah!
Although barely 10% of the way to battering it. So don't be a muppet over Christmas. Right?
I heard from my octogenarian step-mother that she is due to be vaccinated on Friday in a fairly small Devon town, so things seem to be moving ahead quite well.
The talk of Lockdown 3 in Febraury is daft as by then I would imagine that the vast majority of 80+ people in this country would have had a double dose and thus be immune.
So it will be safe to let the virus spread unhindered through the whole population aged 79 and less?
One would have thought that by now the message about the danger of mutations from large-scale infections would have penetrated even the thickest of skulls.
Do you think society should only go back to "normal" once everyone has been vaccinated?
There is no one who is not aware of the Covid risks. Whether they be 20 or 80. Hence we should be trusted to do what we believe we want to or think right. For some that will be seeing their 80-yr old parents; for some that will not be seeing their 80-yr old parents.
I don't think anyone will go directly from a knees-up at Spoons to their 80-yr old parents.
I think given the risk profile it is mostly for the 80-yr old parents to decide ultimately. For some of those, Christmas and seeing family is a hugely important part of their lives in a pretty miserable year, perhaps enough for it to be a significant factor in their mental health wellbeing; for others they will not mind waiting a few more months to see the family.
I guess the question is whether Covid is a seat belts (protect the people in your car) or a drink driving (protect everyone on the road) kind of situation. I would say that it's more like the latter so the government absolutely should be able to tell people what to do. I think this whole "let's keep Christmas going" thing is horseshit, especially when the government was happy to shut down Eid with a few hours' notice. They've had plenty of time to see that their approach will lead to people dying unnecessarily and should have the guts to tell people that the situation has changed.
Let's not forget that it is and was supposed to be about protecting the NHS. If people want to bungee jump, drive racing cars, 3-day event or what have you the government says nothing about it and rightly so.
But of course bungee jumping, etc doesn't impact others and hence we are at your "protecting others". But this is your family. This is precisely people in your car and hence your former example. Of course wearing seatbelts is imo rightly mandated by law but I believe Christmas, for some people, is a special case. For others, it is not and they presumably won't have one this year.
But it's not just your family. You give it to aunty Brenda, who passes it onto a work colleague, who dies. You give it to your granny, who ends up in hospital, where the nurse treating her catches it and dies. This is how infectious diseases work: if they could only be passed on once they would die out!
Well you are slightly not crediting people with sufficient common sense. If Auntie Brenda is off to work on the 27th Dec then she will also have to use common sense. The risks, individually, however, remain very small.
Not zero by any means, but very small.
Is that the same common sense that saw millions of people flying off on their essential summer holidays and packing the high streets for essential Christmas shopping?
I have a feeling that come Jan 21st many senior Republicans are going to start turning on Trump.
They're too afraid too right now and I don't entirely blame them. The bizarre constitutional set up that generates a near 3-month gap from election to inauguration is to blame. It relies on decency but breaks down when you have an as5hole in the White House.
Stripped of office, Trump will no longer look or sound like a person of power. He will still rant and rave but he will come to regret making so many enemies. There's that moment in House of Cards when the big cheese Raymond Tusk suddenly finds himself facing jail ...
We’ll see. I don’t think that’s a foregone conclusion at all. It’s just as likely, perhaps more so, that the party remains in thrall to him.
The problem is there are now two GOP parties and one is basically a Trump personality cult. Only one will survive the coming party civil war and I don't think it will be the sane branch.
Maybe a new centre right party will be the medium term solution? There's been mutterings.
The problem in the US is that the voter base for a sane centre right party is smaller than that of a far right populist nationalist party, which is why Trumpism will be hard for the Republican party to destroy through the primary process too. We are probably heading in the same direction here, owing to the same processes - the hollowing out of the middle class and the growing liberalism of what remains of it.
Biden is a sane centre right politician and will be a more popular President than either a Trumpist or a Sanders/Warren type could be. As was Obama. It is not the voter base that is the problem....
That is a large assumption now.
The voter base definitely has a large number of poorly educated people who can be sold random theories via social media. In itself that would not be a problem in terms of electing Presidents if party chiefs appointed candidates without the primary process.
Primaries (and one member one vote here) are more democratic for the party memberships but less democratic and more divisive for the countries they run.
Indeed, but once a significant proportion of the electorate is hooked on conspiracy theories and hatred, expecting them to change that worldview any time soon is ... optimistic.
It's not impossible, but there is simply no Republican leader in sight who might attempt such a process, or possess the capacity to carry it out.
Over the years that I've been following US politics I've watched the GoP transform from the conservative party into the stupid party. As a general rule you can now tell whether somebody is likely to be a Democrat or a Republican by assessing how stupid they are.
This makes it very difficult for a Leader other than a Trump-like snake-oil salesman and populist to emerge and gain traction with the voters.
In 2012, just 8 years ago, Romney was picked as the GOP nominee in the primaries and even won college graduates in the general election over Obama.
Romney still lost. McCain lost. The type of Republicans the left likes. Plucky losers who maintain the fiction the old America is there, somewhere, and might get into power one day.
What is the "old" America in this context?
What's the mental picture?
Bedford Falls. Trump is more of a Pottersville kind of guy.
Mmm. I can see that, yes. A good reference, actually, that film. Jimmy Stewart (America) lived through a nightmare and when it ended was flooded with relief and joy. Him waking up was in essence the call of Pennsylvania.
The irony is that Stewart was a rock solid conservative Republican - campaigned for Goldwater and Reagan.
I heard from my octogenarian step-mother that she is due to be vaccinated on Friday in a fairly small Devon town, so things seem to be moving ahead quite well.
Colleague's calendar at work had "Take Dad to Covid vaccine" yesterday afternoon, which I was encouraged by.
I hope they will release separate statistics for second doses when that becomes appropriate.
If we take at face value the 200 GP locations which have to vaccinate 975 people each within 3 days of being up and running (i.e. 1 box of vaccine), that should be nearly 200k vaccinations that the reporting doesn't yet reflect. Over 500k first doses by Christmas seems very do-able, with still plenty of scale up to go.
We should be over a million by this time next week.
That's a million of the most obvious targets of which Covid will be deprived. That really is something worthy of congratulations to all involved. Hurrah!
Although barely 10% of the way to battering it. So don't be a muppet over Christmas. Right?
We are firmly staying at home for Christmas & so are my parents - there’ll be a big family bash later in the year when they’ve been vaccinated I imagine & we can all manage to wait until then.
I’d hope that most families will be doing likewise, but poking about on social media, there seem to be a big chunk of the population who are just going to throw caution to the wind.
There is no one who is not aware of the Covid risks. Whether they be 20 or 80. Hence we should be trusted to do what we believe we want to or think right. For some that will be seeing their 80-yr old parents; for some that will not be seeing their 80-yr old parents.
I don't think anyone will go directly from a knees-up at Spoons to their 80-yr old parents.
I think given the risk profile it is mostly for the 80-yr old parents to decide ultimately. For some of those, Christmas and seeing family is a hugely important part of their lives in a pretty miserable year, perhaps enough for it to be a significant factor in their mental health wellbeing; for others they will not mind waiting a few more months to see the family.
I guess the question is whether Covid is a seat belts (protect the people in your car) or a drink driving (protect everyone on the road) kind of situation. I would say that it's more like the latter so the government absolutely should be able to tell people what to do. I think this whole "let's keep Christmas going" thing is horseshit, especially when the government was happy to shut down Eid with a few hours' notice. They've had plenty of time to see that their approach will lead to people dying unnecessarily and should have the guts to tell people that the situation has changed.
Let's not forget that it is and was supposed to be about protecting the NHS. If people want to bungee jump, drive racing cars, 3-day event or what have you the government says nothing about it and rightly so.
But of course bungee jumping, etc doesn't impact others and hence we are at your "protecting others". But this is your family. This is precisely people in your car and hence your former example. Of course wearing seatbelts is imo rightly mandated by law but I believe Christmas, for some people, is a special case. For others, it is not and they presumably won't have one this year.
But it's not just your family. You give it to aunty Brenda, who passes it onto a work colleague, who dies. You give it to your granny, who ends up in hospital, where the nurse treating her catches it and dies. This is how infectious diseases work: if they could only be passed on once they would die out!
Well you are slightly not crediting people with sufficient common sense. If Auntie Brenda is off to work on the 27th Dec then she will also have to use common sense. The risks, individually, however, remain very small.
Not zero by any means, but very small.
Is that the same common sense that saw millions of people flying off on their essential summer holidays and packing the high streets for essential Christmas shopping?
That's people for you. We are idiots. What else do you want the govt to legislate against? A long list, I would imagine.
If the NHS is not overwhelmed then there is an argument for the government to back off.
And that's to say nothing about the economic costs.
What level of Covid deaths do you think is acceptable?
To be honest with electric planes, and more sustainable aviation fuels and carbon-neutral methods of ground construction, it should be possible to expand Heathrow in the long-term without too much environmental impact.
The bigger tear in my view is levelling the villages.
Absolutely agreed.
The way to get to 'net zero' is to get to sustainable clean alternatives - not to all live in Greenpeace/XR approved mud huts.
Levelling the villages is an issue, but it is an issue for the government to resolve with compulsory purchase orders and the law if need be - not for Greenpeace and XR etc to halt in the courts.
There is a massive unbridgeable gap between your wish list of a free market, technology driven, economic green solution and reality though.
A gap that will become glaringly and catastrophically obvious between now and 2050.
No there isn't. Science is excellent at finding a solution, so is business.
If that were so these 'solutions' wouldn't need a huge helping hand from the taxpayer and the regulator. We wouldn;t need the Maoist step of banning petrol cars in 2030, for example. We could trust the market and the consumer.
We don't live in a perfectly capitalist society, never have done, so under our principles of reality the government can nudge the market in the right direction. Set a goal (no petrol vehicles) and then let the market find the solution - rather than the state choosing the solution or model of car for the market. The market and consumers then pick solutions that work to meet that goal.
I have a feeling that come Jan 21st many senior Republicans are going to start turning on Trump.
They're too afraid too right now and I don't entirely blame them. The bizarre constitutional set up that generates a near 3-month gap from election to inauguration is to blame. It relies on decency but breaks down when you have an as5hole in the White House.
Stripped of office, Trump will no longer look or sound like a person of power. He will still rant and rave but he will come to regret making so many enemies. There's that moment in House of Cards when the big cheese Raymond Tusk suddenly finds himself facing jail ...
We’ll see. I don’t think that’s a foregone conclusion at all. It’s just as likely, perhaps more so, that the party remains in thrall to him.
The problem is there are now two GOP parties and one is basically a Trump personality cult. Only one will survive the coming party civil war and I don't think it will be the sane branch.
Maybe a new centre right party will be the medium term solution? There's been mutterings.
The problem in the US is that the voter base for a sane centre right party is smaller than that of a far right populist nationalist party, which is why Trumpism will be hard for the Republican party to destroy through the primary process too. We are probably heading in the same direction here, owing to the same processes - the hollowing out of the middle class and the growing liberalism of what remains of it.
Biden is a sane centre right politician and will be a more popular President than either a Trumpist or a Sanders/Warren type could be. As was Obama. It is not the voter base that is the problem....
That is a large assumption now.
The voter base definitely has a large number of poorly educated people who can be sold random theories via social media. In itself that would not be a problem in terms of electing Presidents if party chiefs appointed candidates without the primary process.
Primaries (and one member one vote here) are more democratic for the party memberships but less democratic and more divisive for the countries they run.
Indeed, but once a significant proportion of the electorate is hooked on conspiracy theories and hatred, expecting them to change that worldview any time soon is ... optimistic.
It's not impossible, but there is simply no Republican leader in sight who might attempt such a process, or possess the capacity to carry it out.
Over the years that I've been following US politics I've watched the GoP transform from the conservative party into the stupid party. As a general rule you can now tell whether somebody is likely to be a Democrat or a Republican by assessing how stupid they are.
This makes it very difficult for a Leader other than a Trump-like snake-oil salesman and populist to emerge and gain traction with the voters.
In 2012, just 8 years ago, Romney was picked as the GOP nominee in the primaries and even won college graduates in the general election over Obama.
Romney still lost. McCain lost. The type of Republicans the left likes. Plucky losers who maintain the fiction the old America is there, somewhere, and might get into power one day.
What is the "old" America in this context?
What's the mental picture?
KKK lynchings, perhaps?
That's what you might call the "purist" end of the white American nostalgia market. Hopefully, most of it is more of the Happy Days with the Cunninghams and Eisenhower variety.
It seems to have become an article of belief among some conservative that following what the law sets out, if they don't like it, is "wet" and "liberal".
The incompetence of this government knows no bounds. Advised by her own lawyers that the appeal was stupid, she proceeded personally and briefed against any judges who disagreed with her. She is right, the entire rest of the legal system is wrong. Obviously.
It seems to have become an article of belief among some conservative that following what the law sets out, if they don't like it, is "wet" and "liberal".
Braverman is a disgrace to her office.
If she had any honour, she would resign.
She should have resigned several times already of course.
I like being privileged. I enjoy the privileges I have, and I'm excited about the thought of accruing more privileges as I go through life. I don't wish others were less privileged so I could be more privileged - that seems like screwed up logic.
Do you believe that if everyone's salary was increased to be above the average wage then poverty would be eliminated?
Do you believe that if the poor each had a gold plated bathroom and a Ferrari in the drive of their palace, they would still be poor, if the very rich had a thousand Ferraris? It just becomes an absurdity.
I like being privileged. I enjoy the privileges I have, and I'm excited about the thought of accruing more privileges as I go through life. I don't wish others were less privileged so I could be more privileged - that seems like screwed up logic.
Congratulations on finding a new way of spectacularly missing the point on the issue of white privilege, a significant achievement given the wide range of bone-headed responses we've already seen on this topic here.
I heard from my octogenarian step-mother that she is due to be vaccinated on Friday in a fairly small Devon town, so things seem to be moving ahead quite well.
Yes.
We need to end up at about 500k per day to get it through by summer or thereabouts.
Care homes: the nightmare for my mother continues.
A few weeks ago the media widely reported a change to government rules regarding care home visits. This, said the media and the government, would - at last - herald meaningful inside visits with our loved ones, starting before Christmas.
My mum`s care home were gearing up for this, waiting for the rapid test (LFT) kits to arrive. I`d informed my mum of the positive change that was on the way, and I would be able to see her at Christmas.
However, yesterday, out of the blue, the care home emailed relatives saying that it has been found that negative lateral flow device results are only 75% reliable, and “this has led to many scientists, organisations and local authorities advising against their use for visiting as this does not remove risk sufficiently”. So, the care home management has decided not to implement these new rules.
Note that the government guidance specifically covers this imperfection. It says “while rapid testing can reduce the risks around visiting it does not completely remove the risk of infection”. Therefore, this factor is already discounted into their more relaxed new guidance.
Unfortunately the same guidance gives license for individual care homes to “dynamically assess risk” and the care homes are using this license to exercise judgement about when, and in what circumstances, visits can be safely supported, which - it is clear - is resulting in them applying rules which are more risk-averse than the government guidelines allows, citing resident and carer safety as their reason. (The less gullible (or more cynical) may think that the main reason is commercial: they are being supplied the test kits but not being funded to administer them.)
I`m furious. Thoughts?
As frustrating and difficult as not seeing your mum at Christmas is, please be patient. My elderly grandma died yesterday in hospital, after contracting Covid in her care home.
She was taken to hospital last week with low oxygen levels, a few hours later the care home rang my mum to say my grandma's latest test had returned positive. Told the hospital, they did a test that came back negative. Couple of days later they did another test, that came back positive.
She died of a double whammy of Covid and pneumonia. Six weeks after being widowed after a mix of Covid, COPD and asbestosis got my grandad.
If that were so these 'solutions' wouldn't need a huge helping hand from the taxpayer and the regulator. We wouldn;t need the Maoist step of banning petrol cars in 2030, for example. We could trust the market and the consumer.
The market and consumer are changing. Even in my road in a not fashionable bit of London, there are now at least three and maybe four electric cars, and several hybrids. Charging points are springing up all over the place, and in some areas they are becoming very common. What the goverment is doing is giving the market a nudge, but there's no doubt in my mind that we will see cars switch to electric motors no matter what the goverment wants, because the technological trends favour batteries and electric motors.
Once you have ditched the gearbox and been propelled by electric motors its very hard to go back to something that feels antiquated. I love my big Volvo, but ditching it for a Tesla is still really tempting.
The utterly mad acceleration* that is inherent in modern electric cars is a serious temptation :-)
*At this point people always ask if you could make a longer range electric car by scaling the motors down. Interestingly, the answer is that it has little effect.
That thread is wonderfully obtuse. The AG is both a lawyer and a politician, and losing a case in court can lead to a very satisfactory political victory.
See R (Miller) v The Prime Minister and Cherry v Advocate General for Scotland ([2019] UKSC 41 for a recent example
There is no one who is not aware of the Covid risks. Whether they be 20 or 80. Hence we should be trusted to do what we believe we want to or think right. For some that will be seeing their 80-yr old parents; for some that will not be seeing their 80-yr old parents.
I don't think anyone will go directly from a knees-up at Spoons to their 80-yr old parents.
I think given the risk profile it is mostly for the 80-yr old parents to decide ultimately. For some of those, Christmas and seeing family is a hugely important part of their lives in a pretty miserable year, perhaps enough for it to be a significant factor in their mental health wellbeing; for others they will not mind waiting a few more months to see the family.
I guess the question is whether Covid is a seat belts (protect the people in your car) or a drink driving (protect everyone on the road) kind of situation. I would say that it's more like the latter so the government absolutely should be able to tell people what to do. I think this whole "let's keep Christmas going" thing is horseshit, especially when the government was happy to shut down Eid with a few hours' notice. They've had plenty of time to see that their approach will lead to people dying unnecessarily and should have the guts to tell people that the situation has changed.
Let's not forget that it is and was supposed to be about protecting the NHS. If people want to bungee jump, drive racing cars, 3-day event or what have you the government says nothing about it and rightly so.
But of course bungee jumping, etc doesn't impact others and hence we are at your "protecting others". But this is your family. This is precisely people in your car and hence your former example. Of course wearing seatbelts is imo rightly mandated by law but I believe Christmas, for some people, is a special case. For others, it is not and they presumably won't have one this year.
But it's not just your family. You give it to aunty Brenda, who passes it onto a work colleague, who dies. You give it to your granny, who ends up in hospital, where the nurse treating her catches it and dies. This is how infectious diseases work: if they could only be passed on once they would die out!
Well you are slightly not crediting people with sufficient common sense. If Auntie Brenda is off to work on the 27th Dec then she will also have to use common sense. The risks, individually, however, remain very small.
Not zero by any means, but very small.
Is that the same common sense that saw millions of people flying off on their essential summer holidays and packing the high streets for essential Christmas shopping?
Do we know what percentage of those summer holidays were booked and paid for before the plague hit? If refunds were dependent on government travel advice then I can understand why people went away rather than spend a couple of grand on nothing.
There is no one who is not aware of the Covid risks. Whether they be 20 or 80. Hence we should be trusted to do what we believe we want to or think right. For some that will be seeing their 80-yr old parents; for some that will not be seeing their 80-yr old parents.
I don't think anyone will go directly from a knees-up at Spoons to their 80-yr old parents.
I think given the risk profile it is mostly for the 80-yr old parents to decide ultimately. For some of those, Christmas and seeing family is a hugely important part of their lives in a pretty miserable year, perhaps enough for it to be a significant factor in their mental health wellbeing; for others they will not mind waiting a few more months to see the family.
I guess the question is whether Covid is a seat belts (protect the people in your car) or a drink driving (protect everyone on the road) kind of situation. I would say that it's more like the latter so the government absolutely should be able to tell people what to do. I think this whole "let's keep Christmas going" thing is horseshit, especially when the government was happy to shut down Eid with a few hours' notice. They've had plenty of time to see that their approach will lead to people dying unnecessarily and should have the guts to tell people that the situation has changed.
Let's not forget that it is and was supposed to be about protecting the NHS. If people want to bungee jump, drive racing cars, 3-day event or what have you the government says nothing about it and rightly so.
But of course bungee jumping, etc doesn't impact others and hence we are at your "protecting others". But this is your family. This is precisely people in your car and hence your former example. Of course wearing seatbelts is imo rightly mandated by law but I believe Christmas, for some people, is a special case. For others, it is not and they presumably won't have one this year.
But it's not just your family. You give it to aunty Brenda, who passes it onto a work colleague, who dies. You give it to your granny, who ends up in hospital, where the nurse treating her catches it and dies. This is how infectious diseases work: if they could only be passed on once they would die out!
Well you are slightly not crediting people with sufficient common sense. If Auntie Brenda is off to work on the 27th Dec then she will also have to use common sense. The risks, individually, however, remain very small.
Not zero by any means, but very small.
Is that the same common sense that saw millions of people flying off on their essential summer holidays and packing the high streets for essential Christmas shopping?
That's people for you. We are idiots. What else do you want the govt to legislate against? A long list, I would imagine.
If the NHS is not overwhelmed then there is an argument for the government to back off.
And that's to say nothing about the economic costs.
What level of Covid deaths do you think is acceptable?
In some areas the NHS is struggling badly already, and many areas are only a doubling or two away from serious trouble.
I think it's too late for banning Christmas gatherings, as it would lead many people to say sod the rules, and not just for those few days but maybe more importantly afterwards. But it should be discouraged.
If that were so these 'solutions' wouldn't need a huge helping hand from the taxpayer and the regulator. We wouldn;t need the Maoist step of banning petrol cars in 2030, for example. We could trust the market and the consumer.
The market and consumer are changing. Even in my road in a not fashionable bit of London, there are now at least three and maybe four electric cars, and several hybrids. Charging points are springing up all over the place, and in some areas they are becoming very common. What the goverment is doing is giving the market a nudge, but there's no doubt in my mind that we will see cars switch to electric motors no matter what the goverment wants, because the technological trends favour batteries and electric motors.
Once you have ditched the gearbox and been propelled by electric motors its very hard to go back to something that feels antiquated. I love my big Volvo, but ditching it for a Tesla is still really tempting.
I would imagine that EVs are likely to be more reliable than ICE-powered vehicles too.
My car is currently back at the garage for the second time, where they are trying to figure out why it conks out after about 5 miles of driving and won't start when hot. They've tried cleaning and changing the spark plugs to no avail; the latest suspect is the crankshaft sensor. Roll on (affordable) EVs, I say!
It seems to have become an article of belief among some conservative that following what the law sets out, if they don't like it, is "wet" and "liberal".
Braverman is a disgrace to her office.
John Harris had an interesting piece the other day in Guardian about how far the "conservatives" had travelled from conserving anything or respecting any institution that they once would have valued.
I have a feeling that come Jan 21st many senior Republicans are going to start turning on Trump.
They're too afraid too right now and I don't entirely blame them. The bizarre constitutional set up that generates a near 3-month gap from election to inauguration is to blame. It relies on decency but breaks down when you have an as5hole in the White House.
Stripped of office, Trump will no longer look or sound like a person of power. He will still rant and rave but he will come to regret making so many enemies. There's that moment in House of Cards when the big cheese Raymond Tusk suddenly finds himself facing jail ...
We’ll see. I don’t think that’s a foregone conclusion at all. It’s just as likely, perhaps more so, that the party remains in thrall to him.
The problem is there are now two GOP parties and one is basically a Trump personality cult. Only one will survive the coming party civil war and I don't think it will be the sane branch.
Maybe a new centre right party will be the medium term solution? There's been mutterings.
The problem in the US is that the voter base for a sane centre right party is smaller than that of a far right populist nationalist party, which is why Trumpism will be hard for the Republican party to destroy through the primary process too. We are probably heading in the same direction here, owing to the same processes - the hollowing out of the middle class and the growing liberalism of what remains of it.
Biden is a sane centre right politician and will be a more popular President than either a Trumpist or a Sanders/Warren type could be. As was Obama. It is not the voter base that is the problem....
That is a large assumption now.
The voter base definitely has a large number of poorly educated people who can be sold random theories via social media. In itself that would not be a problem in terms of electing Presidents if party chiefs appointed candidates without the primary process.
Primaries (and one member one vote here) are more democratic for the party memberships but less democratic and more divisive for the countries they run.
Indeed, but once a significant proportion of the electorate is hooked on conspiracy theories and hatred, expecting them to change that worldview any time soon is ... optimistic.
It's not impossible, but there is simply no Republican leader in sight who might attempt such a process, or possess the capacity to carry it out.
Over the years that I've been following US politics I've watched the GoP transform from the conservative party into the stupid party. As a general rule you can now tell whether somebody is likely to be a Democrat or a Republican by assessing how stupid they are.
This makes it very difficult for a Leader other than a Trump-like snake-oil salesman and populist to emerge and gain traction with the voters.
In 2012, just 8 years ago, Romney was picked as the GOP nominee in the primaries and even won college graduates in the general election over Obama.
Romney still lost. McCain lost. The type of Republicans the left likes. Plucky losers who maintain the fiction the old America is there, somewhere, and might get into power one day.
What is the "old" America in this context?
What's the mental picture?
Bedford Falls. Trump is more of a Pottersville kind of guy.
Mmm. I can see that, yes. A good reference, actually, that film. Jimmy Stewart (America) lived through a nightmare and when it ended was flooded with relief and joy. Him waking up was in essence the call of Pennsylvania.
The irony is that Stewart was a rock solid conservative Republican - campaigned for Goldwater and Reagan.
There's a cringey R4 programme wherein celebs host imaginary dinner parties with recordings of dead celebs spliced together to make up the table talk. Alison Steadman chose Jimmy Stewart as one of her guests; he spoke movingly about how his son had died in Vietnam, rather less movingly about how the war had been lost because the US had not been united behind its government(s). I fear if he was still with us that he would have taken the Jack Nicklaus & Jon Voight path of accommodating the Donald.
I heard from my octogenarian step-mother that she is due to be vaccinated on Friday in a fairly small Devon town, so things seem to be moving ahead quite well.
The talk of Lockdown 3 in Febraury is daft as by then I would imagine that the vast majority of 80+ people in this country would have had a double dose and thus be immune.
So it will be safe to let the virus spread unhindered through the whole population aged 79 and less?
One would have thought that by now the message about the danger of mutations from large-scale infections would have penetrated even the thickest of skulls.
Do you think society should only go back to "normal" once everyone has been vaccinated?
One of the first signs of "normal" will be the vaccinated over-80's jetting off for those ultra-low cost cruises. Once that happens, it will be rather more difficult to get the young buying into tight lockdowns...
The incompetence of this government knows no bounds. Advised by her own lawyers that the appeal was stupid, she proceeded personally and briefed against any judges who disagreed with her. She is right, the entire rest of the legal system is wrong. Obviously.
Legal understatement of the year (at least in the UK - there've been some humdingers in the Trump election litigation) below -
"The judges said the attorney general's argument, that the sentences of Bowers and Cole were unduly lenient because the judge did not "depart" from the sentencing guidelines, was "to say the least, an unusual submission".
You vote for a third party. If there are sufficient intelligent right of centre voters who do so, the Republican party will eventually get the message.
Wouldn’t that take at least a couple of electoral cycles to filter through? There doesn’t seem to be much taste for strategic delayed gratification in the GOP at the moment, go for the big voter pool of crazies and complain about fraud and stolen elections seems more their thing. Doesn't help that quite a few of their elected members are also crazies..
Everything always seem more intense and extreme in America. Our versions of what they have always a bit bargain basement. Like, I caught a chap on the telly yesterday, an MP by the name of Desmond Swayne, and he radiated some definite essence of Tea Party but I found it impossible to take him seriously. Not sure why - just something about him.
I like being privileged. I enjoy the privileges I have, and I'm excited about the thought of accruing more privileges as I go through life. I don't wish others were less privileged so I could be more privileged - that seems like screwed up logic.
Congratulations on finding a new way of spectacularly missing the point on the issue of white privilege, a significant achievement given the wide range of bone-headed responses we've already seen on this topic here.
We await your insightful contributions with interest.
I've said loads on this topic, I feel like a broken record. Bottom line - living in a multiracial household I belive white privilege to be real, I have seen it in action. It is one of many ways (like class or sex) that some groups are treated better than others in ways that are unconnected to their talents or intrinsic worth. To be honest, it surprises me that people find it controversial and put so much effort into proving it doesn't exist, rather than listening to those who say it has affected them and finding ways of making society fairer.
Care homes: the nightmare for my mother continues.
A few weeks ago the media widely reported a change to government rules regarding care home visits. This, said the media and the government, would - at last - herald meaningful inside visits with our loved ones, starting before Christmas.
My mum`s care home were gearing up for this, waiting for the rapid test (LFT) kits to arrive. I`d informed my mum of the positive change that was on the way, and I would be able to see her at Christmas.
However, yesterday, out of the blue, the care home emailed relatives saying that it has been found that negative lateral flow device results are only 75% reliable, and “this has led to many scientists, organisations and local authorities advising against their use for visiting as this does not remove risk sufficiently”. So, the care home management has decided not to implement these new rules.
Note that the government guidance specifically covers this imperfection. It says “while rapid testing can reduce the risks around visiting it does not completely remove the risk of infection”. Therefore, this factor is already discounted into their more relaxed new guidance.
Unfortunately the same guidance gives license for individual care homes to “dynamically assess risk” and the care homes are using this license to exercise judgement about when, and in what circumstances, visits can be safely supported, which - it is clear - is resulting in them applying rules which are more risk-averse than the government guidelines allows, citing resident and carer safety as their reason. (The less gullible (or more cynical) may think that the main reason is commercial: they are being supplied the test kits but not being funded to administer them.)
I`m furious. Thoughts?
As frustrating and difficult as not seeing your mum at Christmas is, please be patient. My elderly grandma died yesterday in hospital, after contracting Covid in her care home.
She was taken to hospital last week with low oxygen levels, a few hours later the care home rang my mum to say my grandma's latest test had returned positive. Told the hospital, they did a test that came back negative. Couple of days later they did another test, that came back positive.
She died of a double whammy of Covid and pneumonia. Six weeks after being widowed after a mix of Covid, COPD and asbestosis got my grandad.
There is no one who is not aware of the Covid risks. Whether they be 20 or 80. Hence we should be trusted to do what we believe we want to or think right. For some that will be seeing their 80-yr old parents; for some that will not be seeing their 80-yr old parents.
I don't think anyone will go directly from a knees-up at Spoons to their 80-yr old parents.
I think given the risk profile it is mostly for the 80-yr old parents to decide ultimately. For some of those, Christmas and seeing family is a hugely important part of their lives in a pretty miserable year, perhaps enough for it to be a significant factor in their mental health wellbeing; for others they will not mind waiting a few more months to see the family.
I guess the question is whether Covid is a seat belts (protect the people in your car) or a drink driving (protect everyone on the road) kind of situation. I would say that it's more like the latter so the government absolutely should be able to tell people what to do. I think this whole "let's keep Christmas going" thing is horseshit, especially when the government was happy to shut down Eid with a few hours' notice. They've had plenty of time to see that their approach will lead to people dying unnecessarily and should have the guts to tell people that the situation has changed.
Let's not forget that it is and was supposed to be about protecting the NHS. If people want to bungee jump, drive racing cars, 3-day event or what have you the government says nothing about it and rightly so.
But of course bungee jumping, etc doesn't impact others and hence we are at your "protecting others". But this is your family. This is precisely people in your car and hence your former example. Of course wearing seatbelts is imo rightly mandated by law but I believe Christmas, for some people, is a special case. For others, it is not and they presumably won't have one this year.
But it's not just your family. You give it to aunty Brenda, who passes it onto a work colleague, who dies. You give it to your granny, who ends up in hospital, where the nurse treating her catches it and dies. This is how infectious diseases work: if they could only be passed on once they would die out!
Well you are slightly not crediting people with sufficient common sense. If Auntie Brenda is off to work on the 27th Dec then she will also have to use common sense. The risks, individually, however, remain very small.
Not zero by any means, but very small.
Is that the same common sense that saw millions of people flying off on their essential summer holidays and packing the high streets for essential Christmas shopping?
That's people for you. We are idiots. What else do you want the govt to legislate against? A long list, I would imagine.
If the NHS is not overwhelmed then there is an argument for the government to back off.
And that's to say nothing about the economic costs.
What level of Covid deaths do you think is acceptable?
In some areas the NHS is struggling badly already, and many areas are only a doubling or two away from serious trouble.
I think it's too late for banning Christmas gatherings, as it would lead many people to say sod the rules, and not just for those few days but maybe more importantly afterwards. But it should be discouraged.
I believe it is going to be discouraged. Mightily.
There is no one who is not aware of the Covid risks. Whether they be 20 or 80. Hence we should be trusted to do what we believe we want to or think right. For some that will be seeing their 80-yr old parents; for some that will not be seeing their 80-yr old parents.
I don't think anyone will go directly from a knees-up at Spoons to their 80-yr old parents.
I think given the risk profile it is mostly for the 80-yr old parents to decide ultimately. For some of those, Christmas and seeing family is a hugely important part of their lives in a pretty miserable year, perhaps enough for it to be a significant factor in their mental health wellbeing; for others they will not mind waiting a few more months to see the family.
I guess the question is whether Covid is a seat belts (protect the people in your car) or a drink driving (protect everyone on the road) kind of situation. I would say that it's more like the latter so the government absolutely should be able to tell people what to do. I think this whole "let's keep Christmas going" thing is horseshit, especially when the government was happy to shut down Eid with a few hours' notice. They've had plenty of time to see that their approach will lead to people dying unnecessarily and should have the guts to tell people that the situation has changed.
Let's not forget that it is and was supposed to be about protecting the NHS. If people want to bungee jump, drive racing cars, 3-day event or what have you the government says nothing about it and rightly so.
But of course bungee jumping, etc doesn't impact others and hence we are at your "protecting others". But this is your family. This is precisely people in your car and hence your former example. Of course wearing seatbelts is imo rightly mandated by law but I believe Christmas, for some people, is a special case. For others, it is not and they presumably won't have one this year.
But it's not just your family. You give it to aunty Brenda, who passes it onto a work colleague, who dies. You give it to your granny, who ends up in hospital, where the nurse treating her catches it and dies. This is how infectious diseases work: if they could only be passed on once they would die out!
Well you are slightly not crediting people with sufficient common sense. If Auntie Brenda is off to work on the 27th Dec then she will also have to use common sense. The risks, individually, however, remain very small.
Not zero by any means, but very small.
Is that the same common sense that saw millions of people flying off on their essential summer holidays and packing the high streets for essential Christmas shopping?
Do we know what percentage of those summer holidays were booked and paid for before the plague hit? If refunds were dependent on government travel advice then I can understand why people went away rather than spend a couple of grand on nothing.
Fair point. For some reason governments across Europe seemed to have decided that Covid was done in the summer, and didn't even try to eradicate it. The economic benefit of those couple of months of opening must be utterly dwarfed by the costs of the second wave.
To be honest with electric planes, and more sustainable aviation fuels and carbon-neutral methods of ground construction, it should be possible to expand Heathrow in the long-term without too much environmental impact.
I don't think commercially viable electric aircraft are anywhere near due to energy density considerations. Jet A1 = 40Mj/kg. Li-ion batteries = 0.7 Mj/kg.
You also have to carry the depleted batteries all the way to destination unlike fuel which gets consumed.
Aviation is more likely to end up powered by H or e-fuel.
No one's going to use hydrogen, I suspect. If we have the tech to produce that economically from renewable electric, then synfuel will be just about as easy. And way easier from the point of practical use.
Electric is quite likely to be used in short haul, though, with quite large advantages in maintenance costs. And Li/S batteries offer a possible order of magnitude improvement in energy/kg on what we have now - though that's probably a decade off.
Every rational study of hydrogen as a fuel has ended up with - "it would be better/cheaper if we attach some carbon atoms to it". Except possibly for rocket upper stages.....
Synthetic kerosene already exists. It's just more expensive and has a couple of technical issues. Nothing that can't be fixed with some R&D.
I have a feeling that come Jan 21st many senior Republicans are going to start turning on Trump.
They're too afraid too right now and I don't entirely blame them. The bizarre constitutional set up that generates a near 3-month gap from election to inauguration is to blame. It relies on decency but breaks down when you have an as5hole in the White House.
Stripped of office, Trump will no longer look or sound like a person of power. He will still rant and rave but he will come to regret making so many enemies. There's that moment in House of Cards when the big cheese Raymond Tusk suddenly finds himself facing jail ...
We’ll see. I don’t think that’s a foregone conclusion at all. It’s just as likely, perhaps more so, that the party remains in thrall to him.
The problem is there are now two GOP parties and one is basically a Trump personality cult. Only one will survive the coming party civil war and I don't think it will be the sane branch.
Maybe a new centre right party will be the medium term solution? There's been mutterings.
The problem in the US is that the voter base for a sane centre right party is smaller than that of a far right populist nationalist party, which is why Trumpism will be hard for the Republican party to destroy through the primary process too. We are probably heading in the same direction here, owing to the same processes - the hollowing out of the middle class and the growing liberalism of what remains of it.
Biden is a sane centre right politician and will be a more popular President than either a Trumpist or a Sanders/Warren type could be. As was Obama. It is not the voter base that is the problem....
That is a large assumption now.
The voter base definitely has a large number of poorly educated people who can be sold random theories via social media. In itself that would not be a problem in terms of electing Presidents if party chiefs appointed candidates without the primary process.
Primaries (and one member one vote here) are more democratic for the party memberships but less democratic and more divisive for the countries they run.
Indeed, but once a significant proportion of the electorate is hooked on conspiracy theories and hatred, expecting them to change that worldview any time soon is ... optimistic.
It's not impossible, but there is simply no Republican leader in sight who might attempt such a process, or possess the capacity to carry it out.
Over the years that I've been following US politics I've watched the GoP transform from the conservative party into the stupid party. As a general rule you can now tell whether somebody is likely to be a Democrat or a Republican by assessing how stupid they are.
This makes it very difficult for a Leader other than a Trump-like snake-oil salesman and populist to emerge and gain traction with the voters.
In 2012, just 8 years ago, Romney was picked as the GOP nominee in the primaries and even won college graduates in the general election over Obama.
Romney still lost. McCain lost. The type of Republicans the left likes. Plucky losers who maintain the fiction the old America is there, somewhere, and might get into power one day.
What is the "old" America in this context?
What's the mental picture?
Bedford Falls. Trump is more of a Pottersville kind of guy.
Mmm. I can see that, yes. A good reference, actually, that film. Jimmy Stewart (America) lived through a nightmare and when it ended was flooded with relief and joy. Him waking up was in essence the call of Pennsylvania.
The irony is that Stewart was a rock solid conservative Republican - campaigned for Goldwater and Reagan.
There's a cringey R4 programme wherein celebs host imaginary dinner parties with recordings of dead celebs spliced together to make up the table talk. Alison Steadman chose Jimmy Stewart as one of her guests; he spoke movingly about how his son had died in Vietnam, rather less movingly about how the war had been lost because the US had not been united behind its government(s). I fear if he was still with us that he would have taken the Jack Nicklaus & Jon Voight path of accommodating the Donald.
Apparently he once got into a physical fight with the liberal Henry Fonda about politics. Fonda won, because left-wingers are notoriously handy in a ruck. The two remained close friends and didn't talk about politics again.
I heard from my octogenarian step-mother that she is due to be vaccinated on Friday in a fairly small Devon town, so things seem to be moving ahead quite well.
They haven’t done my mum yet and she should be first in the queue! They seem to be vaccinating all the wrong people!
40K jabs is not something to applaud if it’s random wrong people, soft lying fruit just to get your stats up, it’s 40K mistakes! If that is the crime the government are committing, it should be punishable with custodial sentence.
My 98 year old grandmother hasn't heard anything yet. She said that In Wales they are only vaccinating in the North and haven't started in the Valleys yet. If this is correct, it seems to be the wrong priority as the outbreak is terrible in the Valleys right now.
More evidence they are just picking low hanging fruit and claiming how wonderful the stats are. Scandal!
I suspect that it's more likely not going through the NHS channels and setting something else up to run the notification.
You vote for a third party. If there are sufficient intelligent right of centre voters who do so, the Republican party will eventually get the message.
Wouldn’t that take at least a couple of electoral cycles to filter through? There doesn’t seem to be much taste for strategic delayed gratification in the GOP at the moment, go for the big voter pool of crazies and complain about fraud and stolen elections seems more their thing. Doesn't help that quite a few of their elected members are also crazies..
Everything always seem more intense and extreme in America. Our versions of what they have always a bit bargain basement. Like, I caught a chap on the telly yesterday, an MP by the name of Desmond Swayne, and he radiated some definite essence of Tea Party but I found it impossible to take him seriously. Not sure why - just something about him.
Something to do with "we're paying too much attention to health professionals and scientists on health and science issues" ?
There is no one who is not aware of the Covid risks. Whether they be 20 or 80. Hence we should be trusted to do what we believe we want to or think right. For some that will be seeing their 80-yr old parents; for some that will not be seeing their 80-yr old parents.
I don't think anyone will go directly from a knees-up at Spoons to their 80-yr old parents.
I think given the risk profile it is mostly for the 80-yr old parents to decide ultimately. For some of those, Christmas and seeing family is a hugely important part of their lives in a pretty miserable year, perhaps enough for it to be a significant factor in their mental health wellbeing; for others they will not mind waiting a few more months to see the family.
I guess the question is whether Covid is a seat belts (protect the people in your car) or a drink driving (protect everyone on the road) kind of situation. I would say that it's more like the latter so the government absolutely should be able to tell people what to do. I think this whole "let's keep Christmas going" thing is horseshit, especially when the government was happy to shut down Eid with a few hours' notice. They've had plenty of time to see that their approach will lead to people dying unnecessarily and should have the guts to tell people that the situation has changed.
Let's not forget that it is and was supposed to be about protecting the NHS. If people want to bungee jump, drive racing cars, 3-day event or what have you the government says nothing about it and rightly so.
But of course bungee jumping, etc doesn't impact others and hence we are at your "protecting others". But this is your family. This is precisely people in your car and hence your former example. Of course wearing seatbelts is imo rightly mandated by law but I believe Christmas, for some people, is a special case. For others, it is not and they presumably won't have one this year.
But it's not just your family. You give it to aunty Brenda, who passes it onto a work colleague, who dies. You give it to your granny, who ends up in hospital, where the nurse treating her catches it and dies. This is how infectious diseases work: if they could only be passed on once they would die out!
Here's an interesting thought experiment.
Stats from the US suggest that accidents caused by someone loading an unloaded gun and this leads to death/injury are in the 1 in 1,000,000 category. The kind of thing where someone puts the gun down, someone else fiddles with it, loads it and the first person comes back later, not realising....
So, if my idea of fun is going out in the garden. waving my gun at my neighbours and going "Click"...
- I can claim I had emptied the gun. To the best of my knowledge. So not my fault. - I can claim that the probability of my injuring someone is extremely small. - It's my right....
That thread is wonderfully obtuse. The AG is both a lawyer and a politician, and losing a case in court can lead to a very satisfactory political victory.
And that is why she has done it - bait the right wing media with something she is told by her own legal team she will lose so that she can then politically grandstand.
The two relevant questions are - is this suitable behaviour for the most senior law officer? And is gaslighting the Daily Heil readers on something that she knows is wrong sensible behaviour for a government minister?
Care homes: the nightmare for my mother continues.
A few weeks ago the media widely reported a change to government rules regarding care home visits. This, said the media and the government, would - at last - herald meaningful inside visits with our loved ones, starting before Christmas.
My mum`s care home were gearing up for this, waiting for the rapid test (LFT) kits to arrive. I`d informed my mum of the positive change that was on the way, and I would be able to see her at Christmas.
However, yesterday, out of the blue, the care home emailed relatives saying that it has been found that negative lateral flow device results are only 75% reliable, and “this has led to many scientists, organisations and local authorities advising against their use for visiting as this does not remove risk sufficiently”. So, the care home management has decided not to implement these new rules.
Note that the government guidance specifically covers this imperfection. It says “while rapid testing can reduce the risks around visiting it does not completely remove the risk of infection”. Therefore, this factor is already discounted into their more relaxed new guidance.
Unfortunately the same guidance gives license for individual care homes to “dynamically assess risk” and the care homes are using this license to exercise judgement about when, and in what circumstances, visits can be safely supported, which - it is clear - is resulting in them applying rules which are more risk-averse than the government guidelines allows, citing resident and carer safety as their reason. (The less gullible (or more cynical) may think that the main reason is commercial: they are being supplied the test kits but not being funded to administer them.)
I`m furious. Thoughts?
As frustrating and difficult as not seeing your mum at Christmas is, please be patient. My elderly grandma died yesterday in hospital, after contracting Covid in her care home.
She was taken to hospital last week with low oxygen levels, a few hours later the care home rang my mum to say my grandma's latest test had returned positive. Told the hospital, they did a test that came back negative. Couple of days later they did another test, that came back positive.
She died of a double whammy of Covid and pneumonia. Six weeks after being widowed after a mix of Covid, COPD and asbestosis got my grandad.
So my advice is stay away, don't risk it.
Sorry to hear that. A sobering reminder why doing the opposite of what the government are saying is sensible.
Just come up on my F/b site, from the Indie. 'Tory party urges activists to campaign like Trump by ‘weaponising fake news’ and ‘fighting wokeism’ Comes from Wellingborough, apparently.
I like being privileged. I enjoy the privileges I have, and I'm excited about the thought of accruing more privileges as I go through life. I don't wish others were less privileged so I could be more privileged - that seems like screwed up logic.
Congratulations on finding a new way of spectacularly missing the point on the issue of white privilege, a significant achievement given the wide range of bone-headed responses we've already seen on this topic here.
We await your insightful contributions with interest.
I've said loads on this topic, I feel like a broken record. Bottom line - living in a multiracial household I belive white privilege to be real, I have seen it in action. It is one of many ways (like class or sex) that some groups are treated better than others in ways that are unconnected to their talents or intrinsic worth. To be honest, it surprises me that people find it controversial and put so much effort into proving it doesn't exist, rather than listening to those who say it has affected them and finding ways of making society fairer.
Regardless of whether or not it exists, as a political message it's immensely counterproductive and inconsistent on its face. The WP fans are simultaneously holding on to the older (and far better) principle that discrimination on the basis on skin colour is morally wrong, and then adding the new message that discrimination on the basis of skin colour is essential - as long as that person is white, or a minority seen to be 'acting white', as the Mendoza types might have it.
The new message doesn't just contradict the first, it robs it of its genuine moral force. Once you've established that discrimination on the basis of skin colour is a contingent rather than an absolute evil, you've cut the ground from under your own feet.
I heard from my octogenarian step-mother that she is due to be vaccinated on Friday in a fairly small Devon town, so things seem to be moving ahead quite well.
They haven’t done my mum yet and she should be first in the queue! They seem to be vaccinating all the wrong people!
40K jabs is not something to applaud if it’s random wrong people, soft lying fruit just to get your stats up, it’s 40K mistakes! If that is the crime the government are committing, it should be punishable with custodial sentence.
My 98 year old grandmother hasn't heard anything yet. She said that In Wales they are only vaccinating in the North and haven't started in the Valleys yet. If this is correct, it seems to be the wrong priority as the outbreak is terrible in the Valleys right now.
More evidence they are just picking low hanging fruit and claiming how wonderful the stats are. Scandal!
I suspect that it's more likely not going through the NHS channels and setting something else up to run the notification.
No, it is a decentralised system with local bodies doing the organisation. I got one of the leftovers, after the at risk patients were done that day.
You vote for a third party. If there are sufficient intelligent right of centre voters who do so, the Republican party will eventually get the message.
Wouldn’t that take at least a couple of electoral cycles to filter through? There doesn’t seem to be much taste for strategic delayed gratification in the GOP at the moment, go for the big voter pool of crazies and complain about fraud and stolen elections seems more their thing. Doesn't help that quite a few of their elected members are also crazies..
Everything always seem more intense and extreme in America. Our versions of what they have always a bit bargain basement. Like, I caught a chap on the telly yesterday, an MP by the name of Desmond Swayne, and he radiated some definite essence of Tea Party but I found it impossible to take him seriously. Not sure why - just something about him.
His name, dress and demeanour. Everything about him feels like a caricature.
I like being privileged. I enjoy the privileges I have, and I'm excited about the thought of accruing more privileges as I go through life. I don't wish others were less privileged so I could be more privileged - that seems like screwed up logic.
Congratulations on finding a new way of spectacularly missing the point on the issue of white privilege, a significant achievement given the wide range of bone-headed responses we've already seen on this topic here.
We await your insightful contributions with interest.
I've said loads on this topic, I feel like a broken record. Bottom line - living in a multiracial household I belive white privilege to be real, I have seen it in action. It is one of many ways (like class or sex) that some groups are treated better than others in ways that are unconnected to their talents or intrinsic worth. To be honest, it surprises me that people find it controversial and put so much effort into proving it doesn't exist, rather than listening to those who say it has affected them and finding ways of making society fairer.
The inability of many to distinguish between whether white privilege exists or not (it does) or is a good slogan (it isn't) is frustrating.
Care homes: the nightmare for my mother continues.
A few weeks ago the media widely reported a change to government rules regarding care home visits. This, said the media and the government, would - at last - herald meaningful inside visits with our loved ones, starting before Christmas.
My mum`s care home were gearing up for this, waiting for the rapid test (LFT) kits to arrive. I`d informed my mum of the positive change that was on the way, and I would be able to see her at Christmas.
However, yesterday, out of the blue, the care home emailed relatives saying that it has been found that negative lateral flow device results are only 75% reliable, and “this has led to many scientists, organisations and local authorities advising against their use for visiting as this does not remove risk sufficiently”. So, the care home management has decided not to implement these new rules.
Note that the government guidance specifically covers this imperfection. It says “while rapid testing can reduce the risks around visiting it does not completely remove the risk of infection”. Therefore, this factor is already discounted into their more relaxed new guidance.
Unfortunately the same guidance gives license for individual care homes to “dynamically assess risk” and the care homes are using this license to exercise judgement about when, and in what circumstances, visits can be safely supported, which - it is clear - is resulting in them applying rules which are more risk-averse than the government guidelines allows, citing resident and carer safety as their reason. (The less gullible (or more cynical) may think that the main reason is commercial: they are being supplied the test kits but not being funded to administer them.)
I`m furious. Thoughts?
As frustrating and difficult as not seeing your mum at Christmas is, please be patient. My elderly grandma died yesterday in hospital, after contracting Covid in her care home.
She was taken to hospital last week with low oxygen levels, a few hours later the care home rang my mum to say my grandma's latest test had returned positive. Told the hospital, they did a test that came back negative. Couple of days later they did another test, that came back positive.
She died of a double whammy of Covid and pneumonia. Six weeks after being widowed after a mix of Covid, COPD and asbestosis got my grandad.
So my advice is stay away, don't risk it.
Very sorry to hear that.
Thank you. They were both very old, knackered and ready to go, I think in both cases, without Covid, they wouldn't have been around for much longer anyway. The worst thing was not being able to see either of them before they went. They both died in hospital surrounded by strangers, not having seen any family for a long time.
There is no one who is not aware of the Covid risks. Whether they be 20 or 80. Hence we should be trusted to do what we believe we want to or think right. For some that will be seeing their 80-yr old parents; for some that will not be seeing their 80-yr old parents.
I don't think anyone will go directly from a knees-up at Spoons to their 80-yr old parents.
I think given the risk profile it is mostly for the 80-yr old parents to decide ultimately. For some of those, Christmas and seeing family is a hugely important part of their lives in a pretty miserable year, perhaps enough for it to be a significant factor in their mental health wellbeing; for others they will not mind waiting a few more months to see the family.
I guess the question is whether Covid is a seat belts (protect the people in your car) or a drink driving (protect everyone on the road) kind of situation. I would say that it's more like the latter so the government absolutely should be able to tell people what to do. I think this whole "let's keep Christmas going" thing is horseshit, especially when the government was happy to shut down Eid with a few hours' notice. They've had plenty of time to see that their approach will lead to people dying unnecessarily and should have the guts to tell people that the situation has changed.
Let's not forget that it is and was supposed to be about protecting the NHS. If people want to bungee jump, drive racing cars, 3-day event or what have you the government says nothing about it and rightly so.
But of course bungee jumping, etc doesn't impact others and hence we are at your "protecting others". But this is your family. This is precisely people in your car and hence your former example. Of course wearing seatbelts is imo rightly mandated by law but I believe Christmas, for some people, is a special case. For others, it is not and they presumably won't have one this year.
But it's not just your family. You give it to aunty Brenda, who passes it onto a work colleague, who dies. You give it to your granny, who ends up in hospital, where the nurse treating her catches it and dies. This is how infectious diseases work: if they could only be passed on once they would die out!
Well you are slightly not crediting people with sufficient common sense. If Auntie Brenda is off to work on the 27th Dec then she will also have to use common sense. The risks, individually, however, remain very small.
Not zero by any means, but very small.
Sure, but compound lots of very small risks and you end up with the situation we have now - Covid cases in hospital rising towards the spring peak, with the effects of more individuals using their personal judgement to take additional small risks over Christmas yet to come.
This is why we need a leader who can inspire people to choose not to take those additional risks - or who could anticipate the desire to mix socially in the dead of winter and reduce prevalence to a minimal level in advance. Instead we have one who is encouraging people to view Christmas as a reasonable excuse to increase the risk they are exposing themselves and others too.
It will lead to additional deaths at the same time as the vaccinations have begun. Such a waste.
There is no one who is not aware of the Covid risks. Whether they be 20 or 80. Hence we should be trusted to do what we believe we want to or think right. For some that will be seeing their 80-yr old parents; for some that will not be seeing their 80-yr old parents.
I don't think anyone will go directly from a knees-up at Spoons to their 80-yr old parents.
I think given the risk profile it is mostly for the 80-yr old parents to decide ultimately. For some of those, Christmas and seeing family is a hugely important part of their lives in a pretty miserable year, perhaps enough for it to be a significant factor in their mental health wellbeing; for others they will not mind waiting a few more months to see the family.
I guess the question is whether Covid is a seat belts (protect the people in your car) or a drink driving (protect everyone on the road) kind of situation. I would say that it's more like the latter so the government absolutely should be able to tell people what to do. I think this whole "let's keep Christmas going" thing is horseshit, especially when the government was happy to shut down Eid with a few hours' notice. They've had plenty of time to see that their approach will lead to people dying unnecessarily and should have the guts to tell people that the situation has changed.
Let's not forget that it is and was supposed to be about protecting the NHS. If people want to bungee jump, drive racing cars, 3-day event or what have you the government says nothing about it and rightly so.
But of course bungee jumping, etc doesn't impact others and hence we are at your "protecting others". But this is your family. This is precisely people in your car and hence your former example. Of course wearing seatbelts is imo rightly mandated by law but I believe Christmas, for some people, is a special case. For others, it is not and they presumably won't have one this year.
But it's not just your family. You give it to aunty Brenda, who passes it onto a work colleague, who dies. You give it to your granny, who ends up in hospital, where the nurse treating her catches it and dies. This is how infectious diseases work: if they could only be passed on once they would die out!
Here's an interesting thought experiment.
Stats from the US suggest that accidents caused by someone loading an unloaded gun and this leads to death/injury are in the 1 in 1,000,000 category. The kind of thing where someone puts the gun down, someone else fiddles with it, loads it and the first person comes back later, not realising....
So, if my idea of fun is going out in the garden. waving my gun at my neighbours and going "Click"...
- I can claim I had emptied the gun. To the best of my knowledge. So not my fault. - I can claim that the probability of my injuring someone is extremely small. - It's my right....
Hmm. ,that 1 in 1000000 is for everybody. Once you have left the gun lying around, it's not that any more ...
Care homes: the nightmare for my mother continues.
A few weeks ago the media widely reported a change to government rules regarding care home visits. This, said the media and the government, would - at last - herald meaningful inside visits with our loved ones, starting before Christmas.
My mum`s care home were gearing up for this, waiting for the rapid test (LFT) kits to arrive. I`d informed my mum of the positive change that was on the way, and I would be able to see her at Christmas.
However, yesterday, out of the blue, the care home emailed relatives saying that it has been found that negative lateral flow device results are only 75% reliable, and “this has led to many scientists, organisations and local authorities advising against their use for visiting as this does not remove risk sufficiently”. So, the care home management has decided not to implement these new rules.
Note that the government guidance specifically covers this imperfection. It says “while rapid testing can reduce the risks around visiting it does not completely remove the risk of infection”. Therefore, this factor is already discounted into their more relaxed new guidance.
Unfortunately the same guidance gives license for individual care homes to “dynamically assess risk” and the care homes are using this license to exercise judgement about when, and in what circumstances, visits can be safely supported, which - it is clear - is resulting in them applying rules which are more risk-averse than the government guidelines allows, citing resident and carer safety as their reason. (The less gullible (or more cynical) may think that the main reason is commercial: they are being supplied the test kits but not being funded to administer them.)
I`m furious. Thoughts?
As frustrating and difficult as not seeing your mum at Christmas is, please be patient. My elderly grandma died yesterday in hospital, after contracting Covid in her care home.
She was taken to hospital last week with low oxygen levels, a few hours later the care home rang my mum to say my grandma's latest test had returned positive. Told the hospital, they did a test that came back negative. Couple of days later they did another test, that came back positive.
She died of a double whammy of Covid and pneumonia. Six weeks after being widowed after a mix of Covid, COPD and asbestosis got my grandad.
So my advice is stay away, don't risk it.
Very sorry to hear that.
Thank you. They were both very old, knackered and ready to go, I think in both cases, without Covid, they wouldn't have been around for much longer anyway. The worst thing was not being able to see either of them before they went. They both died in hospital surrounded by strangers, not having seen any family for a long time.
Yes, also sorry to hear your news. Comes down to views about quality of life versus quantity.
Keith - I don't care about DonCum's pay rise. It's an internal row creation machine in Number 10, but irrelevant to anyone who doesn't work at Number 10.
I like being privileged. I enjoy the privileges I have, and I'm excited about the thought of accruing more privileges as I go through life. I don't wish others were less privileged so I could be more privileged - that seems like screwed up logic.
Congratulations on finding a new way of spectacularly missing the point on the issue of white privilege, a significant achievement given the wide range of bone-headed responses we've already seen on this topic here.
We await your insightful contributions with interest.
I've said loads on this topic, I feel like a broken record. Bottom line - living in a multiracial household I belive white privilege to be real, I have seen it in action. It is one of many ways (like class or sex) that some groups are treated better than others in ways that are unconnected to their talents or intrinsic worth. To be honest, it surprises me that people find it controversial and put so much effort into proving it doesn't exist, rather than listening to those who say it has affected them and finding ways of making society fairer.
Regardless of whether or not it exists, as a political message it's immensely counterproductive and inconsistent on its face. The WP fans are simultaneously holding on to the older (and far better) principle that discrimination on the basis on skin colour is morally wrong, and then adding the new message that discrimination on the basis of skin colour is essential - as long as that person is white, or a minority seen to be 'acting white', as the Mendoza types might have it.
The new message doesn't just contradict the first, it robs it of its genuine moral force. Once you've established that discrimination on the basis of skin colour is a contingent rather than an absolute evil, you've cut the ground from under your own feet.
Absolutely it is a rubbish and counter productive slogan, which is why the culture warriors on the right love talking about it and promoting social media nutters like Mendoza rather than offering anything constructive or engaging with moderate opinion that wants change.
Care homes: the nightmare for my mother continues.
A few weeks ago the media widely reported a change to government rules regarding care home visits. This, said the media and the government, would - at last - herald meaningful inside visits with our loved ones, starting before Christmas.
My mum`s care home were gearing up for this, waiting for the rapid test (LFT) kits to arrive. I`d informed my mum of the positive change that was on the way, and I would be able to see her at Christmas.
However, yesterday, out of the blue, the care home emailed relatives saying that it has been found that negative lateral flow device results are only 75% reliable, and “this has led to many scientists, organisations and local authorities advising against their use for visiting as this does not remove risk sufficiently”. So, the care home management has decided not to implement these new rules.
Note that the government guidance specifically covers this imperfection. It says “while rapid testing can reduce the risks around visiting it does not completely remove the risk of infection”. Therefore, this factor is already discounted into their more relaxed new guidance.
Unfortunately the same guidance gives license for individual care homes to “dynamically assess risk” and the care homes are using this license to exercise judgement about when, and in what circumstances, visits can be safely supported, which - it is clear - is resulting in them applying rules which are more risk-averse than the government guidelines allows, citing resident and carer safety as their reason. (The less gullible (or more cynical) may think that the main reason is commercial: they are being supplied the test kits but not being funded to administer them.)
I`m furious. Thoughts?
As frustrating and difficult as not seeing your mum at Christmas is, please be patient. My elderly grandma died yesterday in hospital, after contracting Covid in her care home.
She was taken to hospital last week with low oxygen levels, a few hours later the care home rang my mum to say my grandma's latest test had returned positive. Told the hospital, they did a test that came back negative. Couple of days later they did another test, that came back positive.
She died of a double whammy of Covid and pneumonia. Six weeks after being widowed after a mix of Covid, COPD and asbestosis got my grandad.
So my advice is stay away, don't risk it.
Condolences on your loss.
The single benefit of losing my mother in a home last Christmas is that I have been spared through 2020 the constant worry of the call telling me she had contracted Covid.
I like being privileged. I enjoy the privileges I have, and I'm excited about the thought of accruing more privileges as I go through life. I don't wish others were less privileged so I could be more privileged - that seems like screwed up logic.
Congratulations on finding a new way of spectacularly missing the point on the issue of white privilege, a significant achievement given the wide range of bone-headed responses we've already seen on this topic here.
We await your insightful contributions with interest.
I've said loads on this topic, I feel like a broken record. Bottom line - living in a multiracial household I belive white privilege to be real, I have seen it in action. It is one of many ways (like class or sex) that some groups are treated better than others in ways that are unconnected to their talents or intrinsic worth. To be honest, it surprises me that people find it controversial and put so much effort into proving it doesn't exist, rather than listening to those who say it has affected them and finding ways of making society fairer.
Regardless of whether or not it exists, as a political message it's immensely counterproductive and inconsistent on its face. The WP fans are simultaneously holding on to the older (and far better) principle that discrimination on the basis on skin colour is morally wrong, and then adding the new message that discrimination on the basis of skin colour is essential - as long as that person is white, or a minority seen to be 'acting white', as the Mendoza types might have it.
The new message doesn't just contradict the first, it robs it of its genuine moral force. Once you've established that discrimination on the basis of skin colour is a contingent rather than an absolute evil, you've cut the ground from under your own feet.
You say "regardless of whether or not it exists" as if that is of secondary importance, which is in itself a privileged position to take! In my view its existence is what matters. Is it a good political slogan? Probably not, it is easy to misrepresent and hence undermine its message. Black Lives Matter is a much better slogan.
Keith - I don't care about DonCum's pay rise. It's an internal row creation machine in Number 10, but irrelevant to anyone who doesn't work at Number 10.
There is no one who is not aware of the Covid risks. Whether they be 20 or 80. Hence we should be trusted to do what we believe we want to or think right. For some that will be seeing their 80-yr old parents; for some that will not be seeing their 80-yr old parents.
I don't think anyone will go directly from a knees-up at Spoons to their 80-yr old parents.
I think given the risk profile it is mostly for the 80-yr old parents to decide ultimately. For some of those, Christmas and seeing family is a hugely important part of their lives in a pretty miserable year, perhaps enough for it to be a significant factor in their mental health wellbeing; for others they will not mind waiting a few more months to see the family.
I guess the question is whether Covid is a seat belts (protect the people in your car) or a drink driving (protect everyone on the road) kind of situation. I would say that it's more like the latter so the government absolutely should be able to tell people what to do. I think this whole "let's keep Christmas going" thing is horseshit, especially when the government was happy to shut down Eid with a few hours' notice. They've had plenty of time to see that their approach will lead to people dying unnecessarily and should have the guts to tell people that the situation has changed.
Let's not forget that it is and was supposed to be about protecting the NHS. If people want to bungee jump, drive racing cars, 3-day event or what have you the government says nothing about it and rightly so.
But of course bungee jumping, etc doesn't impact others and hence we are at your "protecting others". But this is your family. This is precisely people in your car and hence your former example. Of course wearing seatbelts is imo rightly mandated by law but I believe Christmas, for some people, is a special case. For others, it is not and they presumably won't have one this year.
But it's not just your family. You give it to aunty Brenda, who passes it onto a work colleague, who dies. You give it to your granny, who ends up in hospital, where the nurse treating her catches it and dies. This is how infectious diseases work: if they could only be passed on once they would die out!
Well you are slightly not crediting people with sufficient common sense. If Auntie Brenda is off to work on the 27th Dec then she will also have to use common sense. The risks, individually, however, remain very small.
Not zero by any means, but very small.
Sure, but compound lots of very small risks and you end up with the situation we have now - Covid cases in hospital rising towards the spring peak, with the effects of more individuals using their personal judgement to take additional small risks over Christmas yet to come.
This is why we need a leader who can inspire people to choose not to take those additional risks - or who could anticipate the desire to mix socially in the dead of winter and reduce prevalence to a minimal level in advance. Instead we have one who is encouraging people to view Christmas as a reasonable excuse to increase the risk they are exposing themselves and others too.
It will lead to additional deaths at the same time as the vaccinations have begun. Such a waste.
Of course. In aggregate it's a real risk. Hence the NHS indicator.
I heard from my octogenarian step-mother that she is due to be vaccinated on Friday in a fairly small Devon town, so things seem to be moving ahead quite well.
They haven’t done my mum yet and she should be first in the queue! They seem to be vaccinating all the wrong people!
40K jabs is not something to applaud if it’s random wrong people, soft lying fruit just to get your stats up, it’s 40K mistakes! If that is the crime the government are committing, it should be punishable with custodial sentence.
My 98 year old grandmother hasn't heard anything yet. She said that In Wales they are only vaccinating in the North and haven't started in the Valleys yet. If this is correct, it seems to be the wrong priority as the outbreak is terrible in the Valleys right now.
More evidence they are just picking low hanging fruit and claiming how wonderful the stats are. Scandal!
I suspect that it's more likely not going through the NHS channels and setting something else up to run the notification.
No, it is a decentralised system with local bodies doing the organisation. I got one of the leftovers, after the at risk patients were done that day.
Still looks as though I won't get one before Christmas.
Keith - I don't care about DonCum's pay rise. It's an internal row creation machine in Number 10, but irrelevant to anyone who doesn't work at Number 10.
It's relevant to every public sector worker that had their pay frozen
SHAGGER: "All 4 nations are unanimous". Yet before he finishes admonishing Keith for his lack of recognition of this fact, Wales announces a change both to Christmas rules and to a Level 4 lockdown immediately afterwards.
A lie? Or simply not in possession of the facts and just busking?
Keith - I don't care about DonCum's pay rise. It's an internal row creation machine in Number 10, but irrelevant to anyone who doesn't work at Number 10.
It's relevant to every public sector worker that had their pay frozen
Nonsense.
What is relevant is the millions of private sector workers who have lost their jobs while the public sector have security in work and their pensions
We await your insightful contributions with interest.
I've said loads on this topic, I feel like a broken record.
Maybe because you're not engaging with the real issue?
I don't think anyone (certainly not here) is contesting that some minorities, particularly black people, experience disadvantage in the UK. The pub-nudge, street-crossing, kids in the bank queue, eye-averting and hovering security guard all being personal examples that were shared with me. It exists. It's real. Not everyone does it, but enough do to make the experiences of black people living here uncomfortable. It needs to end.
The problem with "White Privilege" is that when you say it anyone who is white hears that because they are white they have privilege. That will instantly make many say, "no, I'm not" because privilege is commonly understood to mean being granted special rights but they've often had very hard lives, and suffer unemployment, bad health and bad education. It will then in turn makes others say, "yes, you do" because of the reasons in my first paragraph, possibly coupled with a slight that if they disagree they're either totally ignorant or a secret racist too. A number of the latter then double-down with nonsense about slavery and colonialism too, which introduces another complexifying vector into it - particular if your family ancestors had a really rough time of it down the factories and mines in the 19th Century too.
It therefore ends up with the conversation almost entirely about White people, who fight out its interpretation amongst themselves, and takes the attention and energy away from the real disadvantages many minority people face. I call many of its defenders "Woke" because I think they narcissistically want to make it all about themselves due to holding deep-seated insecurities and guilt - particularly prevalent amongst the professional and educated classes - which is why they make so many public declarations of their faith and belief in public, and call out transgressors, whilst doing virtually nothing to address the underlying issues at heart. I can see straight through that, it properly winds me up and I find it hard to respect people who do it.
Like "defund the police" it's a clickbaity type slogan that rises amongst the maelstrom in social media and grabs the headlines but risks making society more split, not worse.
Language matters and it's time we starting using the right language if we're interested in real results, rather than just ourselves.
"White privilege" is simply that white people (especially white, straight, men) face less barriers and obstacles in life and society, on the whole. This is due to a whole manner of historical reasons.
That doesn't mean that white people don't suffer or that white people don't earn their success. It also doesn't mean that the struggles of the white working class, for example, are any less meaningful.
There's nothing "woke" about it as a concept and it annoys me when Twitter idiots turn it into a whole lifestyle.
If you're explaining, you're losing. It's an unhelpful convection that crudely categorises people, and therefore polarises them, and it should be ditched for that reason alone.
See Robert's excellent post at the start of the thread.
Consider the following 2 sentiments -
(1) We are all individuals, unique in our differences, and should never be viewed primarily as a cog in a machine or as a mere unit of a racial or gender or class grouping. To do so is dehumanizing and alienating and does not help in the practical improvement of relationships in society.
(2) Although we are all unique individuals, a massive factor influencing life outcomes is birth circumstances. What race and gender we are, and what class are parents are. Society cannot therefore be understood unless viewed through the prism of identity.
Both these are true. (1) is an obvious truth and (2) is more challenging to accept.
So for me we need to first accept the truth of (2) and decide if we wish to do the work to make it less true. If we do, we should then bear in mind the truth of (1) when going about it.
Keith - I don't care about DonCum's pay rise. It's an internal row creation machine in Number 10, but irrelevant to anyone who doesn't work at Number 10.
Starmer is very poor today
He’s been poor for months. The worry for labour supporters must be whatever pressure is being put on government, it’s zilch pressure put on government by Starmer and his bland front bench.
That’s nine wins in a row for Boris at pmqs
“ "All he wants to do is lock the country down, he's a one club golfer."‘
Care homes: the nightmare for my mother continues.
A few weeks ago the media widely reported a change to government rules regarding care home visits. This, said the media and the government, would - at last - herald meaningful inside visits with our loved ones, starting before Christmas.
My mum`s care home were gearing up for this, waiting for the rapid test (LFT) kits to arrive. I`d informed my mum of the positive change that was on the way, and I would be able to see her at Christmas.
However, yesterday, out of the blue, the care home emailed relatives saying that it has been found that negative lateral flow device results are only 75% reliable, and “this has led to many scientists, organisations and local authorities advising against their use for visiting as this does not remove risk sufficiently”. So, the care home management has decided not to implement these new rules.
Note that the government guidance specifically covers this imperfection. It says “while rapid testing can reduce the risks around visiting it does not completely remove the risk of infection”. Therefore, this factor is already discounted into their more relaxed new guidance.
Unfortunately the same guidance gives license for individual care homes to “dynamically assess risk” and the care homes are using this license to exercise judgement about when, and in what circumstances, visits can be safely supported, which - it is clear - is resulting in them applying rules which are more risk-averse than the government guidelines allows, citing resident and carer safety as their reason. (The less gullible (or more cynical) may think that the main reason is commercial: they are being supplied the test kits but not being funded to administer them.)
I`m furious. Thoughts?
As frustrating and difficult as not seeing your mum at Christmas is, please be patient. My elderly grandma died yesterday in hospital, after contracting Covid in her care home.
She was taken to hospital last week with low oxygen levels, a few hours later the care home rang my mum to say my grandma's latest test had returned positive. Told the hospital, they did a test that came back negative. Couple of days later they did another test, that came back positive.
She died of a double whammy of Covid and pneumonia. Six weeks after being widowed after a mix of Covid, COPD and asbestosis got my grandad.
So my advice is stay away, don't risk it.
Very sorry to hear that.
Thank you. They were both very old, knackered and ready to go, I think in both cases, without Covid, they wouldn't have been around for much longer anyway. The worst thing was not being able to see either of them before they went. They both died in hospital surrounded by strangers, not having seen any family for a long time.
Sorry to hear it. One of the more painful things still about my mother's death is that though I saw her in the hospice the day before, she died with no family around while I was driving through after the 'you'd better get through here asap' phone call. I can only imagine what having that magnified by weeks or months feels like.
SHAGGER: "All 4 nations are unanimous". Yet before he finishes admonishing Keith for his lack of recognition of this fact, Wales announces a change both to Christmas rules and to a Level 4 lockdown immediately afterwards.
A lie? Or simply not in possession of the facts and just busking?
Actually the Welsh Government have agreed with all the UK nations to continue to allow three households to mix between 23rd and 27th December, so actually the message is the same over Christmas
Rules for Christmas will not change in any region of UK but advice will be strengthened
Think really long and hard before risking your relatives?
Of course the problem with the breaking news was that it wasn't true. Either Shagger was his literal clueless self making it up as he goes along, or he lied.
Keith - I don't care about DonCum's pay rise. It's an internal row creation machine in Number 10, but irrelevant to anyone who doesn't work at Number 10.
It's relevant to every public sector worker that had their pay frozen
Nonsense.
What is relevant is the millions of private sector workers who have lost their jobs while the public sector have security in work and their pensions
And paid 100% while furloughed when many were paid 80%.
Comments
I suppose alternately you have people who want to touch their loved ones yet prefer the home to remain COVID free most of all, and look on you and the Daily Mail campaign as being silly and dangerous?
One would have thought that by now the message about the danger of mutations from large-scale infections would have penetrated even the thickest of skulls.
I'm sure he wears his mask with pride.
I hope they will release separate statistics for second doses when that becomes appropriate.
If it's no deizens or a very small fraction of denizens who get visited now, then having a high proportion of denizens visited with tests of that level of reliability will increase risk. How much depends on the numbers, the level of false negatives, visitors per patient, how many of those visitors are from the same family anyway, etc.. But it may well be that the insurance company for one is not happy.
"Silly and dangerous"! She`s 86, hasn`t seen her family properly since February, in poor physical health and even poorer mental health and is in God`s waiting room FFS.
Apparently, Fluorine can be stored in copper vessels because it forms a protective coating of Copper Fluoride.
Not zero by any means, but very small.
https://www.leaderlive.co.uk/news/18918427.family-visits-may-cancelled-christmas-homes-not-protected-coronavirus-outbreak-insurance-claims-say-care-providers/
FWIW, the rapid tests do seem to be less accurate when compared with PCR, but the majority of cases they miss are likely not to be very infectious. A combination of tests, together with good hygiene (sanitiser & masks), ought to be relatively safe - but obviously not absolutely safe.
Deaths, yes.
Hospital admissions, no.
More than half of hospital admissions and clinically severe cases are under 63.
My mum`s home is allowing two per resident per week, only one visitor per visit, and the visitors have to be nominated forever (i.e. the nomination can`t change). For my mum we have nominated my dad and her best friend (as I live far away) and there is a screen between them meaning that they have trouble hearing each other. it`s like visiting someone in prison.
Although barely 10% of the way to battering it. So don't be a muppet over Christmas. Right?
I’d hope that most families will be doing likewise, but poking about on social media, there seem to be a big chunk of the population who are just going to throw caution to the wind.
If the NHS is not overwhelmed then there is an argument for the government to back off.
And that's to say nothing about the economic costs.
What level of Covid deaths do you think is acceptable?
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/two-in-three-brits-want-fossil-fuel-subsidy-shift-to-renewables_uk_5f80c42cc5b6e5c31ffe3fd4?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZWNvc2lhLm9yZy8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAAydNOIYwTvohRDLV8wJwhcDTGJ7325ih5W0-jHhK8lnYrMsLlA8M7x95B9yrUpxdpBBQuQB8DJcOmccUnECWzi3uHO5nDoHxvUfGkHuwsCByVmurJ3pVIPhxEGkpwuZ8sYQl3B42CmerjcAs-dvYsQYxk8nTntObpZccjapsxq0
So to speak.
Braverman is a disgrace to her office.
She should have resigned several times already of course.
We need to end up at about 500k per day to get it through by summer or thereabouts.
Ideally double that.
https://twitter.com/BarristerSecret/status/1339173277135233026
She was taken to hospital last week with low oxygen levels, a few hours later the care home rang my mum to say my grandma's latest test had returned positive. Told the hospital, they did a test that came back negative. Couple of days later they did another test, that came back positive.
She died of a double whammy of Covid and pneumonia. Six weeks after being widowed after a mix of Covid, COPD and asbestosis got my grandad.
So my advice is stay away, don't risk it.
*At this point people always ask if you could make a longer range electric car by scaling the motors down. Interestingly, the answer is that it has little effect.
See R (Miller) v The Prime Minister and Cherry v Advocate General for Scotland ([2019] UKSC 41 for a recent example
I think it's too late for banning Christmas gatherings, as it would lead many people to say sod the rules, and not just for those few days but maybe more importantly afterwards. But it should be discouraged.
My car is currently back at the garage for the second time, where they are trying to figure out why it conks out after about 5 miles of driving and won't start when hot. They've tried cleaning and changing the spark plugs to no avail; the latest suspect is the crankshaft sensor. Roll on (affordable) EVs, I say!
"The judges said the attorney general's argument, that the sentences of Bowers and Cole were unduly lenient because the judge did not "depart" from the sentencing guidelines, was "to say the least, an unusual submission".
Synthetic kerosene already exists. It's just more expensive and has a couple of technical issues. Nothing that can't be fixed with some R&D.
Nudge. Strongly. But don't ban.
https://twitter.com/TimPBouverie/status/1339172232791252993
Or was it the ridiculous collar ?
Stats from the US suggest that accidents caused by someone loading an unloaded gun and this leads to death/injury are in the 1 in 1,000,000 category. The kind of thing where someone puts the gun down, someone else fiddles with it, loads it and the first person comes back later, not realising....
So, if my idea of fun is going out in the garden. waving my gun at my neighbours and going "Click"...
- I can claim I had emptied the gun. To the best of my knowledge. So not my fault.
- I can claim that the probability of my injuring someone is extremely small.
- It's my right....
Rules for Christmas will not change in any region of UK but advice will be strengthened
The two relevant questions are - is this suitable behaviour for the most senior law officer? And is gaslighting the Daily Heil readers on something that she knows is wrong sensible behaviour for a government minister?
'Tory party urges activists to campaign like Trump by ‘weaponising fake news’ and ‘fighting wokeism’
Comes from Wellingborough, apparently.
Must say, I thought they already did.
The new message doesn't just contradict the first, it robs it of its genuine moral force. Once you've established that discrimination on the basis of skin colour is a contingent rather than an absolute evil, you've cut the ground from under your own feet.
This is why we need a leader who can inspire people to choose not to take those additional risks - or who could anticipate the desire to mix socially in the dead of winter and reduce prevalence to a minimal level in advance. Instead we have one who is encouraging people to view Christmas as a reasonable excuse to increase the risk they are exposing themselves and others too.
It will lead to additional deaths at the same time as the vaccinations have begun. Such a waste.
The single benefit of losing my mother in a home last Christmas is that I have been spared through 2020 the constant worry of the call telling me she had contracted Covid.
Is it a good political slogan? Probably not, it is easy to misrepresent and hence undermine its message. Black Lives Matter is a much better slogan.
A lie? Or simply not in possession of the facts and just busking?
What is relevant is the millions of private sector workers who have lost their jobs while the public sector have security in work and their pensions
I don't think anyone (certainly not here) is contesting that some minorities, particularly black people, experience disadvantage in the UK. The pub-nudge, street-crossing, kids in the bank queue, eye-averting and hovering security guard all being personal examples that were shared with me. It exists. It's real. Not everyone does it, but enough do to make the experiences of black people living here uncomfortable. It needs to end.
The problem with "White Privilege" is that when you say it anyone who is white hears that because they are white they have privilege. That will instantly make many say, "no, I'm not" because privilege is commonly understood to mean being granted special rights but they've often had very hard lives, and suffer unemployment, bad health and bad education. It will then in turn makes others say, "yes, you do" because of the reasons in my first paragraph, possibly coupled with a slight that if they disagree they're either totally ignorant or a secret racist too. A number of the latter then double-down with nonsense about slavery and colonialism too, which introduces another complexifying vector into it - particular if your family ancestors had a really rough time of it down the factories and mines in the 19th Century too.
It therefore ends up with the conversation almost entirely about White people, who fight out its interpretation amongst themselves, and takes the attention and energy away from the real disadvantages many minority people face. I call many of its defenders "Woke" because I think they narcissistically want to make it all about themselves due to holding deep-seated insecurities and guilt - particularly prevalent amongst the professional and educated classes - which is why they make so many public declarations of their faith and belief in public, and call out transgressors, whilst doing virtually nothing to address the underlying issues at heart. I can see straight through that, it properly winds me up and I find it hard to respect people who do it.
Like "defund the police" it's a clickbaity type slogan that rises amongst the maelstrom in social media and grabs the headlines but risks making society more split, not worse.
Language matters and it's time we starting using the right language if we're interested in real results, rather than just ourselves.
(1) We are all individuals, unique in our differences, and should never be viewed primarily as a cog in a machine or as a mere unit of a racial or gender or class grouping. To do so is dehumanizing and alienating and does not help in the practical improvement of relationships in society.
(2) Although we are all unique individuals, a massive factor influencing life outcomes is birth circumstances. What race and gender we are, and what class are parents are. Society cannot therefore be understood unless viewed through the prism of identity.
Both these are true. (1) is an obvious truth and (2) is more challenging to accept.
So for me we need to first accept the truth of (2) and decide if we wish to do the work to make it less true. If we do, we should then bear in mind the truth of (1) when going about it.
That’s nine wins in a row for Boris at pmqs
“ "All he wants to do is lock the country down, he's a one club golfer."‘
And this one by a knockout. 🏌🏻♂️