That's a couple of extra jabs for two other 90-year-olds, though. Your folks are probably slightly less protected, but two other folks are a lot more protected (than they would be with no jab at all), so a net plus.
Or 4 people not properly protected
Pfizer says over 21 days protection not proven
Why bother with clinical trials if you can just make it up as you go along
Depends on your definition of properly protected I suppose. The statement from the MHRA is that a single jab of either has been demonstrated to provide short-term protection.
Short term 21 days Pfizer definitely safe
short term 12 weeks God knows lets roll the dice?
THE LATTER IS NO WAY TO RUN A VACCINATION PROGRAMME
What are you on about? The MHRA statement said that with a single dose it has been shown you get significant protection, at least in the short term. Nothing to do with a second dose.
Supposing however the protection from one dose wears off after four months, whereas two will protect for life?
We don’t know that is true of course, but it would be a terrible waste of vaccine if it was...
I think the UK government might want to think about putting a different case....
Is that legal?
it's an SNP not a Scottish Govt message.
Every single line is true though. Shouldn't be illegal to tell the truth.
I don't know whether that particular message is a legal, or rather legitimate, use or not (it seems pretty bland), but that point is clearly horsecrap as a rule. Some things will be largely true, but certain people or groups would be inappropriate to be the ones making the point if it would make it a partisan political point. That's why people will speak in different capacities.
Boris would love your take though, he could be a lot bolder in what goes out as official government communication than he already would be (I have no doubt there will be examples which have crossed the line) and then argue it is true. "What?" he'd say, "It's not illegal to tell the truth".
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
I think ageing populations are fundamentally deflationary, because they run down savings, which reduces the stock of money. The government and BOJ are simply compensating.
Interesting. I thought that compensation with the wind down in CDOs let us get away with the first lot of QE but I have been at a loss to explain the lack of response this time. The question that immediately comes to mind is do pensioners on average run down their savings? They are disproportionately wealthy and these days many have very good incomes with little in the way of outlays. I would guess that they may not be net spenders overall.
That's a couple of extra jabs for two other 90-year-olds, though. Your folks are probably slightly less protected, but two other folks are a lot more protected (than they would be with no jab at all), so a net plus.
Or 4 people not properly protected
Pfizer says over 21 days protection not proven
Why bother with clinical trials if you can just make it up as you go along
Depends on your definition of properly protected I suppose. The statement from the MHRA is that a single jab of either has been demonstrated to provide short-term protection.
Short term 21 days Pfizer definitely safe
short term 12 weeks God knows lets roll the dice?
THE LATTER IS NO WAY TO RUN A VACCINATION PROGRAMME
What are you on about? The MHRA statement said that with a single dose it has been shown you get significant protection, at least in the short term. Nothing to do with a second dose.
Supposing however the protection from one dose wears off after four months, whereas two will protect for life?
We don’t know that is true of course, but it would be a terrible waste of vaccine if it was...
We'll have vaccine to waste in a few months, though. The point now is to get the maximum possible value out of the vaccines that we have, though that is, of course, also not without an element of risk.
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
Worrying about inflation right now is like worrying about rising damp when your house is on fire.
Rather than “new economics” we actually need to go all in.
Significant infrastructure investment (metro transport systems; green energy; 5G rollout) and be looking seriously at UBI.
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
I think ageing populations are fundamentally deflationary, because they run down savings, which reduces the stock of money. The government and BOJ are simply compensating.
Interesting. I thought that compensation with the wind down in CDOs let us get away with the first lot of QE but I have been at a loss to explain the lack of response this time. The question that immediately comes to mind is do pensioners on average run down their savings? They are disproportionately wealthy and these days many have very good incomes with little in the way of outlays. I would guess that they may not be net spenders overall.
My pub bore theory is that the silicon valley companies are sitting on such almighty piles of cash that inflation hasn't manifested itself despite massive QE across the West.
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
House price inflation seems to be back in vogue. Perhaps that's where the money is going?
There's been quite a lot of asset inflation. Look where our stock markets are despite a horrendous year and a very dodgy outlook. But why on earth is that not spilling into general inflation?
I think the UK government might want to think about putting a different case....
Is that legal?
it's an SNP not a Scottish Govt message.
Every single line is true though. Shouldn't be illegal to tell the truth.
I don't know whether that particular message is a legal, or rather legitimate, use or not (it seems pretty bland), but that point is clearly horsecrap as a rule. Some things will be largely true, but certain people or groups would be inappropriate to be the ones making the point if it would make it a partisan political point. That's why people will speak in different capacities.
Boris would love your take though, he could be a lot bolder in what goes out as official government communication than he already would be (I have no doubt there will be examples which have crossed the line) and then argue it is true. "What?" he'd say, "It's not illegal to tell the truth".
I think Johnson has already absorbed this message, given the volume of pro Brexit propaganda the government has been pumping out via 'get ready for Brexit' announcements all over the radio (the ones that ruin my enjoyment of Magic FM and cause me to swear at our car radio).
There is probably some benefit from a single Pfizer, but may mean needing a second booster. We really don't have anything to hang a hat on, at least in the published literature.
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
House price inflation seems to be back in vogue. Perhaps that's where the money is going?
There's been quite a lot of asset inflation. Look where our stock markets are despite a horrendous year and a very dodgy outlook. But why on earth is that not spilling into general inflation?
It is very obvious in the collectables market too. Especially at the trade wholesale end - hundreds of small traders getting (and largely spending) 50k capital injection (through bounce back loans) all at once has pushed prices up.
I think the UK government might want to think about putting a different case....
Is that legal?
it's an SNP not a Scottish Govt message.
Can you talk me through the qualitative difference between it and this (apart from the Scotgov one being from a government voted in by Scots and the UK Government in Scotland coming from a government voted in by you)?
This is quite funny. Two competing governments. "We're the Scottish Government". "We're the UK Government in Scotland". "We say this is shite". "We say you are shite".
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
Worrying about inflation right now is like worrying about rising damp when your house is on fire.
Rather than “new economics” we actually need to go all in.
Significant infrastructure investment (metro transport systems; green energy; 5G rollout) and be looking seriously at UBI.
The furlough experience this year has made me think UBI will never work. It ends up in pointless riots over statues
On the the news just now that the only way Edinburgh will mark Hogmanay is a lone piper on the ramparts of the castle at the bells.
Even if you hate the pipes and have never attended the ghastly, commercialised scrum/wonderful celebration of this most Scottish night, that should still have the hairs on your neck rising.
We had a great time in Edinburgh last year and watched the fireworks over the Castle from the Grassmarket which was a lot less crowded and unticketed before adjourning to a friend's flat.
None of that this year but my wife got me a tasting menu from a very good local restaurant for Christmas. She picked it up this afternoon and we are going to be seeing the New Year in with some style, even if we are just the family.
On the the news just now that the only way Edinburgh will mark Hogmanay is a lone piper on the ramparts of the castle at the bells.
Even if you hate the pipes and have never attended the ghastly, commercialised scrum/wonderful celebration of this most Scottish night, that should still have the hairs on your neck rising.
We had a great time in Edinburgh last year and watched the fireworks over the Castle from the Grassmarket which was a lot less crowded and unticketed before adjourning to a friend's flat.
None of that this year but my wife got me a tasting menu from a very good local restaurant for Christmas. She picked it up this afternoon and we are going to be seeing the New Year in with some style, even if we are just the family.
All the best when it comes.
Same to you. I shall be engaged in the to-the-death struggle to persuade my SO that almost anything is better than Only An Excuse (last one ever though so one small glimmer of light); she hates football as well!
Probably grateful for once that Jools' Hootenany was recorded in happier times.
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
Worrying about inflation right now is like worrying about rising damp when your house is on fire.
Rather than “new economics” we actually need to go all in.
Significant infrastructure investment (metro transport systems; green energy; 5G rollout) and be looking seriously at UBI.
The furlough experience this year has made me think UBI will never work. It ends up in pointless riots over statues
I’m queasy about it, I can think of many objections, I don’t think anyone’s figured out how to do it properly.
But I feel that technological change is pushing us inevitably in this direction.
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
Monetarism has near zero predictive value as we learned in the 1980s when the UK government was stupid enough to implement it. Economists have other models for forecasting inflation which work just fine.
Really? What theory do you think can have a government running a £400bn deficit, printing £300bn+, skipping the collection of taxes, pumping most of that deficit to people with a high propensity to spend, interest rates of 0.1% and inflation as dead as an intellectual idea in Williamson's forebrain? I would like to read about it.
I think the UK government might want to think about putting a different case....
Is that legal?
it's an SNP not a Scottish Govt message.
Every single line is true though. Shouldn't be illegal to tell the truth.
Actually it's a set of opinions, and there are extremely good reasons why it should not have been posted, or promoted from an official Scottish Government account, and why the page it links to, which is headlined by a call for independence, doesn't belong on the official Scottish Government website.
It is all the more disgraceful if it turns out that the budget for this (I believe the post was promoted) has been drawn from funds provided for Covid relief. That is going to go down like a bucket of cold sick with voters.
Frankly I'm a little puzzled at your claimed journey from unionist into an apologist for the most cringeingly flagrant misuse of taxpayer owned channels and money by the SNP.
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
Monetarism has near zero predictive value as we learned in the 1980s when the UK government was stupid enough to implement it. Economists have other models for forecasting inflation which work just fine.
Really? What theory do you think can have a government running a £400bn deficit, printing £300bn+, skipping the collection of taxes, pumping most of that deficit to people with a high propensity to spend, interest rates of 0.1% and inflation as dead as an intellectual idea in Williamson's forebrain? I would like to read about it.
Wild guess, but:
How much have the banks lent this year, one way and another?
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
Worrying about inflation right now is like worrying about rising damp when your house is on fire.
Rather than “new economics” we actually need to go all in.
Significant infrastructure investment (metro transport systems; green energy; 5G rollout) and be looking seriously at UBI.
The furlough experience this year has made me think UBI will never work. It ends up in pointless riots over statues
I’m queasy about it, I can think of many objections, I don’t think anyone’s figured out how to do it properly.
But I feel that technological change is pushing us inevitably in this direction.
Past experience shows that, in aggregate, technological innovation creates jobs rather than destroying them. Why would now be any different?
Vaccines shouldn't be used as a fire fighting tool - that's the purpose of lockdowns, distancing etc. Vaccines are the long term solution out of this.
I'm coming to the conclusion that the government bet the farm on AstraZeneca and their millions of doses and now they've underdelivered the government is now trying a Hail Mary.
I know quite a few front line workers not wanting the vaccine, mostly because they have had confirmed Covid-19, so have antibodies. It doesn't mean they are nutters.
My neighbour knows someone in a local NHS renal unit that is refusing it because she believes the 'sterilisation' conspiracy theory.
It seems NHS staff aren't immune from this nonsense.
I think the UK government might want to think about putting a different case....
Is that legal?
it's an SNP not a Scottish Govt message.
Can you talk me through the qualitative difference between it and this (apart from the Scotgov one being from a government voted in by Scots and the UK Government in Scotland coming from a government voted in by you)?
This is quite funny. Two competing governments. "We're the Scottish Government". "We're the UK Government in Scotland". "We say this is shite". "We say you are shite".
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
House price inflation seems to be back in vogue. Perhaps that's where the money is going?
There's been quite a lot of asset inflation. Look where our stock markets are despite a horrendous year and a very dodgy outlook. But why on earth is that not spilling into general inflation?
The FTSE is down 14% on the year is it not? Up from April of course, but down over the year. The US and Asian exchanges have done rather better though not sure how that fits.
Personally I did very well on the markets, selling mid Feb and buying back in in April. I don't think that something that I could repeat in other years.
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
Worrying about inflation right now is like worrying about rising damp when your house is on fire.
Rather than “new economics” we actually need to go all in.
Significant infrastructure investment (metro transport systems; green energy; 5G rollout) and be looking seriously at UBI.
The furlough experience this year has made me think UBI will never work. It ends up in pointless riots over statues
I’m queasy about it, I can think of many objections, I don’t think anyone’s figured out how to do it properly.
But I feel that technological change is pushing us inevitably in this direction.
Past experience shows that, in aggregate, technological innovation creates jobs rather than destroying them. Why would now be any different?
Yes, that was past experience. I’m not sure it holds in the “fourth industrial revolution”.
More horrendous case and death numbers though we are told it's "a weekend effect" by some. Well, perhaps but the headline figures look bad as do the messages from the NHS however sceptical some may be.
Am I right in thinking we are not going to provide the second Pfizer inoculation three weeks after the initial vaccination? It also seems Pfizer don't know how effective a second injection 12 weeks rather than 3 weeks after the first will be so why are we going off on this tangent?
I presume the line now is to get a first injection into as many people as possible to provide some level of protection even if that compromises the protection of those already injected?
I don't understand that at all - if we are trying to save lives and reduce hospitalisations and if we acknowledge the leaders in both categories are the elderly, it must make sense to finish the task of inoculating the highest risk groups.
To this observer, it seems the Government just wants to look like it's being effective - "look at us, one million people vaccinated this week" - not strictly true of course, no one fully vaccinated just a lot of people partly vaccinated but it's big numbers and it sounds as though something is happening.
It's all about hope but it's the hope that kills you (metaphorically at least).
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
Isn't inflation too much money chasing too few goods? The QE type of money creation goes straight to other, substitute assets. It is not spent on goods (or services). So bond prices have been driven up (i.e. interest rates down).
I know quite a few front line workers not wanting the vaccine, mostly because they have had confirmed Covid-19, so have antibodies. It doesn't mean they are nutters.
My neighbour knows someone in a local NHS renal unit that is refusing it because she believes the 'sterilisation' conspiracy theory.
It seems NHS staff aren't immune from this nonsense.
I haven't heard anything so nutty in my unit, but there does seem to be quite a lot of antivaxing in the Asian community. Seems particularly daft to me!
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
Worrying about inflation right now is like worrying about rising damp when your house is on fire.
Rather than “new economics” we actually need to go all in.
Significant infrastructure investment (metro transport systems; green energy; 5G rollout) and be looking seriously at UBI.
The furlough experience this year has made me think UBI will never work. It ends up in pointless riots over statues
I’m queasy about it, I can think of many objections, I don’t think anyone’s figured out how to do it properly.
But I feel that technological change is pushing us inevitably in this direction.
Past experience shows that, in aggregate, technological innovation creates jobs rather than destroying them. Why would now be any different?
Yes, that was past experience. I’m not sure it holds in the “fourth industrial revolution”.
Why not? Millions of people are doing jobs right now that were inconceivable 30 years ago.
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
Monetarism has near zero predictive value as we learned in the 1980s when the UK government was stupid enough to implement it. Economists have other models for forecasting inflation which work just fine.
Really? What theory do you think can have a government running a £400bn deficit, printing £300bn+, skipping the collection of taxes, pumping most of that deficit to people with a high propensity to spend, interest rates of 0.1% and inflation as dead as an intellectual idea in Williamson's forebrain? I would like to read about it.
A New Keynesian Phillips Curve with a large negative output gap would predict low inflation like we have now. That kind of model does a much better job of forecasting inflation than any model containing monetary variables. BTW y/y inflation will be well above 2% in Q2 next year owing to base effects, so we might see people talking about an inflation scare at that point - although I would expect it to come down again pretty quickly. You can only get proper inflation if you can get wage inflation, otherwise rising prices reduce consumers' incomes, and inflation soon runs out of steam. With the crushing of organised labour we are unlikely to see 1970s style wage inflation in my opinion.
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
Monetarism has near zero predictive value as we learned in the 1980s when the UK government was stupid enough to implement it. Economists have other models for forecasting inflation which work just fine.
Really? What theory do you think can have a government running a £400bn deficit, printing £300bn+, skipping the collection of taxes, pumping most of that deficit to people with a high propensity to spend, interest rates of 0.1% and inflation as dead as an intellectual idea in Williamson's forebrain? I would like to read about it.
Wild guess, but:
How much have the banks lent this year, one way and another?
My guess would be a lot less. They may also have had a lot more write offs than normal as businesses collapse. I agree that would be deflationary but the scale of government intervention is incredible and should offset that with ease.
I think the UK government might want to think about putting a different case....
Is that legal?
it's an SNP not a Scottish Govt message.
Every single line is true though. Shouldn't be illegal to tell the truth.
Actually it's a set of opinions, and there are extremely good reasons why it should not have been posted, or promoted from an official Scottish Government account, and why the page it links to, which is headlined by a call for independence, doesn't belong on the official Scottish Government website.
It is all the more disgraceful if it turns out that the budget for this (I believe the post was promoted) has been drawn from funds provided for Covid relief. That is going to go down like a bucket of cold sick with voters.
Frankly I'm a little puzzled at your claimed journey from unionist into an apologist for the most cringeingly flagrant misuse of taxpayer owned channels and money by the SNP.
Multiple reports for Scottish Gmt, laid before Scottish Pmt, that Brexit is economic damage on legs.
Ditto for UK Gmt and Parliament.
Opinions, maybe, but consensus enough to make action a duty against economic damage.
My guess is that the Republicans win both. But then you already know that.
That is my guess too. That being said, I do wonder if Georgia is about to become a Purple state.
It's possible at the Presidential level. Now that Democrats have learned that they can win there they may be more inclined to vote. But the Democratic record in run offs is absymal. They have never won one for the Senate. I personally believe the run off system is designed that way. It penalises a party who may be able to get their marginal voters out for the President but not for anything else.
Its also worth reflecting on how Texas was supposedly going purple. It wasn't. Not even close.
My guess is that the Republicans win both. But then you already know that.
That is my guess too. That being said, I do wonder if Georgia is about to become a Purple state.
It's possible at the Presidential level. Now that Democrats have learned that they can win there they may be more inclined to vote. But the Democratic record in run offs is absymal. They have never won one for the Senate. I personally believe the run off system is designed that way. It penalises a party who may be able to get their marginal voters out for the President but not for anything else.
Its also worth reflecting on how Texas was supposedly going purple. It wasn't. Not even close.
Texas was Democrat in the Presidential Elections of 1960 - 1964 - and 1968. Lloyd Bentsen was elected Senator there in 1988 and Ann Richards was Democrat Governor until 1994.
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
Worrying about inflation right now is like worrying about rising damp when your house is on fire.
Rather than “new economics” we actually need to go all in.
Significant infrastructure investment (metro transport systems; green energy; 5G rollout) and be looking seriously at UBI.
It's a fair point. This is the most extreme economic event of my lifetime and I remember 25% inflation in the early 70's as well as 2008.
More horrendous case and death numbers though we are told it's "a weekend effect" by some. Well, perhaps but the headline figures look bad as do the messages from the NHS however sceptical some may be.
Am I right in thinking we are not going to provide the second Pfizer inoculation three weeks after the initial vaccination? It also seems Pfizer don't know how effective a second injection 12 weeks rather than 3 weeks after the first will be so why are we going off on this tangent?
I presume the line now is to get a first injection into as many people as possible to provide some level of protection even if that compromises the protection of those already injected?
I don't understand that at all - if we are trying to save lives and reduce hospitalisations and if we acknowledge the leaders in both categories are the elderly, it must make sense to finish the task of inoculating the highest risk groups.
To this observer, it seems the Government just wants to look like it's being effective - "look at us, one million people vaccinated this week" - not strictly true of course, no one fully vaccinated just a lot of people partly vaccinated but it's big numbers and it sounds as though something is happening.
It's all about hope but it's the hope that kills you (metaphorically at least).
Oh no, it's not the weaseling about the number of PPE items thing again? Please say it isn't.
I know quite a few front line workers not wanting the vaccine, mostly because they have had confirmed Covid-19, so have antibodies. It doesn't mean they are nutters.
My neighbour knows someone in a local NHS renal unit that is refusing it because she believes the 'sterilisation' conspiracy theory.
It seems NHS staff aren't immune from this nonsense.
I haven't heard anything so nutty in my unit, but there does seem to be quite a lot of antivaxing in the Asian community. Seems particularly daft to me!
Yes, I've heard the same from a work colleague in the West Midlands, so it isn't just Leicester. He's trying to work on his own relatives at least.
If the anti-vax problem is clustered rather than geographically spread that implies that there will still be outbreaks for quite some time to come - even if the vaccine prevents onwards transmission.
A New Keynesian Phillips Curve with a large negative output gap would predict low inflation like we have now. That kind of model does a much better job of forecasting inflation than any model containing monetary variables. BTW y/y inflation will be well above 2% in Q2 next year owing to base effects, so we might see people talking about an inflation scare at that point - although I would expect it to come down again pretty quickly. You can only get proper inflation if you can get wage inflation, otherwise rising prices reduce consumers' incomes, and inflation soon runs out of steam. With the crushing of organised labour we are unlikely to see 1970s style wage inflation in my opinion.
There seem to be as many economists on here as there are virologists and epidemiologists. All I can offer is wage inflation occurs when labour capacity is limited as it was in the late 80s especially in the south-east when we went beyond full employment. There's an argument shutting off the supply of EU workers might cause similar labour shortages down the line - I don't know about that.
The surfeit of cheap labour has meant some organisations have simply hired extra hands rather than investing in, for example, automaton to enhance business processes so productivity has stagnated. A shortage of labour might encourage some capital expenditure on improving business processes.
The other aspect of inflation and a return to a more normal monetary policy is going to be psychological. It's 20 years since anyone has had to worry much about interest rates or inflation so that pain those of us old enough to remember the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s will understand means nothing to most people under 50.
I think the UK government might want to think about putting a different case....
Is that legal?
it's an SNP not a Scottish Govt message.
Every single line is true though. Shouldn't be illegal to tell the truth.
Actually it's a set of opinions, and there are extremely good reasons why it should not have been posted, or promoted from an official Scottish Government account, and why the page it links to, which is headlined by a call for independence, doesn't belong on the official Scottish Government website.
It is all the more disgraceful if it turns out that the budget for this (I believe the post was promoted) has been drawn from funds provided for Covid relief. That is going to go down like a bucket of cold sick with voters.
Frankly I'm a little puzzled at your claimed journey from unionist into an apologist for the most cringeingly flagrant misuse of taxpayer owned channels and money by the SNP.
Every line in it is factually correct. I don't think it is any worse than the pro Brexit bilge getting pumped out by the UK govt with our tax money. Not sure I understand your puzzlement. My country has been forced out of the EU against its will, after almost two thirds of Scottish voters chose to stay in. That seems a fairly clear proof that the UK is a toxic construct for Scots, wouldn't you agree? I am by inclination a Unionist - I live in England, after all.
I think the UK government might want to think about putting a different case....
Is that legal?
it's an SNP not a Scottish Govt message.
Can you talk me through the qualitative difference between it and this (apart from the Scotgov one being from a government voted in by Scots and the UK Government in Scotland coming from a government voted in by you)?
If it was a pre-Brexit-ref advertisement, calling for Brexit, attacking the EU, and linking to a page on the UK Government website that called for Brexit, it would be comparable, and I strongly suspect you'd be apoplectic, and rightly so. The SNP has done a lot of spending taxpayers' money to promote independence, but usually they at least semi manage to camouflage it. This is over the edge stuff.
My guess is that the Republicans win both. But then you already know that.
That is my guess too. That being said, I do wonder if Georgia is about to become a Purple state.
It's possible at the Presidential level. Now that Democrats have learned that they can win there they may be more inclined to vote. But the Democratic record in run offs is absymal. They have never won one for the Senate. I personally believe the run off system is designed that way. It penalises a party who may be able to get their marginal voters out for the President but not for anything else.
Its also worth reflecting on how Texas was supposedly going purple. It wasn't. Not even close.
My guess is that the Republicans win both. But then you already know that.
That is my guess too. That being said, I do wonder if Georgia is about to become a Purple state.
It's possible at the Presidential level. Now that Democrats have learned that they can win there they may be more inclined to vote. But the Democratic record in run offs is absymal. They have never won one for the Senate. I personally believe the run off system is designed that way. It penalises a party who may be able to get their marginal voters out for the President but not for anything else.
Its also worth reflecting on how Texas was supposedly going purple. It wasn't. Not even close.
Texas was Democrat in the Presidential Elections of 1960 - 1964 - and 1968. Lloyd Bentsen was elected Senator there in 1988 and Ann Richards was Democrat Governor until 1994.
I hate to break it to you, time flies for us all, but the last of those was 26 years ago and the fluff about Biden having a chance there proved to be exactly that.
One of the City's most prominent hedge fund managers is preparing to invest millions of pounds in GB News, the fledgling current broadcasting company which is targeting a launch into British homes next year.
Sky News has learnt that Sir Paul Marshall, the co-founder of Marshall Wace, is in advanced talks about injecting approximately £10m into GB News.
I really don't see this. The likes of Sky News gets tiny audiences. There is already the BBC, who have the size to smash most competition and a range of smaller competition from Sky, to Talk Radio, to Times Radio to LBC, and big bad Uncle Rupert is launching News UK.
I’m not quite sure how the economics work either, but perhaps the channel itself is merely a loss-making way to produce covidiot and brexity culture war fodder for more profitable use elsewhere.
Just what we need, even more boomer radicalisation.
To be fair to the post war generation, it does have to be said that a lot of the current generation of radical older conservatives are really a little younger than the classic boomers as they used to be understood, at around 50-65.
My son calls me a boomer, and I am 45.
My son once called me a smackhead in front my colleagues.
He was like 3, and my friend Rob had spent the weekend with us, and he taught my son the phrase 'Your Dad is acting like a smackhead.'
Rob explained to my son that a smackhead is someone who is being silly/naughty and deserves a smack on the head.
IF you are ever enobled (by your monarch, that is) then allow me to suggest that LORD SMACKHEAD would be a GREAT addition to the Peerage?
Lord Smackhead of Throbbing Noggin in the County of Middlesex
More horrendous case and death numbers though we are told it's "a weekend effect" by some. Well, perhaps but the headline figures look bad as do the messages from the NHS however sceptical some may be.
Am I right in thinking we are not going to provide the second Pfizer inoculation three weeks after the initial vaccination? It also seems Pfizer don't know how effective a second injection 12 weeks rather than 3 weeks after the first will be so why are we going off on this tangent?
I presume the line now is to get a first injection into as many people as possible to provide some level of protection even if that compromises the protection of those already injected?
I don't understand that at all - if we are trying to save lives and reduce hospitalisations and if we acknowledge the leaders in both categories are the elderly, it must make sense to finish the task of inoculating the highest risk groups.
To this observer, it seems the Government just wants to look like it's being effective - "look at us, one million people vaccinated this week" - not strictly true of course, no one fully vaccinated just a lot of people partly vaccinated but it's big numbers and it sounds as though something is happening.
It's all about hope but it's the hope that kills you (metaphorically at least).
It's a slight gamble, but I think it's a sensible one -- it's extremely likely that giving one dose to more vulnerable people quickly will save more lives than giving two doses to fewer. Considerably more. There's some evidence for this, both in the Oxford trial (because they made a hash of the dosing schedules) and in the phase 1/2 data for both AZ and Pfizer.
Actually, as regards the AZ vaccine, it's very plausible that a longer gap between doses is at least as strong or even stronger than a shorter gap. There is both some sign of this in the data and a biological reason to expect that it might happen.
I don't honestly think it is a government PR move. I think it's scientists' calculations about the way to save the most lives. And I wouldn't be concerned that one dose is only partial vaccination. I think it's better to think of it as more "temporary" vaccination, with the second dose causing the immunity to last longer.
Hmm. Do nearly 40% of the UK’s population die every year? If 3% of those who test positive die in 28 days after that, and it has nothing to do with that test, then those 28 days are nothing special and shouldn’t differ from the rest of the year. 13 x 4 weeks = 52 weeks. 13 x 3% = 39%.
So, if that hypothesis (the test being positive is unrelated to the death in these vases) is true, then 39% of Brits die every year, and even with births, the country will be completely depopulated in 2 and a half years.
I think we can reject that hypothesis.
Could you please stop thinking and using those ugly number things?
You are going to Hurt The Feelings of a COVID denier and Feelings are more important than your silly Fact things.
I want this argument to be right, but it does assume that the tested are a representative sample of the population overall, does it not?
There’s no significant reason why not. People go in for tests or have them administered through all demographics and areas.
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
Monetarism has near zero predictive value as we learned in the 1980s when the UK government was stupid enough to implement it. Economists have other models for forecasting inflation which work just fine.
Really? What theory do you think can have a government running a £400bn deficit, printing £300bn+, skipping the collection of taxes, pumping most of that deficit to people with a high propensity to spend, interest rates of 0.1% and inflation as dead as an intellectual idea in Williamson's forebrain? I would like to read about it.
A New Keynesian Phillips Curve with a large negative output gap would predict low inflation like we have now. That kind of model does a much better job of forecasting inflation than any model containing monetary variables. BTW y/y inflation will be well above 2% in Q2 next year owing to base effects, so we might see people talking about an inflation scare at that point - although I would expect it to come down again pretty quickly. You can only get proper inflation if you can get wage inflation, otherwise rising prices reduce consumers' incomes, and inflation soon runs out of steam. With the crushing of organised labour we are unlikely to see 1970s style wage inflation in my opinion.
I always remember LBJ's comment on speeches about economics. He compared it to peeing down your leg. It might feel hot for you but it doesn't do much for anyone else.
So I will be brief. The Phillips curve showed the relationship between unemployment and wages. Pre Covid we had record employment so it would be another flashing red light. And yet, nothing. Membership of the EU (per Stuart Rose) might be pointed at but this is not a uniquely UK or even EU phenomenon.
I think the UK government might want to think about putting a different case....
Is that legal?
it's an SNP not a Scottish Govt message.
Can you talk me through the qualitative difference between it and this (apart from the Scotgov one being from a government voted in by Scots and the UK Government in Scotland coming from a government voted in by you)?
If it was a pre-Brexit-ref advertisement, calling for Brexit, attacking the EU, and linking to a page on the UK Government website that called for Brexit, it would be comparable, and I strongly suspect you'd be apoplectic, and rightly so. The SNP has done a lot of spending taxpayers' money to promote independence, but usually they at least semi manage to camouflage it. This is over the edge stuff.
I'm sure there's someone to whom you can write a stiff letter.
Any of these ads popped up yet?
'Boris Johnson set to launch £5m anti-independence ad blitz for Scotland'
I think the UK government might want to think about putting a different case....
Is that legal?
it's an SNP not a Scottish Govt message.
Every single line is true though. Shouldn't be illegal to tell the truth.
Actually it's a set of opinions, and there are extremely good reasons why it should not have been posted, or promoted from an official Scottish Government account, and why the page it links to, which is headlined by a call for independence, doesn't belong on the official Scottish Government website.
It is all the more disgraceful if it turns out that the budget for this (I believe the post was promoted) has been drawn from funds provided for Covid relief. That is going to go down like a bucket of cold sick with voters.
Frankly I'm a little puzzled at your claimed journey from unionist into an apologist for the most cringeingly flagrant misuse of taxpayer owned channels and money by the SNP.
Every line in it is factually correct. I don't think it is any worse than the pro Brexit bilge getting pumped out by the UK govt with our tax money. Not sure I understand your puzzlement. My country has been forced out of the EU against its will, after almost two thirds of Scottish voters chose to stay in. That seems a fairly clear proof that the UK is a toxic construct for Scots, wouldn't you agree? I am by inclination a Unionist - I live in England, after all.
Actually it is nearly all predictions or assumptions based on particular opinions, which may or may not turn out to be true.
And it is blatantly a Party line, which imo should not be put out on a Government (even a regional Government) platform.
I do not know whether there this is lawful in Scotland.
It's a slight gamble, but I think it's a sensible one -- it's extremely likely that giving one dose to more vulnerable people quickly will save more lives than giving two doses to fewer. Considerably more. There's some evidence for this, both in the Oxford trial (because they made a hash of the dosing schedules) and in the phase 1/2 data for both AZ and Pfizer.
Actually, as regards the AZ vaccine, it's very plausible that a longer gap between doses is at least as strong or even stronger than a shorter gap. There is both some sign of this in the data and a biological reason to expect that it might happen.
I don't honestly think it is a government PR move. I think it's scientists' calculations about the way to save the most lives. And I wouldn't be concerned that one dose is only partial vaccination. I think it's better to think of it as more "temporary" vaccination, with the second dose causing the immunity to last longer.
--AS
It's an unnecessarily confusing message. I was only talking about Pfizer - I haven't read up on AZ. My understanding was Pfizer doubted whether leaving the second dose to 12 weeks rather than 21 days improved its efficacy. They had advised a second dose within 21 days and I'm not sure where the science is on prolonging that period because I don't believe Pfizer knows.
Rather a shame we still appear to be having more infections than vaccinations per week, particular once you allow for those not tested for.
There's a big political decision ahead that will need to be made: at what point to we relax restrictions? When hospitalisations fall or when we no longer have a large number of daily cases?
Because it is likely that most vunerable people will be vaccinated (and so hospitalisations down) long before most under 60s get vaccinated. Under 60s make up 75% of the population make up only 6% of Covid deaths (source: ONS weekly deaths), and I imagine a fair few of those fall under pre-existing conditions and so will be higher up the queue.
There will surely be a tipping point at which there is pressure to relax restrictions despite the virus continuing to run rampant.
Scotsperson sold for peanuts. IIRC the Scotsperson and related newspapers alone was £160m back in 2005. But I suppose if you put monkeys in charge ... so sad, it used to be a great newspaper.
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
Monetarism has near zero predictive value as we learned in the 1980s when the UK government was stupid enough to implement it. Economists have other models for forecasting inflation which work just fine.
Really? What theory do you think can have a government running a £400bn deficit, printing £300bn+, skipping the collection of taxes, pumping most of that deficit to people with a high propensity to spend, interest rates of 0.1% and inflation as dead as an intellectual idea in Williamson's forebrain? I would like to read about it.
Wild guess, but:
How much have the banks lent this year, one way and another?
My guess would be a lot less. They may also have had a lot more write offs than normal as businesses collapse. I agree that would be deflationary but the scale of government intervention is incredible and should offset that with ease.
Which was my point. If it is at least partially offset by a collapse in commercial lending that might explain why we don’t have runaway inflation, especially given the collapse of demand.
Family doctors are rebelling against a “grossly unfair” NHS decision to cancel appointments for elderly patients due to have their second Pfizer coronavirus vaccination next week.
GP leaders have encouraged doctors to defy NHS advice and press ahead with booster doses already booked, saying that it is wrong to disappoint vulnerable people at the last minute.
NHS bosses are holding firm, arguing that prioritising giving the first dose to more people will save thousands of lives.
Both the Pfizer and Oxford vaccines require two doses for full protection, but in a significant shift of strategy yesterday ministers said that the NHS should aim to give as many first doses as possible rather than ensure that people had the second within the recommended three or four weeks.
So far 786,000 people have had a first dose, with 264,406 vaccinated over Christmas week. NHS chiefs are pledging that most people living in care homes will be vaccinated within four weeks as they prioritise people over 80 and health and care staff.
Vaccination centres, however, have been told to cancel anyone booked in for a second dose from Monday.
Richard Vautrey, head of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, said that it was “grossly and patently unfair” to reschedule the appointments of tens of thousands of vulnerable patients.
“Local leaders are telling us that is unprofessional and impractical to amend the appointments for thousands of frail elderly patients,” he said.
“The existing commitment made to these patients by the NHS and local clinicians should be respected. If GPs decide to honour these booked appointments in January the BMA will support them. The government must see that it’s only right that existing bookings for the oldest and most vulnerable members of our society are honoured.”
Dr Vautrey said that the change in strategy would cause huge logistical problems for almost all vaccination sites and practices. “For example, to make contact with even just 2,000 elderly or vulnerable patients will take a team of five staff at a practice about a week, and that’s simply untenable,” he said.
The BMA is not opposing the whole of the new strategy, saying that it would be easier to cancel appointments booked further in the future and that it was supportive of prioritising first doses. Dr Vautrey said that many doctors still needed to be convinced and that the government should “as soon as possible publish a scientifically validated justification for its new approach”.
I think the UK government might want to think about putting a different case....
Is that legal?
it's an SNP not a Scottish Govt message.
Every single line is true though. Shouldn't be illegal to tell the truth.
Actually it's a set of opinions, and there are extremely good reasons why it should not have been posted, or promoted from an official Scottish Government account, and why the page it links to, which is headlined by a call for independence, doesn't belong on the official Scottish Government website.
It is all the more disgraceful if it turns out that the budget for this (I believe the post was promoted) has been drawn from funds provided for Covid relief. That is going to go down like a bucket of cold sick with voters.
Frankly I'm a little puzzled at your claimed journey from unionist into an apologist for the most cringeingly flagrant misuse of taxpayer owned channels and money by the SNP.
Multiple reports for Scottish Gmt, laid before Scottish Pmt, that Brexit is economic damage on legs.
Ditto for UK Gmt and Parliament.
Opinions, maybe, but consensus enough to make action a duty against economic damage.
I am all for action to mitigate the effects of any big changes on businesses, however, neither the video nor the accompanying press release does anything of the kind - it merely lists a series of supposed negative outcomes and uses them as what is no more or less than a flagrant advertisement for Indy.
Frankly, when I predicted that the SNP would be splurging on a Brexit misery advertising campaign, I expected a good deal more guile. I would at least have expected a 'Do you need help with your concerns about national security after Brexit?' and 'Do you need help with the exhausting red tape your business will face after Brexit?'. That would at least have preserved the veneer of a public information campaign. But apparently the SNP thinks its audience is too thick to even get those breezeblock style hints, so it's just gone Tonto instead.
The year when we had to sit impotently at home while malign forces spread across the country capriciously undermining our economy, harming our wellbeing and destroying our livelihoods.
On top of which, we had to cope with the coronavirus.
Hmm. Do nearly 40% of the UK’s population die every year? If 3% of those who test positive die in 28 days after that, and it has nothing to do with that test, then those 28 days are nothing special and shouldn’t differ from the rest of the year. 13 x 4 weeks = 52 weeks. 13 x 3% = 39%.
So, if that hypothesis (the test being positive is unrelated to the death in these vases) is true, then 39% of Brits die every year, and even with births, the country will be completely depopulated in 2 and a half years.
I think we can reject that hypothesis.
Could you please stop thinking and using those ugly number things?
You are going to Hurt The Feelings of a COVID denier and Feelings are more important than your silly Fact things.
I want this argument to be right, but it does assume that the tested are a representative sample of the population overall, does it not?
There’s no significant reason why not. People go in for tests or have them administered through all demographics and areas.
Subsequent to this, as @Malmesbury ’s excellent graphs show, the peak in cases is the 15-44 age category, which we would expect to be less likely to die.
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
I think ageing populations are fundamentally deflationary, because they run down savings, which reduces the stock of money. The government and BOJ are simply compensating.
Interesting. I thought that compensation with the wind down in CDOs let us get away with the first lot of QE but I have been at a loss to explain the lack of response this time. The question that immediately comes to mind is do pensioners on average run down their savings? They are disproportionately wealthy and these days many have very good incomes with little in the way of outlays. I would guess that they may not be net spenders overall.
Yes, pensioners do - on average - run down their financial savings. This is a bigger issue in Japan, than the UK, of course, because more of people's savings has been kept in bank accounts, but it's still an issue in the UK.
It's a slight gamble, but I think it's a sensible one -- it's extremely likely that giving one dose to more vulnerable people quickly will save more lives than giving two doses to fewer. Considerably more. There's some evidence for this, both in the Oxford trial (because they made a hash of the dosing schedules) and in the phase 1/2 data for both AZ and Pfizer.
Actually, as regards the AZ vaccine, it's very plausible that a longer gap between doses is at least as strong or even stronger than a shorter gap. There is both some sign of this in the data and a biological reason to expect that it might happen.
I don't honestly think it is a government PR move. I think it's scientists' calculations about the way to save the most lives. And I wouldn't be concerned that one dose is only partial vaccination. I think it's better to think of it as more "temporary" vaccination, with the second dose causing the immunity to last longer.
--AS
It's an unnecessarily confusing message. I was only talking about Pfizer - I haven't read up on AZ. My understanding was Pfizer doubted whether leaving the second dose to 12 weeks rather than 21 days improved its efficacy. They had advised a second dose within 21 days and I'm not sure where the science is on prolonging that period because I don't believe Pfizer knows.
Well, there is strong evidence that the Pfizer jab gives protection after one dose. It's not entirely clear how long that lasts beyond 21 days, but rates of antibody decay suggest long enough. Please remember that this is a recommendation from scientists, who take their public health responsibilities very seriously. (If this had been only because of political pressure I'm quite sure we'd have seen some of the JCVI resign and saying so.)
You should probably bear in the mind that Pfizer have an interest in everyone buying two doses, and showing 95% rather than (say) 91% effectiveness! I suspect that they would also have tested one dose if only they'd have known how well two doses was going to work, but everyone needed results at speed and they plumped for two doses for the trial. This is one limitation of having combined phase 1/2 and 2/3 trials.
Rather a shame we still appear to be having more infections than vaccinations per week, particular once you allow for those not tested for.
There's a big political decision ahead that will need to be made: at what point to we relax restrictions? When hospitalisations fall or when we no longer have a large number of daily cases?
Because it is likely that most vunerable people will be vaccinated (and so hospitalisations down) long before most under 60s get vaccinated. Under 60s make up 75% of the population make up only 6% of Covid deaths (source: ONS weekly deaths), and I imagine a fair few of those fall under pre-existing conditions and so will be higher up the queue.
There will surely be a tipping point at which there is pressure to relax restrictions despite the virus continuing to run rampant.
What proportion of hospitalisations, though? (It’s not the same by a long chalk)
That’s the key variable, because without hospital assistance in the critically ill cases in the younger age bands, their death rates would be far higher.
Family doctors are rebelling against a “grossly unfair” NHS decision to cancel appointments for elderly patients due to have their second Pfizer coronavirus vaccination next week.
GP leaders have encouraged doctors to defy NHS advice and press ahead with booster doses already booked, saying that it is wrong to disappoint vulnerable people at the last minute.
NHS bosses are holding firm, arguing that prioritising giving the first dose to more people will save thousands of lives.
Both the Pfizer and Oxford vaccines require two doses for full protection, but in a significant shift of strategy yesterday ministers said that the NHS should aim to give as many first doses as possible rather than ensure that people had the second within the recommended three or four weeks.
So far 786,000 people have had a first dose, with 264,406 vaccinated over Christmas week. NHS chiefs are pledging that most people living in care homes will be vaccinated within four weeks as they prioritise people over 80 and health and care staff.
Vaccination centres, however, have been told to cancel anyone booked in for a second dose from Monday.
Richard Vautrey, head of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, said that it was “grossly and patently unfair” to reschedule the appointments of tens of thousands of vulnerable patients.
“Local leaders are telling us that is unprofessional and impractical to amend the appointments for thousands of frail elderly patients,” he said.
“The existing commitment made to these patients by the NHS and local clinicians should be respected. If GPs decide to honour these booked appointments in January the BMA will support them. The government must see that it’s only right that existing bookings for the oldest and most vulnerable members of our society are honoured.”
Dr Vautrey said that the change in strategy would cause huge logistical problems for almost all vaccination sites and practices. “For example, to make contact with even just 2,000 elderly or vulnerable patients will take a team of five staff at a practice about a week, and that’s simply untenable,” he said.
The BMA is not opposing the whole of the new strategy, saying that it would be easier to cancel appointments booked further in the future and that it was supportive of prioritising first doses. Dr Vautrey said that many doctors still needed to be convinced and that the government should “as soon as possible publish a scientifically validated justification for its new approach”.
This has to be decided by strictly utilitarian principles. There are too many lives at stake. If we getting a bigger bang from our supply by putting those second doses into other arms that's where they go. We cannot muck about with this.
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
Asset price inflation waves hello
Oh yes, that's an excellent point.
But can I point you again to Japan, where house prices have only just gotten up off the floor, and are about half the level of 30 years ago. (As is, for that matter, the Nikkei.)
A tough decision, do you give fewer people the best protection, or more people with worse protection?
I will give you my 94 yr old uncles number and let you explain why it was "vital" a fortnight ago for him to come next week otherwise "he wont be protected" and now its not!!
I do get its a difficult decision but he really wont understand.
I personally think those with booked appointments already should keep them and the 12 week thing kicks in for new first dosers.
My 87 yr old Aunt gets her first dose tomorrow (NYD) BTW
Tell them that it was Tony Blair's clever idea.
I wonder if the imagery of oldies getting both doses and then going off on holiday with their triple lock pensions while the working population was still waiting for their first dose was troublesome.
Family doctors are rebelling against a “grossly unfair” NHS decision to cancel appointments for elderly patients due to have their second Pfizer coronavirus vaccination next week.
GP leaders have encouraged doctors to defy NHS advice and press ahead with booster doses already booked, saying that it is wrong to disappoint vulnerable people at the last minute.
NHS bosses are holding firm, arguing that prioritising giving the first dose to more people will save thousands of lives.
Both the Pfizer and Oxford vaccines require two doses for full protection, but in a significant shift of strategy yesterday ministers said that the NHS should aim to give as many first doses as possible rather than ensure that people had the second within the recommended three or four weeks.
So far 786,000 people have had a first dose, with 264,406 vaccinated over Christmas week. NHS chiefs are pledging that most people living in care homes will be vaccinated within four weeks as they prioritise people over 80 and health and care staff.
Vaccination centres, however, have been told to cancel anyone booked in for a second dose from Monday.
Richard Vautrey, head of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, said that it was “grossly and patently unfair” to reschedule the appointments of tens of thousands of vulnerable patients.
“Local leaders are telling us that is unprofessional and impractical to amend the appointments for thousands of frail elderly patients,” he said.
“The existing commitment made to these patients by the NHS and local clinicians should be respected. If GPs decide to honour these booked appointments in January the BMA will support them. The government must see that it’s only right that existing bookings for the oldest and most vulnerable members of our society are honoured.”
Dr Vautrey said that the change in strategy would cause huge logistical problems for almost all vaccination sites and practices. “For example, to make contact with even just 2,000 elderly or vulnerable patients will take a team of five staff at a practice about a week, and that’s simply untenable,” he said.
The BMA is not opposing the whole of the new strategy, saying that it would be easier to cancel appointments booked further in the future and that it was supportive of prioritising first doses. Dr Vautrey said that many doctors still needed to be convinced and that the government should “as soon as possible publish a scientifically validated justification for its new approach”.
I'm not unsympathetic, but the NHS postponing things at late notice is hardly an unusual phenomenon. I have relatives who had important but elective surgery postponed at 24 hours notice several times.
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
I think ageing populations are fundamentally deflationary, because they run down savings, which reduces the stock of money. The government and BOJ are simply compensating.
Interesting. I thought that compensation with the wind down in CDOs let us get away with the first lot of QE but I have been at a loss to explain the lack of response this time. The question that immediately comes to mind is do pensioners on average run down their savings? They are disproportionately wealthy and these days many have very good incomes with little in the way of outlays. I would guess that they may not be net spenders overall.
Yes, pensioners do - on average - run down their financial savings. This is a bigger issue in Japan, than the UK, of course, because more of people's savings has been kept in bank accounts, but it's still an issue in the UK.
Historically that has been true. With this generation of FS pensioners (the like of which we will never see again) I wonder.
The year when we had to sit impotently at home while malign forces spread across the country capriciously undermining our economy, harming our wellbeing and destroying our livelihoods.
On top of which, we had to cope with the coronavirus.
Movie night at the Foxy household, and (finally!) The last of the turkey. Foxjr2, who is generally the party animal, will have a zoom party later. Not sure Mrs Foxy will last until midnight as the wine going down quickly already.
Rather a shame we still appear to be having more infections than vaccinations per week, particular once you allow for those not tested for.
There's a big political decision ahead that will need to be made: at what point to we relax restrictions? When hospitalisations fall or when we no longer have a large number of daily cases?
Because it is likely that most vunerable people will be vaccinated (and so hospitalisations down) long before most under 60s get vaccinated. Under 60s make up 75% of the population make up only 6% of Covid deaths (source: ONS weekly deaths), and I imagine a fair few of those fall under pre-existing conditions and so will be higher up the queue.
There will surely be a tipping point at which there is pressure to relax restrictions despite the virus continuing to run rampant.
Those of us who are under 45 are likely to see restrictions heavily relaxed before vaccination - but the pressure will be to vaccinate the 45s to 65 (or at least 50 to 65) before too much relaxation of restrictions.
The 45 to 65 age group provides a much greater proportion of hospitalisations than it does deaths. If the pressure on the NHS is hospitalisations then they will want I assume to get that done ASAP before relaxing too much.
Family doctors are rebelling against a “grossly unfair” NHS decision to cancel appointments for elderly patients due to have their second Pfizer coronavirus vaccination next week.
GP leaders have encouraged doctors to defy NHS advice and press ahead with booster doses already booked, saying that it is wrong to disappoint vulnerable people at the last minute.
NHS bosses are holding firm, arguing that prioritising giving the first dose to more people will save thousands of lives.
Both the Pfizer and Oxford vaccines require two doses for full protection, but in a significant shift of strategy yesterday ministers said that the NHS should aim to give as many first doses as possible rather than ensure that people had the second within the recommended three or four weeks.
So far 786,000 people have had a first dose, with 264,406 vaccinated over Christmas week. NHS chiefs are pledging that most people living in care homes will be vaccinated within four weeks as they prioritise people over 80 and health and care staff.
Vaccination centres, however, have been told to cancel anyone booked in for a second dose from Monday.
Richard Vautrey, head of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, said that it was “grossly and patently unfair” to reschedule the appointments of tens of thousands of vulnerable patients.
“Local leaders are telling us that is unprofessional and impractical to amend the appointments for thousands of frail elderly patients,” he said.
“The existing commitment made to these patients by the NHS and local clinicians should be respected. If GPs decide to honour these booked appointments in January the BMA will support them. The government must see that it’s only right that existing bookings for the oldest and most vulnerable members of our society are honoured.”
Dr Vautrey said that the change in strategy would cause huge logistical problems for almost all vaccination sites and practices. “For example, to make contact with even just 2,000 elderly or vulnerable patients will take a team of five staff at a practice about a week, and that’s simply untenable,” he said.
The BMA is not opposing the whole of the new strategy, saying that it would be easier to cancel appointments booked further in the future and that it was supportive of prioritising first doses. Dr Vautrey said that many doctors still needed to be convinced and that the government should “as soon as possible publish a scientifically validated justification for its new approach”.
The Johnson Administration (Boris not Lyndon) has ZERO understanding of what "commitment" means, to say noting of fact that they have ZERO intention of honoring ANY promise IF it does NOT suit their immediate gratification.
It's what happens when you put a Putinist in change of first a political party, and then a government.
Lies, lies, and yet more lies, 24/7 & 365 (+1 on leap years).
I think the UK government might want to think about putting a different case....
Is that legal?
it's an SNP not a Scottish Govt message.
Can you talk me through the qualitative difference between it and this (apart from the Scotgov one being from a government voted in by Scots and the UK Government in Scotland coming from a government voted in by you)?
If it was a pre-Brexit-ref advertisement, calling for Brexit, attacking the EU, and linking to a page on the UK Government website that called for Brexit, it would be comparable, and I strongly suspect you'd be apoplectic, and rightly so. The SNP has done a lot of spending taxpayers' money to promote independence, but usually they at least semi manage to camouflage it. This is over the edge stuff.
I'm sure there's someone to whom you can write a stiff letter.
Any of these ads popped up yet?
'Boris Johnson set to launch £5m anti-independence ad blitz for Scotland'
Raising a glass of Scotland's finest tonight to a brilliant 2021 with a lot less disease and death in it. Let it be an 'Annus Mirabilis' for us all, one way or another. Slainte!
We hope you had reasonable Christmases. Thank you to those of you who were working, in whatever capacity.
Weekly emails no longer seem sufficient as things are changing so fast. We now have over 90 patients on ACCU across the two floors (6 pods of roughly 15 patient each). The number of people with Covid continues to rise rapidly.
Every hospital in North East London is struggling, some with insufficient oxygen supplies, all with insufficient nursing numbers. Believe it or not, Royal London critical care is coping well relative to some sites. We have often had to help out our neighbours by taking patients they simply do not have capacity to manage. General medical bed numbers (so called ‘G&A beds’) are being increased as well as critical care beds.
Kent is in a similar, if not worse, position. You may have heard on the news that they are sending patients to South West England. The rest of London is probably a couple of weeks behind NEL, but their hospitals too are filling up. NHS London have asked the other sectors to expand capacity in much the same was as we have.
We are currently working on 4E, 4F, 15C, and 15E (both sides). As in the first wave, many nursing staff from a variety of areas have been redeployed to help. ICU nurses from Barts are now a regular feature. We have also been joined by ICU consultants and trainees from Barts.
We will soon by joined by Barts cardiology registrars, to populate a further tier of senior trainees. The anaesthetic department are providing consultants to cover all off-unit calls which would normally be attended by ACCU doctors (trauma calls, code blacks, and cardiac arrests), a consultant to run one of our pods, and will be providing extra airway cover at night (to help with proning/deproning, head turns, managing deteriorations etc.) The comms team is again being boosted in numbers.
Contd: There are a few developments we wanted to update you with:
Further expansion. We have always had robust(ish) plans to staff 90 beds, which is where we are now. The new strain and failure of tiers have led to an unexpected increase in numbers however. We are going to have to open more beds. NHS London are authorising 1:3 nursing ratios. We are still gathering together enough staff to do so (both medical and nursing), but the next base of operations to open will be half of 15F. In the meantime, we are going to squeeze extra beds in to the existing 15th floor wards.
The ACCU consultant rota will change from next week back to what it was in the first wave. There will be a separate admissions consultant, working alongside the 1113 trainee. The consultant on call overnight will be resident.
We will be sending more regular, probably daily, emails to nurses with some simple facts to try to keep you in the loop. Feel free to ignore this, as really important information will come separately, or in our weekly(ish) emails (the ones with pictures and/or poems). We are also exploring setting up screens in staff rooms to display useful information/encouraging ditties/vaccine updates etc.
We are starting a daily Teams feedback forum in which to raise practical problems, in an attempt to catch these early, and solve the solvable.
We would like to take this opportunity to reiterate the fact we are now in disaster medicine mode. We are no longer providing high standard critical care, because we cannot. While this is far from ideal, it’s the way things are, and the way they have to be for now.
In terms of how much you do for each patient, discuss this with your nurse in charge and/or the medical team. Some will still need hourly obs, others won’t. Some will still need 4 hourly rolls, but others may be OK with two rolls per shift. This may even change during the shift.
Things are going to get harder before they get better (which they will, eventually). As we get busy, we all tend to reach a limit, in some way or other. Different people will do this in different ways at different times. Bear with them, offer an ear/shoulder (metaphorically of course, while maintaining social distancing!), be understanding. We’ll get through this better by getting through it together.
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
Asset price inflation waves hello
Oh yes, that's an excellent point.
But can I point you again to Japan, where house prices have only just gotten up off the floor, and are about half the level of 30 years ago. (As is, for that matter, the Nikkei.)
That's because they don't have our NIMBY planning restrictions in part though too.
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
Monetarism has near zero predictive value as we learned in the 1980s when the UK government was stupid enough to implement it. Economists have other models for forecasting inflation which work just fine.
Really? What theory do you think can have a government running a £400bn deficit, printing £300bn+, skipping the collection of taxes, pumping most of that deficit to people with a high propensity to spend, interest rates of 0.1% and inflation as dead as an intellectual idea in Williamson's forebrain? I would like to read about it.
A New Keynesian Phillips Curve with a large negative output gap would predict low inflation like we have now. That kind of model does a much better job of forecasting inflation than any model containing monetary variables. BTW y/y inflation will be well above 2% in Q2 next year owing to base effects, so we might see people talking about an inflation scare at that point - although I would expect it to come down again pretty quickly. You can only get proper inflation if you can get wage inflation, otherwise rising prices reduce consumers' incomes, and inflation soon runs out of steam. With the crushing of organised labour we are unlikely to see 1970s style wage inflation in my opinion.
I always remember LBJ's comment on speeches about economics. He compared it to peeing down your leg. It might feel hot for you but it doesn't do much for anyone else.
So I will be brief. The Phillips curve showed the relationship between unemployment and wages. Pre Covid we had record employment so it would be another flashing red light. And yet, nothing. Membership of the EU (per Stuart Rose) might be pointed at but this is not a uniquely UK or even EU phenomenon.
Pre Covid most estimates of the output gap were around zero, and inflation was around the 2% target. There was no real reason to think that inflation was about to pick up materially. And now we have a significant negative output gap. Expansionary fiscal and monetary policy are designed to close that gap, but I wouldn't expect them to generate significant inflation before that gap is closed.
But can I point you again to Japan, where house prices have only just gotten up off the floor, and are about half the level of 30 years ago. (As is, for that matter, the Nikkei.)
Isn't that because 30 years ago Japan was in a ridiculous asset bubble ?
Compare with 40 or 50 years ago and its not so bad:
My guess is that the Republicans win both. But then you already know that.
That is my guess too. That being said, I do wonder if Georgia is about to become a Purple state.
It's possible at the Presidential level. Now that Democrats have learned that they can win there they may be more inclined to vote. But the Democratic record in run offs is absymal. They have never won one for the Senate. I personally believe the run off system is designed that way. It penalises a party who may be able to get their marginal voters out for the President but not for anything else.
Its also worth reflecting on how Texas was supposedly going purple. It wasn't. Not even close.
My guess is that the Republicans win both. But then you already know that.
That is my guess too. That being said, I do wonder if Georgia is about to become a Purple state.
It's possible at the Presidential level. Now that Democrats have learned that they can win there they may be more inclined to vote. But the Democratic record in run offs is absymal. They have never won one for the Senate. I personally believe the run off system is designed that way. It penalises a party who may be able to get their marginal voters out for the President but not for anything else.
Its also worth reflecting on how Texas was supposedly going purple. It wasn't. Not even close.
Texas was Democrat in the Presidential Elections of 1960 - 1964 - and 1968. Lloyd Bentsen was elected Senator there in 1988 and Ann Richards was Democrat Governor until 1994.
I hate to break it to you, time flies for us all, but the last of those was 26 years ago and the fluff about Biden having a chance there proved to be exactly that.
My guess is that the Republicans win both. But then you already know that.
That is my guess too. That being said, I do wonder if Georgia is about to become a Purple state.
It's possible at the Presidential level. Now that Democrats have learned that they can win there they may be more inclined to vote. But the Democratic record in run offs is absymal. They have never won one for the Senate. I personally believe the run off system is designed that way. It penalises a party who may be able to get their marginal voters out for the President but not for anything else.
Its also worth reflecting on how Texas was supposedly going purple. It wasn't. Not even close.
My guess is that the Republicans win both. But then you already know that.
That is my guess too. That being said, I do wonder if Georgia is about to become a Purple state.
It's possible at the Presidential level. Now that Democrats have learned that they can win there they may be more inclined to vote. But the Democratic record in run offs is absymal. They have never won one for the Senate. I personally believe the run off system is designed that way. It penalises a party who may be able to get their marginal voters out for the President but not for anything else.
Its also worth reflecting on how Texas was supposedly going purple. It wasn't. Not even close.
Texas was Democrat in the Presidential Elections of 1960 - 1964 - and 1968. Lloyd Bentsen was elected Senator there in 1988 and Ann Richards was Democrat Governor until 1994.
I hate to break it to you, time flies for us all, but the last of those was 26 years ago and the fluff about Biden having a chance there proved to be exactly that.
I totally agree re- time flying, but the idea that Texas has been a Republican stronghold for ever and a day is much exaggerated. Hubert Humphrey carried the state in 1968 despite losing the national election. Carter's Southern roots doubtless helped him to prevail there in 1976, but the Democrats have had success more recently in elections for the Senate and Governor. Under George Bush the Republicans appeared totally dominant there , but the last decade has seen the pendulum swing back to the Democrats. The state is probably now a better longterm prospect for them than Missouri.
Family doctors are rebelling against a “grossly unfair” NHS decision to cancel appointments for elderly patients due to have their second Pfizer coronavirus vaccination next week.
GP leaders have encouraged doctors to defy NHS advice and press ahead with booster doses already booked, saying that it is wrong to disappoint vulnerable people at the last minute.
NHS bosses are holding firm, arguing that prioritising giving the first dose to more people will save thousands of lives.
Both the Pfizer and Oxford vaccines require two doses for full protection, but in a significant shift of strategy yesterday ministers said that the NHS should aim to give as many first doses as possible rather than ensure that people had the second within the recommended three or four weeks.
So far 786,000 people have had a first dose, with 264,406 vaccinated over Christmas week. NHS chiefs are pledging that most people living in care homes will be vaccinated within four weeks as they prioritise people over 80 and health and care staff.
Vaccination centres, however, have been told to cancel anyone booked in for a second dose from Monday.
Richard Vautrey, head of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, said that it was “grossly and patently unfair” to reschedule the appointments of tens of thousands of vulnerable patients.
“Local leaders are telling us that is unprofessional and impractical to amend the appointments for thousands of frail elderly patients,” he said.
“The existing commitment made to these patients by the NHS and local clinicians should be respected. If GPs decide to honour these booked appointments in January the BMA will support them. The government must see that it’s only right that existing bookings for the oldest and most vulnerable members of our society are honoured.”
Dr Vautrey said that the change in strategy would cause huge logistical problems for almost all vaccination sites and practices. “For example, to make contact with even just 2,000 elderly or vulnerable patients will take a team of five staff at a practice about a week, and that’s simply untenable,” he said.
The BMA is not opposing the whole of the new strategy, saying that it would be easier to cancel appointments booked further in the future and that it was supportive of prioritising first doses. Dr Vautrey said that many doctors still needed to be convinced and that the government should “as soon as possible publish a scientifically validated justification for its new approach”.
Susan Collins is closer to Biden than Trump, or even Mitch. I think the Dems only really need one senate seat to get most of their centrist/soft left (by US standards) policies through. There are other liberal Republicans too of course but Susan could even serve happily in Biden's cabinet without much friction.
It’s not that simple though. If the GOP have a senate majority then McConnell can simply prevent any Bill he doesn’t like from going to a vote.
But can I point you again to Japan, where house prices have only just gotten up off the floor, and are about half the level of 30 years ago. (As is, for that matter, the Nikkei.)
Isn't that because 30 years ago Japan was in a ridiculous asset bubble ?
Compare with 40 or 50 years ago and its not so bad:
I think the UK government might want to think about putting a different case....
Is that legal?
it's an SNP not a Scottish Govt message.
Can you talk me through the qualitative difference between it and this (apart from the Scotgov one being from a government voted in by Scots and the UK Government in Scotland coming from a government voted in by you)?
If it was a pre-Brexit-ref advertisement, calling for Brexit, attacking the EU, and linking to a page on the UK Government website that called for Brexit, it would be comparable, and I strongly suspect you'd be apoplectic, and rightly so. The SNP has done a lot of spending taxpayers' money to promote independence, but usually they at least semi manage to camouflage it. This is over the edge stuff.
I'm sure there's someone to whom you can write a stiff letter.
Any of these ads popped up yet?
'Boris Johnson set to launch £5m anti-independence ad blitz for Scotland'
Raising a glass of Scotland's finest tonight to a brilliant 2021 with a lot less disease and death in it. Let it be an 'Annus Mirabilis' for us all, one way or another. Slainte!
And to you! Even an annus not too horribilis would be an improvement.
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
We have plenty of evidence that modern monetary theory doesn’t generate conventional inflation but feeds through to asset prices and greater inequality.
The inflation threat for later 2021 will arise from post-virus pent up demand for spending and the wall of unspent money meeting shortages in supply due to post-virus economic disruption and, in the UK, Brexit.
I think the UK government might want to think about putting a different case....
Is that legal?
it's an SNP not a Scottish Govt message.
Every single line is true though. Shouldn't be illegal to tell the truth.
Actually it's a set of opinions, and there are extremely good reasons why it should not have been posted, or promoted from an official Scottish Government account, and why the page it links to, which is headlined by a call for independence, doesn't belong on the official Scottish Government website.
It is all the more disgraceful if it turns out that the budget for this (I believe the post was promoted) has been drawn from funds provided for Covid relief. That is going to go down like a bucket of cold sick with voters.
Frankly I'm a little puzzled at your claimed journey from unionist into an apologist for the most cringeingly flagrant misuse of taxpayer owned channels and money by the SNP.
Every line in it is factually correct. I don't think it is any worse than the pro Brexit bilge getting pumped out by the UK govt with our tax money. Not sure I understand your puzzlement. My country has been forced out of the EU against its will, after almost two thirds of Scottish voters chose to stay in. That seems a fairly clear proof that the UK is a toxic construct for Scots, wouldn't you agree? I am by inclination a Unionist - I live in England, after all.
Actually it is nearly all predictions or assumptions based on particular opinions, which may or may not turn out to be true.
And it is blatantly a Party line, which imo should not be put out on a Government (even a regional Government) platform.
I do not know whether there this is lawful in Scotland.
No, I think each claim is based on fact. It is a fact that the deal will lead to more cost and red tape for business, will have a major effect on food and drink imports and exports, will negatively affect national security and will reduce inflows of EU citizens, who make a positive contribution to Scotland. It is also true that Scotland didn't vote for Brexit and can't avoid all the negative consequences. And that Scotland has the right to choose to leave the UK and rejoin the EU. You may find it inconvenient to have these facts pointed out, but they are facts.
But can I point you again to Japan, where house prices have only just gotten up off the floor, and are about half the level of 30 years ago. (As is, for that matter, the Nikkei.)
Isn't that because 30 years ago Japan was in a ridiculous asset bubble ?
Compare with 40 or 50 years ago and its not so bad:
Rather a shame we still appear to be having more infections than vaccinations per week, particular once you allow for those not tested for.
There's a big political decision ahead that will need to be made: at what point to we relax restrictions? When hospitalisations fall or when we no longer have a large number of daily cases?
Because it is likely that most vunerable people will be vaccinated (and so hospitalisations down) long before most under 60s get vaccinated. Under 60s make up 75% of the population make up only 6% of Covid deaths (source: ONS weekly deaths), and I imagine a fair few of those fall under pre-existing conditions and so will be higher up the queue.
There will surely be a tipping point at which there is pressure to relax restrictions despite the virus continuing to run rampant.
Those of us who are under 45 are likely to see restrictions heavily relaxed before vaccination - but the pressure will be to vaccinate the 45s to 65 (or at least 50 to 65) before too much relaxation of restrictions.
The 45 to 65 age group provides a much greater proportion of hospitalisations than it does deaths. If the pressure on the NHS is hospitalisations then they will want I assume to get that done ASAP before relaxing too much.
Fair point (as was Andy Cooke's). The proportion of death falls to 1.9% for under 50s so perhaps your cut-off point is more likely, especially if hospitalisations are proportionally larger for this group.
From what I can tell from ONS data, hospitalisations for under 45s make up a small of the total as well.
My point is less a prediction as to when this will come, but that there will be a tipping point at some point next year. As someone in their early 30s, it will be strange to go out and act normal (and therefore quite likely catch covid) when I've spent over a year doing very little in order to avoid it.
I think this will also make very clear to those paying less attention to details that everyone's sacrifices has been for the older generation. This will surely influence the public mood for when the decision has to be made on where cuts or tax increases need to fall? Or maybe that's wishful thinking on my part.
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
We have plenty of evidence that modern monetary theory doesn’t generate conventional inflation but feeds through to asset prices and greater inequality.
The inflation threat for later 2021 will arise from post-virus pent up demand for spending and the wall of unspent money meeting shortages in supply due to post-virus economic disruption and, in the UK, Brexit.
Pent up demand and shortages of supply of what though.
Not of food or any other goods - we've not been going without this year.
So what are people likely to spend more on - holidays, hospitality, houses.
Family doctors are rebelling against a “grossly unfair” NHS decision to cancel appointments for elderly patients due to have their second Pfizer coronavirus vaccination next week.
GP leaders have encouraged doctors to defy NHS advice and press ahead with booster doses already booked, saying that it is wrong to disappoint vulnerable people at the last minute.
NHS bosses are holding firm, arguing that prioritising giving the first dose to more people will save thousands of lives.
Both the Pfizer and Oxford vaccines require two doses for full protection, but in a significant shift of strategy yesterday ministers said that the NHS should aim to give as many first doses as possible rather than ensure that people had the second within the recommended three or four weeks.
So far 786,000 people have had a first dose, with 264,406 vaccinated over Christmas week. NHS chiefs are pledging that most people living in care homes will be vaccinated within four weeks as they prioritise people over 80 and health and care staff.
Vaccination centres, however, have been told to cancel anyone booked in for a second dose from Monday.
Richard Vautrey, head of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, said that it was “grossly and patently unfair” to reschedule the appointments of tens of thousands of vulnerable patients.
“Local leaders are telling us that is unprofessional and impractical to amend the appointments for thousands of frail elderly patients,” he said.
“The existing commitment made to these patients by the NHS and local clinicians should be respected. If GPs decide to honour these booked appointments in January the BMA will support them. The government must see that it’s only right that existing bookings for the oldest and most vulnerable members of our society are honoured.”
Dr Vautrey said that the change in strategy would cause huge logistical problems for almost all vaccination sites and practices. “For example, to make contact with even just 2,000 elderly or vulnerable patients will take a team of five staff at a practice about a week, and that’s simply untenable,” he said.
The BMA is not opposing the whole of the new strategy, saying that it would be easier to cancel appointments booked further in the future and that it was supportive of prioritising first doses. Dr Vautrey said that many doctors still needed to be convinced and that the government should “as soon as possible publish a scientifically validated justification for its new approach”.
"Scotland didn't vote for Brexit" No, nor did London because it was a vote of the whole United Kingdom. People in Scotland voted as citizens of the UK. Like everywhere else.
Family doctors are rebelling against a “grossly unfair” NHS decision to cancel appointments for elderly patients due to have their second Pfizer coronavirus vaccination next week.
GP leaders have encouraged doctors to defy NHS advice and press ahead with booster doses already booked, saying that it is wrong to disappoint vulnerable people at the last minute.
NHS bosses are holding firm, arguing that prioritising giving the first dose to more people will save thousands of lives.
Both the Pfizer and Oxford vaccines require two doses for full protection, but in a significant shift of strategy yesterday ministers said that the NHS should aim to give as many first doses as possible rather than ensure that people had the second within the recommended three or four weeks.
So far 786,000 people have had a first dose, with 264,406 vaccinated over Christmas week. NHS chiefs are pledging that most people living in care homes will be vaccinated within four weeks as they prioritise people over 80 and health and care staff.
Vaccination centres, however, have been told to cancel anyone booked in for a second dose from Monday.
Richard Vautrey, head of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, said that it was “grossly and patently unfair” to reschedule the appointments of tens of thousands of vulnerable patients.
“Local leaders are telling us that is unprofessional and impractical to amend the appointments for thousands of frail elderly patients,” he said.
“The existing commitment made to these patients by the NHS and local clinicians should be respected. If GPs decide to honour these booked appointments in January the BMA will support them. The government must see that it’s only right that existing bookings for the oldest and most vulnerable members of our society are honoured.”
Dr Vautrey said that the change in strategy would cause huge logistical problems for almost all vaccination sites and practices. “For example, to make contact with even just 2,000 elderly or vulnerable patients will take a team of five staff at a practice about a week, and that’s simply untenable,” he said.
The BMA is not opposing the whole of the new strategy, saying that it would be easier to cancel appointments booked further in the future and that it was supportive of prioritising first doses. Dr Vautrey said that many doctors still needed to be convinced and that the government should “as soon as possible publish a scientifically validated justification for its new approach”.
Family doctors are rebelling against a “grossly unfair” NHS decision to cancel appointments for elderly patients due to have their second Pfizer coronavirus vaccination next week.
GP leaders have encouraged doctors to defy NHS advice and press ahead with booster doses already booked, saying that it is wrong to disappoint vulnerable people at the last minute.
NHS bosses are holding firm, arguing that prioritising giving the first dose to more people will save thousands of lives.
Both the Pfizer and Oxford vaccines require two doses for full protection, but in a significant shift of strategy yesterday ministers said that the NHS should aim to give as many first doses as possible rather than ensure that people had the second within the recommended three or four weeks.
So far 786,000 people have had a first dose, with 264,406 vaccinated over Christmas week. NHS chiefs are pledging that most people living in care homes will be vaccinated within four weeks as they prioritise people over 80 and health and care staff.
Vaccination centres, however, have been told to cancel anyone booked in for a second dose from Monday.
Richard Vautrey, head of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, said that it was “grossly and patently unfair” to reschedule the appointments of tens of thousands of vulnerable patients.
“Local leaders are telling us that is unprofessional and impractical to amend the appointments for thousands of frail elderly patients,” he said.
“The existing commitment made to these patients by the NHS and local clinicians should be respected. If GPs decide to honour these booked appointments in January the BMA will support them. The government must see that it’s only right that existing bookings for the oldest and most vulnerable members of our society are honoured.”
Dr Vautrey said that the change in strategy would cause huge logistical problems for almost all vaccination sites and practices. “For example, to make contact with even just 2,000 elderly or vulnerable patients will take a team of five staff at a practice about a week, and that’s simply untenable,” he said.
The BMA is not opposing the whole of the new strategy, saying that it would be easier to cancel appointments booked further in the future and that it was supportive of prioritising first doses. Dr Vautrey said that many doctors still needed to be convinced and that the government should “as soon as possible publish a scientifically validated justification for its new approach”.
Which group of public servants we rely on to get through this mess are the government going to piss off next?
That post does not show you in a good light. You have every right to be annoyed about the way the school situation has been handled. The BMA on the other hand can go fuck themselves.
Re Bitcoin, as the only man on here to have bought it at $3, and as I still hang on to well... half a bitcoin... it is worth remembering that it has one massive flaw:
The way it is architected allows it to only process about 5 to 7 transactions a second.
And another smaller one... It typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to get confirmation of a transaction having been completed, during which the sender could (in theory) walk back the transaction.
Together, these don't matter, if everyone is just buying it and sitting on it, but it doesn't really allow for it to be used for regular purchases, or indeed to replace "fiat" money or payment networks like Western Union, PayPal or Visa.
I get the occasional twinge - I was doing GOPU research back in the day. Had the most powerful GPU yet made on early release from NVIDIA. Fired up BitCoin mining for a laugh. Left it running - by accident - at work over the weekend. This was when mining on a single machine was spewing bitcoins....
Deleted all the data on Monday and did some real work.
I ordered a Butterfly Labs bitcoin miner on-line, the very first produced.
It was shipped to me in the UK, but by a twist of fate Fedex lost it for six weeks. In that period Bitcoin mining difficulty increased more than four times.
I then sold it on eBay to someone.
They used it to generate Bitcoin for two months. Then they claimed it didn't work, and returned it. I made a complain to eBay, but they weren't interested. That person basically stole £2,000 from me.
The whole BitCoin mining thing reminded me of the stories of various gold rushes. The people who made the money sold spades, picks and other supplies.... the miners themselves often ended up poorer
The appeal is surely that Bitcoin is finite and more difficult for authorities to keep tabs on than fiat.
Investors are doing the maths. The great money printing adventure can only last so long.
Even the most conservative Western governments will be coming for middle class money soon. Big Time. What else can they do?
I tend to agree that governments are going to lean ever more on the magic money printing machine.
And at some point, that will inevitably lead to inflation.
But I couldn't tell you if that happens in 2021 or 2051.
Remember that Japan has been furiously printing money for about two decades now, and the BOJ now owns debt equivalent to well over 100% of Japanese GDP, and that hasn't resulted in a single drop of inflation.
We need some new economics. Our current monetary theories are not consistent with the current lack of inflation. Not at all.
We have plenty of evidence that modern monetary theory doesn’t generate conventional inflation but feeds through to asset prices and greater inequality.
The inflation threat for later 2021 will arise from post-virus pent up demand for spending and the wall of unspent money meeting shortages in supply due to post-virus economic disruption and, in the UK, Brexit.
Pent up demand and shortages of supply of what though.
Not of food or any other goods - we've not been going without this year.
So what are people likely to spend more on - holidays, hospitality, houses.
...holidays, hospitality, property, home improvements, gardening, eating out, having fun, stuff.
In the US, private sector household deposits are up by $2,200,000,000,000 across the year and in the UK the BoE estimates that there is over £100,000,000,000 of "excess savings".
One of the City's most prominent hedge fund managers is preparing to invest millions of pounds in GB News, the fledgling current broadcasting company which is targeting a launch into British homes next year.
Sky News has learnt that Sir Paul Marshall, the co-founder of Marshall Wace, is in advanced talks about injecting approximately £10m into GB News.
I really don't see this. The likes of Sky News gets tiny audiences. There is already the BBC, who have the size to smash most competition and a range of smaller competition from Sky, to Talk Radio, to Times Radio to LBC, and big bad Uncle Rupert is launching News UK.
I’m not quite sure how the economics work either, but perhaps the channel itself is merely a loss-making way to produce covidiot and brexity culture war fodder for more profitable use elsewhere.
I believe Paul is a LibDem
He was. He financed and co-edited the Orange Book. He left the LibDems for the Tories over Brexit in 2015. He made a donation to Michael Gove's failed leadership bid in 2016. He is a neo-liberal - similar to Philip T.
Comments
We don’t know that is true of course, but it would be a terrible waste of vaccine if it was...
Boris would love your take though, he could be a lot bolder in what goes out as official government communication than he already would be (I have no doubt there will be examples which have crossed the line) and then argue it is true. "What?" he'd say, "It's not illegal to tell the truth".
Rather than “new economics” we actually need to go all in.
Significant infrastructure investment (metro transport systems; green energy; 5G rollout) and be looking seriously at UBI.
There is probably some benefit from a single Pfizer, but may mean needing a second booster. We really don't have anything to hang a hat on, at least in the published literature.
I shall be engaged in the to-the-death struggle to persuade my SO that almost anything is better than Only An Excuse (last one ever though so one small glimmer of light); she hates football as well!
Probably grateful for once that Jools' Hootenany was recorded in happier times.
https://twitter.com/jo_bromilow/status/1344705233713328129
But I feel that technological change is pushing us inevitably in this direction.
It is all the more disgraceful if it turns out that the budget for this (I believe the post was promoted) has been drawn from funds provided for Covid relief. That is going to go down like a bucket of cold sick with voters.
Frankly I'm a little puzzled at your claimed journey from unionist into an apologist for the most cringeingly flagrant misuse of taxpayer owned channels and money by the SNP.
How much have the banks lent this year, one way and another?
It seems NHS staff aren't immune from this nonsense.
Personally I did very well on the markets, selling mid Feb and buying back in in April. I don't think that something that I could repeat in other years.
I’m not sure it holds in the “fourth industrial revolution”.
More horrendous case and death numbers though we are told it's "a weekend effect" by some. Well, perhaps but the headline figures look bad as do the messages from the NHS however sceptical some may be.
Am I right in thinking we are not going to provide the second Pfizer inoculation three weeks after the initial vaccination? It also seems Pfizer don't know how effective a second injection 12 weeks rather than 3 weeks after the first will be so why are we going off on this tangent?
I presume the line now is to get a first injection into as many people as possible to provide some level of protection even if that compromises the protection of those already injected?
I don't understand that at all - if we are trying to save lives and reduce hospitalisations and if we acknowledge the leaders in both categories are the elderly, it must make sense to finish the task of inoculating the highest risk groups.
To this observer, it seems the Government just wants to look like it's being effective - "look at us, one million people vaccinated this week" - not strictly true of course, no one fully vaccinated just a lot of people partly vaccinated but it's big numbers and it sounds as though something is happening.
It's all about hope but it's the hope that kills you (metaphorically at least).
BTW y/y inflation will be well above 2% in Q2 next year owing to base effects, so we might see people talking about an inflation scare at that point - although I would expect it to come down again pretty quickly.
You can only get proper inflation if you can get wage inflation, otherwise rising prices reduce consumers' incomes, and inflation soon runs out of steam. With the crushing of organised labour we are unlikely to see 1970s style wage inflation in my opinion.
Ditto for UK Gmt and Parliament.
Opinions, maybe, but consensus enough to make action a duty against economic damage.
If the anti-vax problem is clustered rather than geographically spread that implies that there will still be outbreaks for quite some time to come - even if the vaccine prevents onwards transmission.
I shall be logging off shortly to start on the (very quiet) festivities here.
The surfeit of cheap labour has meant some organisations have simply hired extra hands rather than investing in, for example, automaton to enhance business processes so productivity has stagnated. A shortage of labour might encourage some capital expenditure on improving business processes.
The other aspect of inflation and a return to a more normal monetary policy is going to be psychological. It's 20 years since anyone has had to worry much about interest rates or inflation so that pain those of us old enough to remember the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s will understand means nothing to most people under 50.
Not sure I understand your puzzlement. My country has been forced out of the EU against its will, after almost two thirds of Scottish voters chose to stay in. That seems a fairly clear proof that the UK is a toxic construct for Scots, wouldn't you agree?
I am by inclination a Unionist - I live in England, after all.
Lord Smackhead of Throbbing Noggin in the County of Middlesex
Actually, as regards the AZ vaccine, it's very plausible that a longer gap between doses is at least as strong or even stronger than a shorter gap. There is both some sign of this in the data and a biological reason to expect that it might happen.
I don't honestly think it is a government PR move. I think it's scientists' calculations about the way to save the most lives. And I wouldn't be concerned that one dose is only partial vaccination. I think it's better to think of it as more "temporary" vaccination, with the second dose causing the immunity to last longer.
--AS
People go in for tests or have them administered through all demographics and areas.
So I will be brief. The Phillips curve showed the relationship between unemployment and wages. Pre Covid we had record employment so it would be another flashing red light. And yet, nothing. Membership of the EU (per Stuart Rose) might be pointed at but this is not a uniquely UK or even EU phenomenon.
Any of these ads popped up yet?
'Boris Johnson set to launch £5m anti-independence ad blitz for Scotland'
https://tinyurl.com/yal5phg6
Happy New Year!
And it is blatantly a Party line, which imo should not be put out on a Government (even a regional Government) platform.
I do not know whether there this is lawful in Scotland.
There's a big political decision ahead that will need to be made: at what point to we relax restrictions? When hospitalisations fall or when we no longer have a large number of daily cases?
Because it is likely that most vunerable people will be vaccinated (and so hospitalisations down) long before most under 60s get vaccinated. Under 60s make up 75% of the population make up only 6% of Covid deaths (source: ONS weekly deaths), and I imagine a fair few of those fall under pre-existing conditions and so will be higher up the queue.
There will surely be a tipping point at which there is pressure to relax restrictions despite the virus continuing to run rampant.
Scotsperson sold for peanuts. IIRC the Scotsperson and related newspapers alone was £160m back in 2005. But I suppose if you put monkeys in charge ... so sad, it used to be a great newspaper.
GP leaders have encouraged doctors to defy NHS advice and press ahead with booster doses already booked, saying that it is wrong to disappoint vulnerable people at the last minute.
NHS bosses are holding firm, arguing that prioritising giving the first dose to more people will save thousands of lives.
Both the Pfizer and Oxford vaccines require two doses for full protection, but in a significant shift of strategy yesterday ministers said that the NHS should aim to give as many first doses as possible rather than ensure that people had the second within the recommended three or four weeks.
So far 786,000 people have had a first dose, with 264,406 vaccinated over Christmas week. NHS chiefs are pledging that most people living in care homes will be vaccinated within four weeks as they prioritise people over 80 and health and care staff.
Vaccination centres, however, have been told to cancel anyone booked in for a second dose from Monday.
Richard Vautrey, head of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, said that it was “grossly and patently unfair” to reschedule the appointments of tens of thousands of vulnerable patients.
“Local leaders are telling us that is unprofessional and impractical to amend the appointments for thousands of frail elderly patients,” he said.
“The existing commitment made to these patients by the NHS and local clinicians should be respected. If GPs decide to honour these booked appointments in January the BMA will support them. The government must see that it’s only right that existing bookings for the oldest and most vulnerable members of our society are honoured.”
Dr Vautrey said that the change in strategy would cause huge logistical problems for almost all vaccination sites and practices. “For example, to make contact with even just 2,000 elderly or vulnerable patients will take a team of five staff at a practice about a week, and that’s simply untenable,” he said.
The BMA is not opposing the whole of the new strategy, saying that it would be easier to cancel appointments booked further in the future and that it was supportive of prioritising first doses. Dr Vautrey said that many doctors still needed to be convinced and that the government should “as soon as possible publish a scientifically validated justification for its new approach”.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/gps-rebel-over-order-to-delay-second-jabs-xsg6qxzcp
Frankly, when I predicted that the SNP would be splurging on a Brexit misery advertising campaign, I expected a good deal more guile. I would at least have expected a 'Do you need help with your concerns about national security after Brexit?' and 'Do you need help with the exhausting red tape your business will face after Brexit?'. That would at least have preserved the veneer of a public information campaign. But apparently the SNP thinks its audience is too thick to even get those breezeblock style hints, so it's just gone Tonto instead.
The year when we had to sit impotently at home while malign forces spread across the country capriciously undermining our economy, harming our wellbeing and destroying our livelihoods.
On top of which, we had to cope with the coronavirus.
You should probably bear in the mind that Pfizer have an interest in everyone buying two doses, and showing 95% rather than (say) 91% effectiveness! I suspect that they would also have tested one dose if only they'd have known how well two doses was going to work, but everyone needed results at speed and they plumped for two doses for the trial. This is one limitation of having combined phase 1/2 and 2/3 trials.
--AS
(It’s not the same by a long chalk)
That’s the key variable, because without hospital assistance in the critically ill cases in the younger age bands, their death rates would be far higher.
But can I point you again to Japan, where house prices have only just gotten up off the floor, and are about half the level of 30 years ago. (As is, for that matter, the Nikkei.)
I wonder if the imagery of oldies getting both doses and then going off on holiday with their triple lock pensions while the working population was still waiting for their first dose was troublesome.
--AS
The 45 to 65 age group provides a much greater proportion of hospitalisations than it does deaths. If the pressure on the NHS is hospitalisations then they will want I assume to get that done ASAP before relaxing too much.
It's what happens when you put a Putinist in change of first a political party, and then a government.
Lies, lies, and yet more lies, 24/7 & 365 (+1 on leap years).
Same to you - definitely not worth arguing about.
Raising a glass of Scotland's finest tonight to a brilliant 2021 with a lot less disease and death in it. Let it be an 'Annus Mirabilis' for us all, one way or another. Slainte!
Does it justify the tweet?
https://twitter.com/JujuliaGrace/status/1344642392733978624
Email:
Dear all,
We hope you had reasonable Christmases. Thank you to those of you who were working, in whatever capacity.
Weekly emails no longer seem sufficient as things are changing so fast. We now have over 90 patients on ACCU across the two floors (6 pods of roughly 15 patient each). The number of people with Covid continues to rise rapidly.
Every hospital in North East London is struggling, some with insufficient oxygen supplies, all with insufficient nursing numbers. Believe it or not, Royal London critical care is coping well relative to some sites. We have often had to help out our neighbours by taking patients they simply do not have capacity to manage. General medical bed numbers (so called ‘G&A beds’) are being increased as well as critical care beds.
Kent is in a similar, if not worse, position. You may have heard on the news that they are sending patients to South West England. The rest of London is probably a couple of weeks behind NEL, but their hospitals too are filling up. NHS London have asked the other sectors to expand capacity in much the same was as we have.
We are currently working on 4E, 4F, 15C, and 15E (both sides). As in the first wave, many nursing staff from a variety of areas have been redeployed to help. ICU nurses from Barts are now a regular feature. We have also been joined by ICU consultants and trainees from Barts.
We will soon by joined by Barts cardiology registrars, to populate a further tier of senior trainees. The anaesthetic department are providing consultants to cover all off-unit calls which would normally be attended by ACCU doctors (trauma calls, code blacks, and cardiac arrests), a consultant to run one of our pods, and will be providing extra airway cover at night (to help with proning/deproning, head turns, managing deteriorations etc.) The comms team is again being boosted in numbers.
...
There are a few developments we wanted to update you with:
Further expansion. We have always had robust(ish) plans to staff 90 beds, which is where we are now. The new strain and failure of tiers have led to an unexpected increase in numbers however. We are going to have to open more beds. NHS London are authorising 1:3 nursing ratios. We are still gathering together enough staff to do so (both medical and nursing), but the next base of operations to open will be half of 15F.
In the meantime, we are going to squeeze extra beds in to the existing 15th floor wards.
The ACCU consultant rota will change from next week back to what it was in the first wave. There will be a separate admissions consultant, working alongside the 1113 trainee. The consultant on call overnight will be resident.
We will be sending more regular, probably daily, emails to nurses with some simple facts to try to keep you in the loop. Feel free to ignore this, as really important information will come separately, or in our weekly(ish) emails (the ones with pictures and/or poems).
We are also exploring setting up screens in staff rooms to display useful information/encouraging ditties/vaccine updates etc.
We are starting a daily Teams feedback forum in which to raise practical problems, in an attempt to catch these early, and solve the solvable.
We would like to take this opportunity to reiterate the fact we are now in disaster medicine mode. We are no longer providing high standard critical care, because we cannot. While this is far from ideal, it’s the way things are, and the way they have to be for now.
In terms of how much you do for each patient, discuss this with your nurse in charge and/or the medical team. Some will still need hourly obs, others won’t. Some will still need 4 hourly rolls, but others may be OK with two rolls per shift. This may even change during the shift.
Things are going to get harder before they get better (which they will, eventually). As we get busy, we all tend to reach a limit, in some way or other. Different people will do this in different ways at different times. Bear with them, offer an ear/shoulder (metaphorically of course, while maintaining social distancing!), be understanding. We’ll get through this better by getting through it together.
Best wishes
Compare with 40 or 50 years ago and its not so bad:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikkei_225#/media/File:Nikkei_225.png
Which group of public servants we rely on to get through this mess are the government going to piss off next?
https://youtu.be/OHL3L9m6qgs
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-55502904
Even an annus not too horribilis would be an improvement.
The inflation threat for later 2021 will arise from post-virus pent up demand for spending and the wall of unspent money meeting shortages in supply due to post-virus economic disruption and, in the UK, Brexit.
From what I can tell from ONS data, hospitalisations for under 45s make up a small of the total as well.
My point is less a prediction as to when this will come, but that there will be a tipping point at some point next year. As someone in their early 30s, it will be strange to go out and act normal (and therefore quite likely catch covid) when I've spent over a year doing very little in order to avoid it.
I think this will also make very clear to those paying less attention to details that everyone's sacrifices has been for the older generation. This will surely influence the public mood for when the decision has to be made on where cuts or tax increases need to fall? Or maybe that's wishful thinking on my part.
Not of food or any other goods - we've not been going without this year.
So what are people likely to spend more on - holidays, hospitality, houses.
"How dare the government cancel a medical procedure at the the last moment. Only we should be cancelling medical procedures at the last moment!!!!!!"
No, nor did London because it was a vote of the whole United Kingdom.
People in Scotland voted as citizens of the UK. Like everywhere else.
Lawyers are loving the government so much, and we know lawyers do so much public good.
In the US, private sector household deposits are up by $2,200,000,000,000 across the year and in the UK the BoE estimates that there is over £100,000,000,000 of "excess savings".
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/31/london-hospital-uclh-warns-on-track-become-covid-only